Prologue

Surrounded by wild looks and shuddering bodies, I dance. Everything is elevated, intense, like none of us want this night to end. The air hangs thick as smoke, floors sticky with champagne as heads tip back and arms rise overhead. To my right, strobe lights flash against nineteenth-century doors, their glass panes fogged over. A handprint drips down the glass as a guy presses his date against a wall, her legs wrapped around his waist as they kiss. The place feels charged with electricity, excitement, maybe even fear…if they’ve been paying attention.

Tonight is the night I’ve waited for my entire life—our initiation into Sterling Club, Princeton’s most prestigious eating club. It’s not just a place to have fun, it’s also a golden escalator to our future. Once inside, we’re bound by our secrets…and that creates a deep bond. It feels dangerous, cultlike, but isn’t fun always a little bit reckless?

Pulling my bra strap back up my shoulder, I step onto the patio and into the cool night air. Tonight feels endless, as if nothing matters but this moment, this feeling of belonging to something greater than myself. It’s exactly what I need right now, after everything that’s happened.

Standing very still, I gaze up at the mansion, which, with its ivied brick and rows of glossy windows, seems to be staring back at me. I shiver. It feels alive, this place. Underneath the shouts and laughter, there’s something dark lingering in the shadows—but I don’t want to think about that. Feeling uneasy, I turn to go back inside when a hand reaches out of the darkness.

“Come daaaance!” My friend passes me a drink and drags me back to the party. Her face is lit up, eyes winged and glittered, torso draped in the same Sterling Club silk scarf as mine. Closing my eyes, I take a long sip of champagne and sway in front of the speaker. The music booms so loud it takes my breath away. I want to find someone to spend the night with, to escape, to forget everything else.

After finishing my drink, I approach a guy I met earlier, and let my fingertips graze his forearm. “Hey.”

He smiles and reaches for me.

A song later, our bodies are flush, his broad back hot under my fingertips. After several songs, I’m dizzy and slick with sweat, but more energized than ever. The bodies around me blur into an amorphous, pulsating mass and I close my eyes, imagining us melting together. I’m lost in a trance when something traces the curve of my neck like a cold finger.

My eyes snap open.

A good-looking guy is watching me, his eyes so intense it’s like they’re pulling me in. He runs a hand through his long blond hair. He’s a student, another Sterling member I vaguely recognize…but…there’s something different about him, something unnerving.

“Do you know him?” I whisper to the guy I’m dancing with, nodding in the stranger’s direction.

“Who?” He lifts his head as a couple slides past, but in a flash, the stranger is gone.

I blink, unsettled. Did I imagine him? Frowning at the now-empty spot where he’d been standing, I shake my head. “Oh, nothing. Never mind.”

After the song ends, I find my friend nearby. Slip my arm through hers. “I need another drink.”

—

Several hours later, I’m catching my breath on the upstairs terrace overlooking the back lawn. The late February air hangs cool and still, and it hasn’t snowed in weeks—maybe the worst is over.

Exhaling a cloud of breath, I lean over the banister. I like watching people out here: new lovers sneaking off into dark corners, young men sharing a bottle of whiskey, a guy kissing someone who is definitely not his girlfriend.

I’m watching a girl stumble down the back steps when a shadow slides over me from behind. A hand touches the bare skin between my shoulder blades, and I go still.

When I turn around, the guy I saw watching me is there, tall and confident. Attractive. His lips curl into a cocky half grin.

He leans closer, and when his hand touches my waist, I feel a current of electricity, my skin warming under his fingertips as if his touch could burn straight through me.

He leans down to whisper in my ear, and what he says makes me freeze: “You’ve been tapped for Greystone Society.”

I look at him, goosebumps rising over my skin. Greystone Society is so covert that most people at Princeton don’t know they exist. But I’ve been fascinated by them for years.

He looks at his watch. “You have thirty seconds to decide if you want to accept. The moment I leave, the offer’s done. So what do you think, are you in?”

As the reality of his offer sinks in, I grow aware of the shakiness of my breath, the rush of blood in my ears, the exhilaration and fear. In front of me is a door to another universe. Another life. I imagine my mother saying from wherever she is now to take every strange adventure life presents to experience the world, not shy away from it.

But in spite of the pride I feel at having been chosen, there’s another instinct telling me to run. I bury it, steel myself, and take his hand. “I’m in.”

He smiles. “Then come with me.”