The Society was here. In my room. Again.

They got inside without alarming my family—maybe even with my family’s knowledge. Got in despite every door and window in the place being firmly shut and locked. I know this because I double-checked before leaving the apartment and no one’s been home since this morning.

They could have sent another email. This paper invitation is a message, and the message is clear: we can get to you anywhere.

I become acutely aware of my heartbeat rushing behind my ears.

I tuck the envelope into my pants, then yank my T-shirt over it and force myself to walk calmly down the hall. Mom’s banging around in the kitchen, so I keep walking to Jenny’s room. She’s reading in bed when I enter but quickly hides the cover when she sees me, as if I don’t already know about her secret penchant for fluffy middle-grade novels.

“Ever think of knocking?” she asks.

I click the door quietly closed, then pull out the invitation. “Do you know about this?”

She scrambles off the bed and takes the invitation from me, quickly scanning the words. “When did this come?”

“I just found it on my bed. Under my covers.”

Her eyes dart up to meet mine. “Who could have gotten in?” she asks.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

A crease appears between her brows. “Why would I know?”

I pin her with a stare. “I dunno, Jenny. You tell me.”

Her frown deepens, and then the crease between her brows clears. “Wait a minute. You think I did it? What the hell, Hope? I don’t know anything about this.”

I examine her carefully, looking for the telltale signs of a lie, but she looks genuinely confused—and hurt. Shit.

“Then someone must have snuck in,” I say.

“What about Ethan? He was just in your room.”

“Don’t be stupid. I was with him the whole time.”

But I did turn my back on him. And he did arrive with some serious dirt on Tucker. He said it wasn’t that hard to find, but without any names in the article, it couldn’t have been easy. It’s the sort of dirt the Society has on the other girls.

I shake my head to rid it of the thought. Ethan is my best friend. Even if we aren’t getting along, he couldn’t be behind this. I know him too well. He wouldn’t want to scare me. Wouldn’t threaten me.

“So are you going?” Jenny asks.

I give a tense shrug. “I don’t know.”

I wasn’t feeling so threatened until now. They have access to my house, to my bed, and now I’m second-guessing the one person who’s been my friend since the first day I moved to New Orleans.

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking about quitting,” Jenny says, poking my arm with a sharp little finger.

“Why wouldn’t I be thinking about that?” I ask. “I have a stalker, Jenny.”

“Just think about the money.”

“If you want the money so bad, feel free to take my place,” I snap. “I’m sure they have lots of fun and games planned for us tonight if you feel like committing suicide.”

“All right, fine, forget it.” She picks up her book.

I was prepared for more of a fight, and now I don’t know what to do with all the excess adrenaline pumping through me.

“Well, okay,” I say.

“Okay,” she answers back. When I don’t move, she adds, “Good night,” giving me a pointed look.

I go back to my room and do a sweep to make sure I’m alone. The window is locked, but I draw the curtains for good measure, then pull out the notebook from under my bed, flipping it open to the first page.

SUSPECTS.

I scrawl Jenny’s name beneath Tucker’s. She may have seemed genuinely surprised when I confronted her about the invite, but I can’t deny she has access. Besides, she knows my medications. Just because I can’t think of any real motive for her to do this, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have one. I’m sure there are thousands of ways I could have slighted my little sister without knowing it. Who knows, maybe she’s even jealous of all the attention Mom gives me.

My pen hovers over the notebook. Jenny’s words replay in my head. What about Ethan?

He was in my room. He does know my medications. And then there was the article. I bite my bottom lip until tears brim on my lashes.

I snap the notebook closed.

Ethan is my best friend. I refuse to let this game make me turn on him.

I jolt awake. The bedroom is dark, lit only by the dim streetlight filtering in around the curtains. My forehead is damp with sweat, and my pajamas cling to my body. Something woke me.

Tink.

A pebble hits my window.

My heart thunders. Someone is outside. I glance at the bedside table: 11:45 p.m. Fifteen minutes until the meeting time. It can’t be a coincidence. Is the Society out there?

