Up by the whiteboard, Mr. Terenzoni was explaining something about derivative functions and linear operations, but I didn’t catch a word. My brain remained on tilt from the day before. Castle Pinckney. The Citadel. Two famous Charleston fortresses. Were they really linked? Was my freaking debutante ball the Gamemaster’s ultimate target? My eyes wandered the room. How many classmates would be there on Friday? The guest list topped three hundred. If my intuition was correct, every single one of them was at risk. What to do? The situation seemed unreal. But I didn’t doubt the Gamemaster’s willingness to kill innocent people. One dead body was proof enough. The boys weren’t being much help. Shelton was openly skeptical of my theory, while Hi admitted to being uncertain. Only Ben thought my idea made a twisted kind of sense. The “castle”
