In general, they looked like any assortment of people from any high school. There were a few people with glossy, perfect hair who had already clumped together through that strange alchemy that joins all people with perfect, glossy hair. There was one girl in a bright red-and-white-check vintage dress with cat-eye glasses, winged eyeliner, a red vintage purse, and a tiny red fascinator. She was the most dressed up, and her heels sank into the grass as they walked. There was another girl with green hair and a NASA T-shirt who handled the grassy terrain in her wheelchair with deftness. There was a girl with a sharply cut black bob, pale skin, and vibrant red lipstick who looked like some kind of silent movie star dressed in a formless but somehow unmistakably fashionable gray dress and thick black belt. There was a girl in a stunning floral hijab who took a lot of pictures of the campus on her phone. There was a guy who never took off his cat-ear headphones during the entire tour.

Their tour was led by a student named Kazim Bazir, who spoke quickly and excitedly. Kaz had bright, excited eyes and the upbeat tone of a salesman who really wanted to sell you your very own deranged mountain retreat.

“Ellingham Academy was built between 1928 and 1936 by Albert Xavier Ellingham and his wife, Iris Ellingham,” Kaz said. “The right side of the campus, where our houses are, is known as wet campus, because the creek turns and borders the property. The fields and classrooms and most of the other buildings are on dry campus. Of course, it’s all a dry campus . . .”

No laughs. Tough crowd.

Ellingham was splendid in the sunshine. That was the only word for it. The light fell like rain in droplets that hung in the air. A cloud of them surrounded the fountain that gushed merrily on the green, creating its own ecosystem of rainbows. The light found every nook and crook of the bright redbrick buildings. It made the gargoyles seem to smile. It deepened the green of the trees. It made the statues—well, it didn’t do anything to the statues except reveal just how many of them there were.

“Do you think these get less creepy with time?” Nate asked as they passed yet another cluster of naked Greeks or Romans.

“I hope not,” Stevie replied.

Kaz led the group around the pathways, pointing out all the buildings and their uses. Albert Ellingham had been a massive admirer of Greek and Roman culture. This was evident from the names of the buildings: Eunomia, Genius, Jupiter, Cybele, Dionysus, Asteria, and Demeter.

As they walked through the green, Stevie looked up at the Great House. Its name was simple and accurate. The Great House was a character in this tale—the first building erected on this spot, designed to meet the whims of the family who inhabited it, while serving as the center of a seat of learning. This was the home Iris and Alice Ellingham left that morning, down this very drive. Stevie counted the windows on the second floor.

“What’s up there?” Janelle asked. “You’re looking up there really intently.”

“Right there,” Stevie said, pointing at two of the windows on the left. “Those are the ones Flora Robinson said she was looking out of the night of the kidnapping.”

“Who’s Flora Robinson?”

“A friend of the Ellinghams’. Iris Ellingham’s best friend. She was suspected for a long time because she gave a weird story that night. Her interview was really odd.”

There was no time to linger on Flora and her story. The tour was moving toward the Ellingham library, a stone structure that looked a bit like a church, with a large rose window, a spire, and a rounded set of red double doors.

“It’s designed this way on purpose,” Kaz said. “Albert Ellingham said knowledge was his religion and libraries were his church, so he built a church.”

Inside, the library was cool and still, with colored light streaming through the stained-glass windows. All of the buildings were impressive, but there was something majestic about this one. There was an overhang that filled about half the space, but once you got past this, much of the building was open, and you could see up three stories to the bookshelves that lined the structure. Elaborate spiral staircases made of wrought iron woven into patterns of twisting vines led up to the other levels. Out of all the buildings, this one should probably have been the quietest and the stillest, but this one seemed a bit . . . Stevie struggled to catch the right word. Wild? There was a loose wind spinning around and whistling near the ceiling. The iron vines seemed to genuinely crawl up the steps. The librarian, who seemed to have just run in, was out of breath. She wore a very professional-looking biking outfit, and her short black hair bore the imprint of a recent bike helmet.

“Hey!” she said, sounding a bit winded. “I’m Kyoko Obi. I’m your librarian. I also run a cycling club. We all do double duty around here. Sorry. One second . . .”

She took a long drink from an Ellingham-branded reusable water bottle.

“We have about half a million books on site,” she said, “both here and in storage. We have access to millions more digitally. We’re partnered with most of the Ivy League libraries, so we can get you more or less anything you require. It’s my job to get you anything you need.”

Stevie turned that over in her mind for a bit. One good thing about being from Pittsburgh was that the Carnegie Library was one of the best in the country. She had been able to get loads of books and materials there. But here there might be things related to the case, things not available anywhere else. Stevie wanted to stay, but Kazim was moving them on, all the way across the campus, to a large, circular tent structure that looked semipermanent.

“This is the study yurt,” Kaz said, pushing back a heavy flap that served as the door. The floor of the inside was covered in a mix of beautiful woven rugs and piles of pillows and beanbags.

“A lot of people sleep in here,” Kaz said. “It’s for studying, but . . . it has all kinds of uses.”

The girl with the bob laughed knowingly. A girl with short silver hair, a longer chunk of which poked straight up at the forehead, was lingering nearby. She wore round glasses, white overalls, and a short tank top underneath. She had been trailing Janelle, Stevie, and Nate for several minutes. The sun came out from behind a cloud, bathing all of them in strong, burning summer light. The girl tapped on her glasses and the lenses darkened.

“Magic,” she said.

“Transition lenses,” Janelle replied with a laugh. “Photochromic plastic.”

“Vi Harper-Tomo,” the girl said to Janelle, extending a hand. “And I am magic.”

Something flashed between these two that was almost visible to the naked eye, which caused Stevie a second of panic. She had just met Janelle, Janelle was her best bet at a closest friend, and already someone else was coming into the frame.

Which was a crazy thought.

Stevie tried to push it out of her mind and focus on the prize of this tour—an inside look at the Ellingham Great House, the Ellinghams’ former residence. She had studied the photos of the house for so long. Seen the floor plans. Knew the history. But instead, Kaz walked them right past it.

“Aren’t we going in?” Stevie asked.

“End of the tour!” he said, walking them past the walled garden, and back into a clearing in the trees to a large, sprawling modern building of raw Vermont wood and stone. It had a high, peaked roof like a ski lodge.