Tink.

I kick off the sheets and climb out of bed, then tiptoe to the window and cautiously peer around the edge of the curtain. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t to see Lyla Greene standing in the parking lot with her car door flung wide behind her. She sees me and waves. I exhale a long breath, then open the curtains and heft up the ancient window to stick my head out.

“What are you doing?” I hiss.

“You seemed weird about taking your mom’s car, so I thought I’d pick you up. Nikki was right anyway—it’s better if we have fewer cars.”

I shake my head. “I’m not going. And you need to leave before you wake up my mom.”

“Why?”

“Because she’ll murder me. Then you,” I say.

“I meant why don’t you want to come?” she asks.

“I just don’t want to do it anymore. It’s not worth it.”

“But I have a plan.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” I hear a noise in the hallway and hold my finger to my lips, but a moment stretches out and there’s no further sound.

“I’ll tell you on the way,” Lyla says.

I press my lips into a line. But I am curious to hear what she has to say, and if I wake up Mom, I can tell her my friend popped by and I went outside to talk to her. That shouldn’t get me into too much trouble.

“Gimme a minute.” I pull a sweater on over my pajama top, shove my feet into some slip-ons, then creep out of my bedroom, down the darkened hallway, to the front door. A creak sounds behind me. I pause with my hand on the front door. When the noise doesn’t continue, I unbolt the lock and slip out.

Lyla’s waiting in the front seat of her car when I get there. “Get in,” she calls.

I scan the apartment windows for signs of life, then sigh and open the passenger-side door. I have to move aside a crumpled bag of McDonald’s so I can sit down.

“Okay,” I say, leaving my door wide open. “I’m listening but not committing.”

“So Nikki’s out of the game, right?” Lyla answers.

I nod.

“And based on the way Farrah freaked out about the Nikki thing, there’s a good chance she’s not coming this time either.”

“And?” I peer up at Mom’s window. Still dark. Still quiet.

“And that means there are only three girls left. Our odds of winning are, like, twice as good as last week. And they’re even better if we agree to split the money. Think about it. If we agree to an alliance, we have a sixty-six percent chance of winning. Fifty K for each of us. And the odds go up to one hundred percent if we beat Hartley.”

“If we beat Hartley,” I repeat. That girl doesn’t even know what fear is.

“She’s a strong player,” Lyla agrees. “But we don’t know what the next dare is going to be. It could be something one of us excels at. The point is, we won’t know unless we go.”

“Why not ask all the girls to split the money?” I say. “Two of us can intentionally fail at the dares, and then we all split the winnings.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t see Hartley going for something like that. She’s an all-or-nothing kind of girl, not a team player.”

I bite my lip, considering. I’m flattered she chose me. Of all the girls she could have propositioned, I’m clearly the lame horse of the race.

“I dunno,” I say. “This whole thing has gotten creepy. I got the invitation in my room today. Tucked under my bedcovers.”

“Mine was on my dresser when I got home from school. But that’s part of the problem. Remember what the note said? Refuse to play the game…”

“We think you know what happens,” I say, supplying the end of the threat.

Lyla nods, somber. “Let’s just go. If we don’t leave now, we’ll be late.”

I look at the time. She’s right. We’ve already spent five minutes having this conversation.

“Okay,” I relent. “Let’s go.”

We’ve been on the road for five minutes before I remember I’m in my PJs and that my inhaler, not to mention my cell phone, is at home.

“You okay?” Lyla asks, somehow sensing the shift in my mood.

“I’m fine.”

But Lyla’s not buying it, and I feel the need to give her something.

“It’s just been a weird couple of days. I had a fight with my best friend tonight.”

“Ethan?” she asks.

I nod.

“I see.”

“It’s not like that,” I say at her knowing tone. I don’t add: I wish it were.

“He has a girlfriend. Anyway, he came over tonight to try to convince me to stay away from this guy.”

“Tucker St. Clair.” She says his name like it’s an institution. “Yeah, everyone’s talking. So how did that happen?”

