SOLVED. Middle school novel. Boy thinks he’s going to a new regular boarding school but ends up at one in a world that teaches students how to be spies. Befriends a girl with vampire teeth, a boy with wings. School watched by ravens. Read 2010-14. [s]

[eldritchmothwings]

Plot that I remember (contains spoilers):

Boy (will be called Danny, I think that was his name) with heterochromatic eyes, pointed ears (supposedly because of a botched surgery as an infant) and other elfin features who has trouble fitting in at previous schools is going to be sent to a boarding school. He thinks it will be a normal one, takes a taxi there instead of getting a ride from parents. Taxi ride is suspiciously long, has a checkpoint partway through to make sure the car "isn't being followed". When they finally arrive, it's night time and Danny has a meeting with the headmaster. Is nearly decapitated by piano wire stretched in the hallway leading up to headmaster's room, but is told to duck under by person leading him.

In the following days, Danny begins attending classes and makes friends with two people: a girl with vampire (in this world vampires are people who can use their fangs to suck poisons out of people, or inject poisons/drugs/antidotes, and not actually called vampires unless as an insult) fangs (Veronica?), and a boy with wings that only work for gliding, not actual flight. Both are orphans do to a war that happened/is happening. Various other students in his classes have special abilities, like one girl who can apparently teleport. The dorms are houses on stilts. At some point in his first few days, Danny sees two doors, one with a silhouette of a woman in a long coat and hat, the other with a man in similar clothes. Thinking they are washrooms, he ducks inside the door with the man on it, where he finds the doors do /not/ lead to washrooms and actually serve as the rooms for two spies who used to be married but were under cover for so long that they entirely forgot their true identities and now only know their work. Danny is saved from an untimely death by one of the staff, who was alerted to the situation by the crows who watch the school.

Danny is still not trusted at this school, due in part to how similar he looks to someone who used to be very important. At one point, a boy who hates Danny is poisoned and nearly dies when he nabs the biscuits off of Danny's plate, and only lives because the vampire girl immediately starts sucking out the poison. The general consensus is that the crows were likely trying to poison Danny to get rid of him.

There's a city nearby to the school, that tends to be covered in smog. The three friends sneak off there for some reason, it's not a happy place. One or two sides of the school is surrounded by a forest, with one path that only takes you one way and another that only takes you the other way. Danny finds a graveyard in it that has headstones with the names of his friend's parents. He's not sure if it's real, but he does think he was supposed to find it to make him want to stay and help in the conflict going on.

There is a group of people (possibly called the Ring) that wants Danny to join them because they think he's important to it. He ends up having to. The initiation is touching a special ring at the same time as everyone else in the group; this allows each person to hear some of the thoughts and feelings going on in the heads of every other person touching it. Apparently Danny looks just like the last person who held his position, down to the suit tailored for them fitting him perfectly.

Sometime after he joins this group, something happens to his friend with wings because of one of the other Ring members. The boy is taken prisoner and held somewhere in the city, and Danny and Veronica have to come up with a plan to get him out. Danny has a high stakes poker game with the person in charge of keeping wing boy in prison, for the right to say what happens with him. Danny wins, chooses death by vampire injection. Vampire girl has managed to sneak in as the one doing the injection, has a special drug that fakes death in the one injected with it. She and Danny later have to get wing boy's body and sneak away with it, getting him to a back alley burial place. Vampire girl injects antidote into wing boy, is scared she got something wrong and he's going to die, but he manages to pull through.

Other things happen before the end of the book, but that's all I remember. I think the cover depicted the three kids, against a dreary background, but not entirely sure. Here's hoping it can be found soon!

**Edit: Solved! book is the Ring of Five, by Eoin McNamee

[Ayshe]

The Ring of Five maybe?

[eldritchmothwings]

Ayshe wrote: "The Ring of Five maybe?"

It is! thank you so much!