Page 102 of An Academy for Liars

“You didn’t sleep well.” It wasn’t a question.

“I slept fine,” she said—a lie. She’d stayed up half the night thinking about August.

Benedict narrowed his eyes. “You’re here because you have a question. So why don’t you ask it?”

The question she most wanted to ask, Benedict didn’t yet have the answer to. So Lennon settled on another. “Who is August?”

Benedict lifted his teacup, took a small sip. “Dante didn’t tell you about him?”

“All he said was that August was a friend of his and a student of yours. Apparently, they had a falling-out? And I’ve heard rumors—”

“Rumors from who?”

“Claude.” Here Benedict’s face pinched into a frown, as if he was angry at him for disclosing something he shouldn’t have. “Alec mentioned something too.”

“Well,” said Benedict, and he leaned back into his chair, “August was a brilliant boy. One of the kindest you could ever meet. You would’ve loved him, Lennon. Everyone who met him did. He was an artist. He painted the portrait behind me.” Benedict gestured to thegruesome portrait on the wall. “He painted one for everyone he held dear, which frankly wasn’t very many people at all. He was shy, so he didn’t have many close friends. He didn’t like to open up. But August always found ways to express just how much he cared. For his friends. For the world, even. He was good. Or at least he was at first. You see, August—like you—was particularly gifted. And he—again, like you—possessed a very important ability. He could open doors that led from one space to another.”

“He was a gatekeeper too?”

“A brilliant one,” said Benedict. “Better than you. Better than Dante. I began training August and Dante both. August immediately excelled. But over the months of our training, he grew…reclusive, paranoid, disturbed, even. This was the price of his talent, I think. Because as August slowly began to lose his mind, his power grew exponentially and in a way that frightened me, a way thatshouldhave frightened everyone else, but they were greedy. They could only see the golden potential of what he could do for the world, not all the ways he could harm it. The ways that he intended to.”

“I thought you said he was kind.”

“I said hewaskind. But this power—when pushed to a certain point—is corrupting. And that’s what happened to August. That sweet boy turned violent and demented.”

“Demented how?”

Here Benedict paused for a moment, considering. “It was his mind. Something went wrong with it. First it was animals, rats turning up dead in the labs where he worked. Dying by the dozens. I didn’t want to believe it was him at first, but then his housemates at Logos began to express…complaints.”

“What kind of complaints?”

“They felt that August was…preying on them. The girls werethe first to raise the alarm. They were having nightmares that were…particularly twisted, violent in nature. Some might call them harassing, even sexual.”

“And you believe August was the source of these dreams?”

“I didn’t at the time. But then, during one of our lessons, August…snapped. In a moment of frustration he attacked Dante, put his hands around his neck. It all happened so quickly. Dante was young then, and startled, I’m sure. Even then I don’t think he was ready to believe that August was as sick as he was. But I knew, in that moment, that something had gone horribly wrong. So I looked into his mind and what I saw there was…perverse, like glimpses into the psyche of a serial killer. What I saw within him aligned with everything I’d feared. The dead rats. The nightmares plaguing his housemates. All of it.”

“It sounds like he needed help. Psychologically.”

“He did,” said Benedict. “But there was no doctor who could’ve put his mind back together. Not after the way it was broken. August was powerful, you see. And he didn’t just lash out with his body, he lashed out with his will too. During one of his tantrums he would siphon power from anyone around him. His will would rend through the air with such a force that windows broke. The house shifted on its foundation, cracks racing up the walls.” He gestured to one of them, a faint discoloration in the paint, so that if you squinted you could see where the plaster was patched over. “But none of that was what really scared me. It was that look in his eyes, a kind of hatred. Like he knew he could do worse and wanted to. I knew then that I’d lost him, that he was going to kill someone, probably many people, if someone didn’t try to stop him. He was that sick.

“Desperate—and frankly hopeless at that point—I went to Eileen for help, and told her that August needed to be removed from theschool. But she wouldn’t hear of it. August had done great harm, yes, but he’d learned to endear himself to the people that mattered. Eileen included. He remained at the top of his class, one of the most promising students that Drayton had produced in several decades. Eileen thought he was a genius, and perhaps more importantly she thought that he—much like Dante—was wholly loyal to her. So, per Eileen’s request, I set my reservations aside and continued working with August, and August kept growing worse. More dangerous. The situation grew untenable, as I knew it would, and so I was forced to make a decision. I confided in the only person who could see what I saw. A person who knew August well, who had his trust and through that trust the ability to stop him.”

“Dante,” said Lennon.

Benedict nodded. “He was the only one who could do it. I asked him to make it seem like a suicide and to make it as painless as he could. It broke his heart, but he knew he had to do it. And then he did.”

So this was what Claude and Alec had been alluding to. The great crime that Dante had committed, though not alone, perhaps not even of his own volition. Benedict had cursed him with the task of killing his best friend. And Dante—whether forced or not—had complied.

Lennon began to shake, and as she did, she felt Benedict begin to occupy her mind. The first time he’d persuaded her—months before, when he’d tried to force her hand into the fire—he had been utterly brutal. But this time, Benedict entered her mind gently. She could feel his presence within her, like a cold stream of water flowing down from her mind, into the hollow cavity of her chest and then pouring through her limbs as if his will was blood and her heart was pumping it through her, the effect less painful than paralytic.

“You’re so like him. August, I mean. You’re both so brilliant. So dangerous.”

“What are you doing?” she demanded, fighting against a blackout.

“I won’t stand by idle and watch another one of my former students succumb to their own demons at the risk of everyone around them. I won’t let you become August. And if Dante is too stubborn to handle this himself, then I will.”

“I’m not August,” she said, and it was a struggle just to speak. When she attempted to stand, she discovered that her legs were stone-numb, senseless.

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