When the students at Mortingham Boarding Academy find a group of strange, silvery beetles on school grounds they are excited, but when the beetles attack them and a mysterious virus starts spreading, a group of mismatched students must work together to survive.

When Stevie Bell is finally able to return to Ellingham Academy after identifying the culprit in the murder of a classmate, she begins to wonder if the case was really resolved and attempts to uncover the truth about the school's founder. Stevie Bell seemed to be on the cusp of the decades-old kidnapping and murder of Albert Ellingham's family. But a classmate's murder-- which Stevie solved-- convinced her parents to pull her out of Ellingham Academy....

At Ellingham Academy, three people are now dead. One, a victim of either a prank gone wrong or a murder. Another, dead by misadventure. And now, an accident in Burlington has claimed another life. Stevie Bell knows who Truly Devious is-- or thinks she does. But David disappeared of his own free will and is up to something. The missing Alice Ellingham and the missing David Eastman. Somewhere in this place of riddles and puzzles there must be answers....