Page 45 of An Academy for Liars

With Benedict distracted, Lennon got up, staggered, and bolted into the birdcage elevator that would take her back to Drayton, back to safety. She was halfway down the foyer, dragging the elevator grate shut with her good hand, when she heard Benedict cry out her name.

“Lennon, come back here! Now.”

Panicked, she smashed the infinity button on the control panel, and the cab sank into swift descent.

Lennon limped backto Logos House in the pouring rain, her burnt hand throbbing a bit, though the pain in her busted knees was far worse. Benedict had only held her hand to the fire for the briefest moment, but the impact of landing on the sharp stones had been enough to gash her kneecaps wide open.

Determined to get home, she kept limping along. What began as a gentle midnight shower exploded into a storm so vicious Lennon wondered if a hurricane was ravaging the coast. It was hard to walk against the wind but the dense magnolias and live oaks offered her some small reprieve. Through the breaks in the trees, she could see Logos House, every one of its curtained windows alight with flickering candles.

She was stunned to see Dante, striding down the walkway that ran parallel to the house, head ducked against the rain, coming toward her. She stopped dead at the sight of him, standing there in the downpour. “There you are. Are you—”

Lennon began to cry.

Dante asked no questions.

He broke toward her and scooped her up, one arm tucked around the small of her back and the other behind her knees, and carried her through the foyer of Logos House and into the powder room on the first floor below the stairs. He set her gingerly down on the toilet seat, leaving the door just ajar.

“Take off your tights,” he ordered.

Lennon obeyed, peeling off her torn and bloodstained nylons, tossing them into the wastebasket beside the toilet.

Dante began to rummage through the contents of a cabinet, retrieving a glass bottle of rubbing alcohol and several cotton balls. He crouched before her, soaked the cotton balls with alcohol, and began to dab at her knees. The pain was horrible enough to bring fresh tears to Lennon’s eyes, but she furiously blinked them back.

“Are you going to tell me what the hell happened?” he asked.

“Benedict.” Lennon managed to cut his name through her gritted teeth.

Dante faltered, froze for a moment, but recovered himself quickly. “What about Benedict?”

“He persuaded me during our lesson. He made me walk toward the fireplace and I—I fell, busted my knees on the stones. When he forced my hand toward the flames an elevator appeared. The pain triggered it, I think.”

Something changed in Dante’s expression. It was brief but sharp, anger flaring then quickly repressed, like a snuffer clasped over a tongue of flame.

He stood up, rather abruptly, and began to cut thick squares of gauze, which he pressed into the open wounds to staunch the last of the bleeding. Then he wrapped bandages tightly around both of herknees. “I’m going to have a word with Benedict, all right? It’s going to be okay.”

The tears came again then, blurring her vision so badly she could barely see Dante crouching at her feet. “I don’t want to be expelled. I want to stay here. This is the only thing I’ve ever been good at, and I just—”

“Hey,” said Dante, and he took her by the hand, squeezed her fingers. “I won’t let that happen. I promise you that, all right?”

Lennon wiped her eyes on her shirtsleeve. “Yeah. Okay.”

They emerged from the bathroom to see that quite a crowd had formed out in the hallway. It seemed it wasn’t often that a tenured professor darkened the door of the house, and everyone had come to gawk.

“What happened?” Blaine asked, shouldering to the front of the crowd.

“Lennon had a bit of a fall,” said Dante. “Can I trust you to look after her?”

Blaine nodded, encircling Lennon with one arm. “Of course. We’ve got her.”

“Good,” said Dante, and Lennon expected him to leave through the front door they’d entered through, but instead he scaled the staircase, up to the second floor. There was a pause and then the elevator chimed. She heard the doors open and shut.

Dante had gone to face Benedict.

Blaine tucked herself into Lennon’s bed that night, the two of them squeezing onto the narrow mattress, slotting their bodies together to keep from falling over the edge. Lennon told her everything that had transpired with Benedict, feeling as though she had no choice. She seemed to bleed the words more than speak them, and Blaine listened in silence.

“You know, at the very least I thought I’d stop feeling like a failure when I got into Logos,” said Lennon, rubbing her swollen eyes.

“You’re not a failure,” said Blaine. “And what happened with Benedict wasn’t your fault.”

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