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“What happened to him?”

“It began with one of his lunula.”

“What’s a lunula?”

“The pale crescent at the base of a fingernail. In a week, all his lunulae turned blue. Nurse Stillhunt—she runs the infirmary—said it was an allergic reaction to the liquid soap in our dormitory bathrooms. But she’s a moron and a liar and ... something.”

Benny said, “What something?”

Leaning forward again, out of the lamplight, his eyes shadowed in their sockets, Speer divided the word into two. “Something. God knows what. Galsbury’s nails stopped being blue after he was caught eating ants and was put under constant watch.”

“Ants? Like bugs? He was eating ants?”

“He had this jar of honey,” said Speer. “He’d take it out in the meadows, where no one could see him, where there were anthills. He’d coat a soupspoon with honey and lure the ants onto it, and eat them. Spoon after spoon of ants. They’re rich in formic acid. They say it was all that formic acid that turned his lunulae blue.”

It was possible, of course, that Jurgen Speer was a hoaxer or even a pathological liar. However, in spite of the boy’s forbidding appearance, the vulnerability that he projected seemed authentic.

The roommate’s dread was real and communicable, so that Benny felt a centipedal chill crawl down his spine. “Why did he eat ants?”

“He didn’t know. He was just compelled. It was something he had to do or go mad. That’s what he said to me. ‘If I didn’t eat them when the urge came, I’d have gone crazy.’”

“Where is he now?” Benny asked.

Speer rose from his chair and went to one of the windows and stood staring at the pleated shade, as if he could see throughit to the view beyond. Rather than answer the question, he said, “Prescott Galsbury thought Mrs. Baneberry-Smith was totally hot. He fantasized about humping her. You know what that means?”

A warmth came into Benny’s face. “I’m thirteen. I’m not twelve anymore. But you said Galsbury was fourteen, just a boy to her.”

“When the list of community service opportunities was issued, Galsbury signed up to assist Mrs. Baneberry-Smith.”

“Community service opportunities?”

“Our success at Briarbush depends on the volunteer work we’re dragooned into. Galsbury signed to assist in her laboratory.”

“She has a laboratory?”

“Behind the headmaster’s house.”

“What does she do there?”

“Studies insects.”

“I thought she gave that up after the spider bit her.”

“She gave up jungles. Now she studies insects in the safety of a laboratory.”

Benny remembered the Lucite boxes that displayed large, exotic, dead insects in the headmaster’s drawing room. He was not comforted by the thought that similar specimens might be crawling around in Mrs. Baneberry-Smith’s lab, even if they were properly contained.

At the window, Jurgen Speer used one finger to push aside the pleated shade just far enough that he could peer with one eye at the soccer field behind Felthammer House. Beyond the field, a primeval evergreen woodland lay in perpetual twilight even on the brightest day, a realm of Transylvanian mystery. In fact, the high grounds of the academy and the adjacent meadows were entirelysurrounded by a forest so dense and deep that it seemed to grow down the steeply sloped walls of an abyss.

After a thoughtful silence, Benny said, “What does she do with insects in her laboratory?”

“No one knows,” said Jurgen Speer.

“But Galsbury assisted her. What did he assist her with?”

“He wouldn’t talk about it. She swore him to secrecy. He said if he kept his oath of silence, she’d eventually let him hump her.”

“She’s like really pretty and the headmaster’s wife. Galsbury is fourteen and—what?—delusional?”