I feel bile rising in my throat, nausea swimming in my stomach. “What did you do to them?” I whisper.

Harlowe laughs, warming her hands in front of the heating vent, rubbing them together. “It’s only an initiation, Emma. We don’t plan to hurt them.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” I ask through gritted teeth.

“Me, Ivy, and Graham.” She scowls. “Willa and Sophie didn’t want to play along.”

I consider walking away. Running back to my dorm room, waking up Pru and Ollie, and scouring the campus for my friends. But if Harlowe’s telling the truth, and she really has transported them off campus, we’ll have wasted precious time. For all I know, she’ll leave them there—wherever they are—all night. I can’t head back to Cypress knowing that they could be bound and gagged somewhere, for hours on end. And with their plums off-line, I have no way of contacting them. I make a split-second decision, grabbing the handle to the back door of the car and flinging it open, then climbing in. My heart’s racing with fear and increasing dread. I’ll buzz Pru and Ollie. Jago and Ansel too. They can search the campus while I go with Harlowe…wherever she plans on taking me.

“Let’s go.” I slam the door shut. Then I glance up at the front seat, skeptical. “Do you even know how to drive this thing?” I examine the interior of the car. It’s seriously old, with cracked leather seats and none of the high-tech devices you’d find in any modern car. No view screen. No digital control panel. Just a bunch of old dials and knobs. Harlowe is busy revving the engine, her foot on the accelerator. An alarm bell goes off in my head, but I ignore it. This is blatantly and egregiously against Darkwood rules. Bringing this car here, driving it in the middle of the night. Where’d she even get it? And how is she flaunting it so brazenly, when the discovery of its existence here at school could get her expelled?

“It’s my dad’s,” she offers in explanation. She presses the gas pedal, and the car lurches forward. Within seconds, we’re leaving campus, heading down the hill into the brush. “We road-tripped to school. He’s going to drive it home next week. He collects vintage cars,” she adds. “Don’t worry, he taught me how to drive when I was twelve. I used to practice all the time back home in Wyoming. You know, lots of wide, open spaces.” We’re gliding smoothly through the woods of the school. I can’t remember ever having ridden in an old-school, gas-powered car like this one, but I’d assumed that the ride would be jerky. It isn’t. And Harlowe is right. She isn’t a bad driver…