Page 69 of They're Watching You

“But at least they’d know Polly and Jane are in trouble,” I whisper-scream. “We can battle the society later, once they’re safe.”

Remington’s breath dusts my neck. “Would they be safe? Annabelle isn’t the Gamemaster—at least, that’s the story these two are feeding us. I thought tying her up would solve all of our problems, but it solves nothing if she isn’t the one holding the girls.”

I let my forehead dip to rest on his chest, my neck muscles too weak to function. It’s been days without sleep while maintaining my grueling lacrosse schedule. “Then we’ll have to find them ourselves.” I inhale, breathing in the lingering spiced scent of his cologne mingled with sweat.

Back in the living room, I take up the fire poker again. “Annabelle, tell me who the Gamemaster is or I’m going to smash your ballerina feet with this thing.”

She draws her lips into a taut line, and my grip tightens around the iron pole.

“Wait,” Remington says. “The Gamemaster’s identity isn’t a secret from the other members. They must know who it is.”

“The members know better than to reveal the Gamemaster’s identity to the champions,” the headmistress cuts in, pushing her shoulders back against the couch cushions. Apparently, being held hostage isn’t enough reason to slack on her perfect posture. “It would make toying with them so much less fun.”

Annabelle said the Gamemaster was backing me, which means it could be someone who’s helped me along at some point. Like Donella, who may’ve let me win the labyrinth the way Annabelle let me win the card game.

I look at Remington, wanting to get him alone, to voice my suspicion in private. But behind the couch, Remington’s head slumps, his brown irises rolling back to reveal the blank whites of his eyes. “Remington?” His entire body crumples, chin hitting the back of the couch on his way to the floor.

I rush over to check on him, pointing my poker at the headmistress. “Don’t you dare move.”

Over on the chair, Annabelle cranes her neck to look at Remington, whose unconscious head peeks out from behind the couch. “Oh dear, what do you think happened to him?”

Her saccharine tone makes my blood boil. My gaze darts to his teacup, empty on the coffee table, and then to mine spilled on the rug. “You poisoned us.”

My head is too tired. The tiredest.

I press my hand to Remington’s cheek, but I don’t feel anything. Not warmth, not the scruffiness of his jawline. Not a thing. My fingers don’t work. And now my face doesn’t work. Because I want to tell the headmistress to stay where she is, but my mouth is glued shut.

“Not poison,” Headmistress Koehler says, her voice too deep and jumbled. “A delayed-release sedative. A harmless herb from my garden. Engineered by Dr. Theodore Lowell himself. You’ll wake up in a few hours.”

Over at the door, the bolt turns of its own accord, and the door swings open. I look just in time to see a familiar face push into the light.

That face. Of course. It all makes sense now.

But my eyelids, too useless and heavy, fall.

My body follows.

Twenty-Six

“Maren.” The deep voice splits my head in half. I crack an eye open, and the light stings like lemon juice dripping onto my eyeballs.

“Remington?” my lazy tongue manages.

“Still sleeping,” comes the same voice. “He drank a lot more tea than you did. You were barely out an hour.”

Blinking against the stabbing lights, I force my lids open.It’s him.

“You’re the Gamemaster,” I say, as he helps me sit up and slide my back against the base of the couch. He doesn’t respond, only finds a pillow to prop behind me for support.

“You let me steal your linchpin pendant at the ball.”

He nods and hands me a glass of cold water. I guzzle it down, trying to dilute the effects of the sedative. The bizarre, buzzy sensation that none of the parts of my body truly belong to me. I don’t even care that the water may be poisoned. I have to flush this feeling from my system.

I’d considered Donella, but my brain stopped short of the real master manipulator.

PaulLowell. The society claims nepotism isn’t a factor, but Paul’s grandfather is a bigshot donor, and Paul happens to be one of the members of the Gamemaster’s Society. He not only got into the society on his daddy’s coattails; he got to run it.

“You pretended not to know who I was or what I looked like. And now you’re going to kill my best friend,” I say, incapable of tears, though I want to cry.

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