Page 32 of An Academy for Liars

“He’s as much me as the man you’re talking to now. I just like him less.”

“How long has he been with you?”

“Quite some time. But he doesn’t mean you any harm.” Dante said this in a way that indicated he meant someone harm, but that someone was not Lennon. “Can I ask you to keep this between us?”

Lennon was reluctant to agree to that. “Will he appear again? I mean, surely you can’t keep him chained up forever. Can you?”

“I can certainly try,” said Dante. “Like I said, I’d had a hard night. I lost composure, but I won’t allow that to happen again, which is why I’d appreciate your discretion.”

“You have it.”

“Good,” he said, and looked relieved. “On that same note, I wouldn’t speak to anyone about what you saw through the elevator gate. Not even Benedict, if you can avoid it. You’ll have to be careful with him, and with everyone from here on out. Your future at Drayton depends on it.” The rain abated some. Dante dropped his cigarette and crushed it underfoot.

“Why?”

Dante made as though he hadn’t heard her. “You should head back to Ethos. Before the next band of the storm sweeps through. Remember what I said about Benedict and the rest, especially if you want to keep your memories of this place.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Yes,” said Dante. “But not one from me.”

In Irvine Hall,there was a single elevator, constructed by William Irvine himself. It had ornate iron doors, its cabin was relatively small, and its control panel sported about a dozen buttons, each corresponding to a different location—New York City, Amsterdam, Kyoto, Moscow, Boston, Beijing. With the press of a button, the cabin accessed these different cities as easily as the levels of a building. Unlike the elevator that Lennon had summoned, William’s elevator didn’t spawn at random. It was a fixed feature of Irvine Hall: reliable, efficient, and perfect in its functionality, despite its old age.

This was the elevator through which Lennon, and many of her peers, had first entered Drayton. It was also the elevator that she was instructed to take back to Benedict’s home in Utah for the first of her weekly lessons in gatekeeping. Eileen had wasted no time adjusting her schedule. The night of the hearing, the vice-chancellor had arranged for her first class with Benedict to take place the following afternoon.

The journey to Utah took the better part of three minutes, andLennon took this opportunity to examine William’s elevator. Apart from the fact that it was a bit old and rickety, the elevator seemed completely normal. Riding in it, Lennon would’ve never guessed that it accessed different cities instead of floors.

She wondered why the faculty had been so panicked by the elevator she’d opened. What was so dangerous about this means of transportation anyway? As far as she could tell, it was nothing more than a faster alternative to driving or flying. But none of the faculty had treated it as such. There was something she didn’t yet understand that Dante and the rest had been either unable or unwilling to disclose the night of the hearing. And Lennon was determined to discover what exactly that was.

There was a man waiting for her in the foyer of Benedict’s house when the elevator slowed to a stop. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with brown eyes and a lick of golden-blond hair that swept tastefully across his brow. He had an aquiline nose and high cheekbones.

“I’m Claude,” he said without really looking at her, which was a bit awkward because, with the two of them alone in the hallway, there was nothing much else for him to be looking at. He extended a pale hand threaded with delicate blue veins.

She shook it. It was damp and very cold. “Lennon.”

“A pleasure.”

There was an awkward silence, during which Lennon expected Claude to offer some explanation of who he was and why he was greeting Lennon instead of Benedict. When he didn’t, Lennon, a little affronted by his rudeness, said: “And you are…?”

“Ben’s apprentice. He asked me to show you in. I’m sorry he’s not here to do it himself, but he’s out in the garden attempting to behead—or if not that, then poison—the mole that’s been digging up his rosebushes. But he’ll be in shortly.” Claude spoke with a gravellyantebellum drawl that made him sound like a southern aristocrat who’d died and been buried, exhumed, and reanimated.

They sat together in the living room, where—on a large oak coffee table—a selection of hors d’oeuvres had been arranged—finger sandwiches, cut vegetables, and the like. Lennon didn’t partake of anything but a small cup of tea that tasted so strongly of roses it was almost unpleasant.

Claude watched her from an armchair across the room, his brow furrowed. His pale eyes possessed a disconcerting intensity that made Lennon feel like she was crawling out of her skin.

“You’ll have to forgive my staring. It’s just that I expected…more.” This would’ve been rude if it’d come from the mouth of anyone else, but Claude delivered this naked truth with an air of nonchalance. As if he was simply too casual to be cruel.

But even though Lennon knew he meant no harm, she still bristled a bit. “More of what?”

“Well, now that I’ve said it out loud…I don’t really know. I guess I just expected someone different. Older. But you can’t be more than, what? Twenty-one?”

“Four,” Lennon corrected him. She drained her teacup, set it down in the saucer with a clatter, and winced.

Claude only smiled, pulling a small flask from the pocket of his blazer. He offered it to her, and when she shook her head he merely shrugged, and poured a generous splash into his own teacup. “It helps with the nerves,” he said.

Benedict entered then, or perhaps he’d been stalling in the doorway for some time, waiting for the right moment to make his presence known. He was light-footed, as if he had memorized each of the creaking floorboards of the old house and took special care to avoid them. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and a dirty canvas apron.

“Off you go,” he said, shooing Claude out of the chair he sat in.

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