I decide I’ll be mortified later. “He asked me to be his partner for this assignment. I said yes.”

“And you thought you’d work on a little extra credit together,” she teases.

I punch her in the arm, and she laughs.

“It’s really new,” I say. I want to add more, but I start to feel like I’m making something out of nothing.

“Well, have fun with it,” she says.

“You sound like my sister. She wants me to invite her over to his house. Like I’m sure he really wants a thirteen-year-old to come over.”

“I wish I could say I relate. My sister is a year older than me, and I spent my whole childhood trying to hang out with her and her friends. When I was seven, I tried to join her slumber party, and she told me to go away, so I told her friends that she still wet the bed sometimes.”

“You didn’t!”

She laughs, still delighted with herself. “She didn’t talk to me for three weeks.”

“You deserved it! Does your sister go to St. Beatrice?”

She frowns unexpectedly. “No, actually. She was being bullied, so she had to drop out. My mom started homeschooling her.”

“Oh my God. That’s awful.”

She nods, and I notice that her eyes are shining.

The radio comes into focus. I desperately reach for something to say, but by the time I think of anything remotely appropriate, the moment has passed and the warehouse looms before us.

It’s my second time here, and I’m not alone now, but the place is just as foreboding as the last time, heavy with expectation. Years of overgrowth choke the building, as if it grew right out of the earth. Or was expelled from it like a tomb.

“Hartley’s here,” Lyla says, nodding at the bike parked outside. But no Farrah. No Nikki.

Lyla grabs on to the chain-link fence, and I follow her lead. This time I climb over without horrifically embarrassing myself.

It’s weird entering the warehouse awake this time. I crane my neck and squint to make out my surroundings. We enter the main room. Exposed pipes climb walls tagged with graffiti. There are faded red storage crates everywhere, and a thick coat of yellow powder—wheat, maybe?—dusts the cement floors.

My eyes stick on the jar sitting on an upturned box in the center of the room.

Just then, Hartley saunters in from the shadows of a darkened hallway, hiking up her baggy, low-slung jeans.

“Where were you?” Lyla asks. I don’t miss the note of suspicion in her voice.

“Taking a little tour to see if anyone was hiding somewhere. If you must know.”

“And?” I ask, glad she was brave enough to wander off in the dark.

“Place is empty. The floors I checked, anyway. I only went up to the first three, but there was dust everywhere like no one had been there in a really long time. Only footprints I saw were my own. No cameras I could find either. If the Society is watching us, it’s gotta be some high-tech FBI-type shit they’re using.” She rakes her hand through her spiky black hair. “No Farrah?”

“No Farrah,” Lyla and I confirm together.

“Figures. All right. Well, it’s midnight. Let’s do this.”

We circle around the jar. Hartley does the honors and pulls the top off, plunging her hand inside to pull out a single folded paper. Just like last time.

“Hey, bitches.”

We spin around as Farrah flounces into the room in a strapless emerald-green baby doll dress that shows off miles of sleek, golden leg. She could walk onto a runway in Paris and not look out of place.

“Could have waited for me.”

We blink at her for what feels like minutes, until Lyla says, “You came.”

“Of course I came. The rules were pretty clear on a few points, participation being one.” Her boots clack across the floor, and then she yanks the paper out of Hartley’s hand. She scans it, then raises her eyes to Hartley. “They can’t be serious.”

Lyla grabs the paper.

“Read it out loud,” I say.

“ ‘One down, four to go. Ready for the real fun to begin?’ ” Lyla reads. “ ‘Go to Honey Island Swamp and look for the sign. You’ll know the one.’ ”

She looks up.

The Honey Island Swamp is a marshland in St. Tammany Parish that’s famous for its alligators, wild boars, bears, and snakes. Getting in that water would be a death sentence, and no sane person would do it, not even the New Orleans natives who take pride in not being scared of gators.

“This has to be a joke,” Farrah says.

“I don’t get the feeling the Society has a sense of humor,” Lyla answers.