Then they went up again, at a gradient usually reserved for ski lifts and airplane takeoffs. Nothing would stop the coach. The shade from the trees darkened the path completely. The branches scratched at the sides of the vehicle like dozens of fingernails. The coach made grinding noises and seemed to be fighting its way up the ever-narrowing path. Stevie knew there was nothing to be afraid of, but the coach seemed to be working against the forces of the universe itself to make its way up this driveway. It was unlikely that this would be the trip, this one with her and her parents, that the coach would give way and barrel backward the way it had come, running loose and wild, crashing blindly toward the river and sweet, cold, watery oblivion . . . but you never knew.

The ground started to level and trees gave way to a smoother path and an opening view of green lawns. The coach approached a gate guarded by two statues on pedestals, winged creatures with smiling faces and empty eyes, four paws, and tails.

“Those are strange angels,” her mother said, craning to look.

“They’re not angels,” Stevie said. “They’re sphinxes. They’re mythical creatures that ask you riddles before you’re allowed to enter a place. If you get it wrong, they eat you. Like from Oedipus. The Riddle of the Sphinx. That’s a sphinx. Not to be confused with Spanx, which is a sidearm in the holster of the diet-industrial complex.”

Her mother gave her that look again. We kind of wanted the going-out, shopping, prom-going type, and we got this weird, creepy one, and we love it but what is it talking about, ever?

Sometimes Stevie felt bad for her parents. Their idea of what constituted interesting was so limited. They were never going to have as much fun as she did.

Germaine peered over at Stevie with large, luminous eyes. Her expression was as unreadable as the sphinxes’.

In that moment, a blanket of doubt dropped over everything in Stevie’s mind. She should not have been admitted. The letter came to the wrong house, the wrong Stevie. It was a trick, a joke, a cosmic mistake. None of this could be real.

But it was too late, even if all of those things were true, because they had arrived at Ellingham Academy.

2

THE FIRST THING STEVIE SAW WAS THE CIRCULAR GREEN WITH A FOUNTAIN in the middle, a statue of Neptune standing in greeting in the splashing water. A thick curtain of trees surrounded the green. Bits of buildings, flashes of brick and stone and glass peeped shyly in the gaps. At the very top of the green, the host of the whole affair, was a great mansion—the Great House, a mad Gothic manor, with dozens of cathedral windows, four arches around the door, and a multipeaked roof.

Stevie was rendered near speechless for a minute. She had seen hundreds of photographs of the Ellingham estate. She knew the maps and the angles and views. But being here in the fresh, thin air, hearing the splash from the Neptune fountain, feeling the sun on her face as she stood on the great lawn—being here gave her a head rush.

The driver unloaded Stevie’s suitcases from the belly of the coach, along with the three bags of groceries her parents had insisted she bring. They were embarrassingly heavy, packed with jumbo plastic containers of peanut butter, powdered iced tea, and lots of shower gel and sanitary products and other things bought on sale.

“Are we supposed to tip him?” her mother said quietly, as all of this was unloaded from the coach.

“No,” Stevie said, forcing confidence into her voice. She had no idea if you tipped the school coach driver or not. This had not come up in her research.

“You okay?” her dad asked.

“Yep,” she said, steadying herself against her suitcase. “It’s just . . . so beautiful.”

“It’s something,” he said. “No denying that.”

A large golf cart circled the drive and pulled up alongside them. Another man greeted them. He was younger than the driver, in his thirties maybe, rugged and muscular and dressed in well-worn cargo shorts and an Ellingham polo shirt. He was the kind of clean-cut person who made her parents relax, and therefore, Stevie relaxed.

“Stephanie Bell?” he asked.

“Stevie,” she corrected him.

“I’m Mark Parsons,” he said. “Head of grounds. You got Minerva. Nice house.”

Stevie’s things and the Bells themselves were loaded into the cart. Germaine and her family were put in another and sent off in the opposite direction.

“Everyone wants Minerva,” Mark added when they were out of earshot. “It’s the best house.”

The property was full of smooth, twisting stone paths between copses of trees. They rode along under the heavy shade, and Stevie and her parents were cowed into impressed silence by the school buildings. There were some large, grand ones of stone and red brick, with Gothic arches connecting them and tiny turrets softening their corners. Some were bare and grand, while others were wrapped so tightly in ivy it looked like they were being presented as gifts to some forest god. This wasn’t her local high school. This was clearly a Seat of Learning.

There were Greek and Roman statues of cold, white stone behind the trees, standing alone in the clearings.

“Someone’s been to the garden center,” her dad said.

“Oh, no,” Mark replied, steering the cart past a chorus of heads, their eyes blank and empty but their expressions determined, looking very much like some committee in the middle of an important decision. “These are all the real thing. A fortune’s worth of statues out in the open.”

There were, to be fair, maybe too many statues. Someone should have had a talk with Albert Ellingham and told him to maybe relax with the statue buying. But if you’re rich enough and famous enough, Stevie figured, you can do pretty much anything you want with your mountaintop lair.

The golf cart stopped in front of a low, dignified house built in alternating red and gold brick. It seemed to be in several parts—there was a large section on the right that looked like a normal house, then a long extension off to the side that ended in a turret. The entire structure was covered in a coat of Virginia creeper that obscured the bas-relief faces that peered from the roofline and from above the windows. The door was bright blue and hanging open, letting in the breeze and the flies.

Stevie and her parents stepped into what appeared to be some kind of common room, with a stone floor and a wide fireplace surrounded by rocking chairs. The room was cool and shaded and still smelled of wood and past fires. It was decorated in a slightly claustrophobic red flocked wallpaper and a mounted moose head that wore a crown of decorative lights. There was a hammock chair hanging by the fire, lots of floor cushions, a beat-up but exceedingly comfortable-looking purple sofa, and a massive farm table that took up most of the room. On the farm table was a tackle box and some small items that looked like craft supplies—beads, or the many mysterious things involved in the scrapbooking process. Right by the door, eight large pegs protruded from the wall. These were maybe nine or ten inches long—far too large for coats. Stevie touched one with the tip of her finger as a physical manifestation of the question: What are you?

“Hello!”

Stevie turned to see a woman coming out of the small kitchen area with a mug of coffee. She had a shaved head with just the smallest amount of peach fuzz and a petite but deeply muscled and tanned frame. Her arms were elegantly tattooed in sleeves of flowers. She was dressed in a loose T-shirt that read I DIG DIGS and cargo shorts, which showed off a pair of strong, hairy legs.