“Get to the dining pavilion,” she said. “Now.”

She marched over to Brandy and helped her to her feet.

“Come on,” she said. “Come on. Time to go.”

Brandy let herself be led, but she was almost deadweight, stumbling through her shock. Patty Horne, who had been staying in the nurse’s cabin the last few nights as part of a house arrest, came running, breaking through the wall of campers who were reluctantly leaving the scene.

“Is that Eric?” she said.

“Patty, go get your campers and go to the dining pavilion.”

“What about the others?” Patty asked. “Are they okay?”

Susan froze.

“Others?” she repeated.

3

TRAINS RUN THROUGH COUNTLESS MURDER MYSTERY NOVELS. PEOPLE are pushed off them or vanish when they move between the cars. When trains pass through tunnels, at least one passenger will get an axe in the face in the dark. People who seem to be asleep on trains are dead, victims of strange poisons in their tea. If you’re not murdered on a train, you’ll probably end up as a witness, seeing something out the window as you speed by—a man with a gun creeping toward a house, a strangling in a window. Train times always mattered. Jasper couldn’t have been on the 7:14 from London because it doesn’t run on Sundays!

Stevie had never actually taken a train anywhere. Her family went places by car only, as trains had a vaguely European and suspicious air about them. It turned out that the train was a pretty quiet and kind of boring tube where you mostly heard other people’s phone conversations or smelled their sandwiches.

It had been a few frantic days. Once she got permission to go to Sunny Pines, she had to scramble to gather up her friends, while Carson moved some things around and got them all jobs that suited their abilities.

At Ellingham, Stevie had lived in a small house called Minerva, with three students on the first floor and three on the second. By the end of the school year, this number was down to four, for various unfortunate reasons. Stevie was one of the four, as was David. The other two were Janelle Franklin, her next-door neighbor, and Nate Fisher, who lived upstairs.

She began with Nate.

Nate Fisher had written a book when he was fourteen, a fantasy novel that had gotten so popular online that a publishing company picked it up. The thing he created to keep himself away from people accidentally launched him into the world at large. The publisher wanted him to go on tour, to make videos, to smile and promote, and—most important—to write a second book.

Nate was always “working” on his book, which meant that Nate was never working on his book. He went all the way to Ellingham not to write his book. Nate would go to Mars if it meant that he didn’t have to write his book. It was never clear to Stevie why he didn’t want to write it; he must have liked writing in order to write a book in the first place. Sometimes she would try to get him to explain, but it always ended with him saying something like “That’s not how it works” before windmilling his arms around and disappearing to his room. She sensed it was something to do with performance anxiety, which she understood. Or maybe it was as simple as not wanting to do something that other people wanted you to do, which was also something she understood.