Having a long history of disciplinary charges and suspensions for misconduct, fiery-tempered teenager Kit is running out of options. And forced by her parents to join the exclusive Blackwood Boarding School to improve her behaviour, troubled Kit arrives at the creepy old manor run by the institution's peculiar headmistress, Madame Duret. But as Kit and the school's only four other students find themselves abandoned at the gloomy mansion, soon enough, the girls begin to exhibit extraordinary talents they never knew they possessed. Does the young ladies' newfound aptitude for art, literature, music, and mathematics have something to do with Blackwood's sinister, spine-chilling secret?—Nick Riganas