Page 93 of An Academy for Liars

“When William first created a gate—long before he’d ever even seen an elevator or knew that elevators existed—his gates manifested as a hall with many doors, each opening onto a different point in time, the hallway itself running through it. For you it’s an elevator. But the principle remains the same.”

“Let’s say I do move through time and I go back into the past—what happens then? Can I change things there? Affect the outcome in the present?”

“Yes and no,” said Dante. “The past creates the present. So even if you went back and tried to interfere, things would turn out the same. In fact, your interference may well create the very circumstances you’re trying to change. That’s why it’s best not to involve yourself. Why it’s dangerous.”

“So you’re saying that if I went back and tried to stop myself from killing Ian, he would still die? Everything would unfold the same way?”

Dante nodded. “Perhaps if you went back, your presence in the past would be the very thing that provoked him to attack you that night. It’s impossible to say. But what we do know is that the present is an immutable consequence of what happened before.”

“And what about the future? Could I travel to it?”

He shook his head. “You can’t travel to what doesn’t yet exist. What hasn’t happened.”

Initially, this made little sense to Lennon. But slowly—over days, and then weeks, of study—Lennon began to understand, and then she attempted to put that understanding into practice. She pushed herself to the brink of utter exhaustion, and then—with Dante’s encouragement—further still. She began to lose her grip on the present, as a concept. Even the limits of her own body felt loose and viscous, like skin and bone were no longer enough to contain her soul.

It was grueling work, hard on the mind and the body, but the nights offered some reprieve. The sessions ended each day at sundown, and afterward both she and Dante would retire to their rooms to scrub away the sweat and sand and recover from the toils of the day. They’d reunite in the kitchen for dinner. Dante always had something warm and delicious at the ready—fried soft-shell crabs, Brunswick stew, fish he’d caught fresh that day.

But it was what came after dinner that Lennon really looked forward to. The lawless games of Scrabble, each of them rowdilyaccusing the other of cheating with sleights of the hand and clever illusions that changed the letters printed on the pieces. They watched horror movies and military documentaries and pretentious art house films. Or, when they were in the mood for something particularly trashy, they’d opt for reality television—deserted island dating shows where tanned contestants wore swimsuits and cowrie shell necklaces—and binge-watch half a season in the span of one night.

But Lennon’s mood would turn contemplative and somber as the night stretched longer. She would find her thoughts returning to her struggles, raising a gate to the past, replaying their lessons over and over, wielding her failures against her own mind like a bludgeoning club.

“Where did you learn everything you’re teaching me?” Lennon asked Dante one night. It was rare that they discussed their work with the gates after their sessions ended, some unspoken agreement between the two of them that the exhaustions of the day shouldn’t impede on the sanctity of the nights, that some part of their lives should be decidedly set apart. But this question—about the breadth of his knowledge and how he’d first attained it—had been troubling Lennon since the day they first began their studies.

“There was a time when the school thought I’d be their next gatekeeper,” said Dante. He was shaving in his bathroom when she asked the question, lathering his jaw with cream, working the razor with quick, decisive strokes. She had taken to following him around the house like a second shadow, trailing him from one room to the next. Dante, for his part, didn’t seem to mind the company, even on nights like this one, when she tailed him all the way into his bathroom as he went through the motions of his nightly routine. “I trained with Eileen and later Benedict before I called it quits.”

“Why? What went wrong?”

“I was too mired in my own past to be of any real use to them.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I was only able to open one gate,” said Dante, “always to the same fixed point in time.”

“And what was that point? Was it important?”

Dante shook his head, wiping the last of the lather off his face. “Not to anyone but me.”

Several weeks into their rigorous lessons, Lennon began to feel like the slop of her consciousness was spilling out of her tired body, as if she was being drained almost. Each day seemed that much harder than the last. Like she was losing a little more of herself every time she tried to call an elevator.

“It’s useless,” said Lennon, crouching on the floor of the living room, utterly spent after hours of trying to call an elevator that would carry her back to the previous day. Her nose bled steadily, droplets splattering across the hardwood floor. “I can’t do it.”

“You can,” said Dante, and he extended a hand and helped her to her feet. “I want to try something different. This time, you take what you need from me.”

“Siphoning?” she said, thinking back to that terrible night in Amsterdam, when Dante had compulsively begun to drain the city. She remembered those poor girls in the red-light district, screaming. A feeling like death. “You said that was dangerous.”

“And it is, especially when it’s compulsive. But this will be different. Intentional. I’m going to lend you some of my power, my will, and you’re going to take it and channel it into the task of calling an elevator to the past.”

“I don’t like this,” said Lennon, shaking her head.

“Well, it’s not a forever thing,” he assured her. “I’ll just tide you over until you build up the mental muscles you need to be able to do this on your own. I promise I won’t let you hurt me. Let’s just try it, see what happens.”

Lennon complied, if only because she was out of energy and ideas and too tired to protest properly. She stood up, her legs feeling soft beneath her, and fixed her gaze on the wall of the den. Nothing happened, and she was about to give up, when she felt it. Dante’s mind within her own, his power channeling through her, a force so strong it snatched the air out of her lungs.

“Wait,” she said, not wanting to hurt him even as she drank of his power. Let it fill her.

“Take what you need from me,” said Dante, but his voice sounded weak and so far away. “I’m all right.”

Lennon’s knees softened beneath her. There was a ringing in her ears. Dante’s power thrummed through her body in a steady current, and she couldn’t tell his will from her own. His every thought and feeling was privy to her. He was in her body, and she was in his, their psyches entwining.

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