Page 112 of An Academy for Liars

They were torturing him.

But why?

“Why are you doing this to him?” said Lennon. “He’s on your side. He did everything you asked. He tried to get me to raise the gate.”

Eileen turned on a heel to look at Dante, perplexed. “You didn’t tell her?” She laughed aloud, and Lennon thought it strange that such a pretty sound could come from such a horrible person. “It was Dante who helped you get out. He attacked Alec and half of the faculty, myself included, to ensure that you were able to flee. Because of him, we very nearly lost you.”

Lennon looked to Dante, wondering if it could possibly be true. All of this time, she’d thought he’d betrayed her, but was it possible that he hadn’t? That this was by design, that he’d been working in secret to save her life while pretending that he’d turned against her?

“It’s all quite romantic,” said Eileen, but she sounded irritated.“Though I did warn you that it would end badly, Dante. If only you’d listened to me. I wanted to be gentle. To do this in her sleep—”

Dante raised a hand and the words caught in Eileen’s throat, died into something that sounded like a whimper.

Eileen went expressionless with shock, her eyes flashing wide. But she recovered herself quickly, with a knowing little smile. “Th-there he is.”

Dante still didn’t raise his head. Blood dribbled from his mouth and nose and spattered his pants. “Leave her alone.”

“If only I could,” said Eileen, and Lennon cut a scream as pain racked her body. It felt like her bones were being crushed from within, the hollow structures of her marrow collapsing in on themselves, imploding almost. She heard a sharp crack as her clavicle bowed, snapping cleanly in two, the jagged shards of bone piercing up through the underside of her skin.

Her vision went and the worst pain along with it.

And she was lost for a while in the murk of unconsciousness.

When she came to, she saw that Dante was on his feet between Lennon and Eileen, making a shield of his own battered body, barely able to stand but protecting her nonetheless.

Eileen’s expression morphed from contempt to ecstasy to childlike delight. But she sounded like a mother when she gazed at Dante with tears in her eyes and whispered: “I’m so proud of you.”

Dante faltered, froze, as if locked within his own body. Blood leaked from his nose and spattered the floor between his planted feet. His breaths were shallow and congested. Each of them escaped with a rattle.

Eileen was killing him.

Lennon pushed to her feet, an effort that very nearly sapped her of all the strength she had left. She cast out a quaking hand and withthe raw force of her will snatched Eileen’s legs out from under her, dragging her back and away from Dante. Eileen, stunned by the viciousness of the attack, redoubled her efforts. Shifting the brunt of her will from Dante to Lennon, who staggered back, as if slapped across the face. Lennon watched as her hand seized up, rictus stiff, and wrenched to the left with the hollow pop of a broken bone. She heard herself scream, her vision graying out into the static of stars. She swayed, trying to stay on her feet as the waves of pain emanated from her wrist.

Eileen smiled with mock sympathy, and Lennon raised the walls of her mind a split second before she invaded.

Eileen’s will took shape as a storm that battered the tiny windows of her childhood bedroom and ripped holes in the ceiling, so that rain bled down through the walls and soaked the carpet. She could hear Eileen’s voice in the wind: a culmination of all of her deepest fears and miseries, her greatest sins and the worst of her self-loathing. She occupied all of the space in the house and infiltrated all of the corners of Lennon’s mind: the bedroom safehold contained in her psyche, her memories and desires, her greatest fears.

There was a terrible crack, like a tree felled, and the walls of her bedroom collapsed in the wind, burying Lennon under the wreckage of fallen plaster, downed support beams, and toppled furniture. The rain came down in heavy torrents and flooded what little crawl space there was beneath the debris. The water rose to her chest, then her chin, and all at once she was drowning, buried and alone in the dark of her own psyche.

When she surfaced again, it wasn’t to Eileen’s office or the fallen walls of her own mind. She was in Dante’s house. His den took shape around her, even as the winds of Eileen’s will battered the windows, like the torrents of a hurricane sweeping in off the sea. In the fardistance, against the cut of the horizon, the finger of a waterspout threaded down from the churning clouds. And yet the walls of the house held firm.

Lennon cast her eyes toward the storm of Eileen’s will, ravaging the coastline. She opened the back door and screamed into the howling wind, “Get the hell out of my head!”

The storm winds receded and Lennon returned to the present. Somehow, she was still on her feet, but her knees were locked to the point of pain. As she slowly regained consciousness, her nose began to bleed, gently at first, and then in a thick torrent that clogged up her nostrils and made it hard to breathe through her nose. Her mouth gaped open, she heard herself snatch a gasping breath—her lungs on fire with the rest of her. She tasted her own blood hot and thick as it slicked her tongue and ran down her throat in rivulets. She inhaled it into her own windpipe, began to sputter and choke.

Dante lay motionless on the floor. If he was breathing, she couldn’t tell.

A scream tangled in Lennon’s throat.

“Easy,” said Eileen, seated comfortably behind her desk, one leg draped over the other. Dante lay motionless in front of the desk, a few feet away from Lennon. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

In the window, Lennon saw her own reflection. Spine bent back, mouth wrenched open, blood pooling in her cupid’s bow and spilling down her chin. Her heaving chest and fingers grasping at nothing. And then she realized it was not her own reflection that she was looking at, but the aberration’s. It was smiling at her, laughing. Her chest wasn’t heavy with the effort of breathing, it was laughter that racked her. Great bellowing, rip-roaring, throat-stripping peals of hystericallaughter. In the dark window, Lennon saw the aberration staring back at her. For the first time, they moved in perfect tandem.

Eileen’s will snapped. Like a thread cut.

Lennon slackened, went limp, still laughing, and seemed for a moment to swoon, pitching forward toward the desk, where she grabbed the brass bust of a little boy, a makeshift paperweight, and raised it high above her head.

The first strike caught Eileen at the temple and sent her to the floor. Her eyes were wide with shock, as though in all of her brilliance she had never, not even for a moment, considered that Lennon would be capable of actually harming her. Lennon crashed down on top of her, with a brutal volley of strikes. Here the screaming began, cries for help and shrieks of pain—as Lennon beat her, bringing the weight down on her forearms again and again as Eileen struggled and scrabbled and tried in vain to defend herself from the blows.

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