Page 81 of An Academy for Liars

“I need to sober up,” said Blaine, and she appeared to go boneless, sliding off her stool. “Let’s take a walk.”

The two of them stepped out into the biting cold. There was a sharp wind blowing west off the river, tossing the greenish water into frothy whitecaps. Underfoot, the cobblestones were slick with slush and ice. It was one of the coldest nights Savannah had seen in some time, and Lennon’s knit sweater felt pitifully thin. She shoved her cold-stiff hands into her pockets, rounded her shoulders against the wind.

“So did I guess right?” she asked, shivering.

“More or less,” said Blaine, not looking at her. But it wasn’t that Blaine was avoiding Lennon’s eyes; it was as if she was seeing another, second Lennon, somewhere down on the ground among the cobblestones. “What I really wanted to know was if you’d run away with me tonight, if I wanted to go. Would you leave Drayton behind?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

Blaine didn’t answer.

Lennon took her by the hand. Her fingers were ice. “Why, Blaine?”

“Forget it,” she said, stealing her hand away. “We should be getting back anyway. It’s late.”

They walked back to the narrow alley that housed the Drayton gate. As they did, two drunk men began to tail them. They were subtle at first, but when Lennon and Blaine turned down the alley, they did too.

“Let’s hurry up,” said Lennon, and turned to face the rotting wooden door that concealed the elevator. But when Lennon drew it open, there was nothing behind it but a brick wall slimed with algae.

The gate that was supposed to take them back to Drayton was gone.

Blaine—eyes alight with panic—slammed the door shut and opened it again.

Still no elevator.

“What the hell?” she said in a thick whisper, her breath a white bloom of steam on the air.

The men at the mouth of the alley came closer, calling after them, waving. Lennon turned to face them.

“Whatever you want, we’re not interested,” she said, but the quiver in her voice undermined any authority she tried to channel with those words.

“We just want to talk a little,” said one of the men, leering. He held a cup of beer, and when he gestured at Lennon some of it sloshed over the rim and splattered the sidewalk. “You don’t like to talk?”

He was close enough now that Lennon could smell him, all beer and musky cologne. They were both relatively well-dressed—leather shoes, expensive watches flashing on their thick wrists. They looked like stragglers from a bachelor party. In their wake, Lennon felt like a small mouse, held between two cupped hands large enough to crush her. It was the same feeling she’d had that very night while sparring with Ian as he’d violated her mind and humiliated her in front of her peers. The same feeling when he’d told her to go belly-up, the night they’d been called to Logos.

“Look, we’re just trying to get home,” said Lennon, adrenaline spiking through her. Blaine kept fiddling with the door.

“There’s something wrong with the gate,” she said, panicking less because of the threat of the men, Lennon realized, and more because she couldn’t get back to Drayton. Here, in the real world, they were stranded until someone thought to look for them. But if she and Blaine couldn’t get into Drayton, there was a good chance that those inside of Drayton wouldn’t be able to get out either. Everyone would be trapped on campus, which to Lennon seemed preferable to being trapped outside of it, removed from the only world she’d ever wanted to be a part of.

“You two shouldn’t be out here alone,” said one of the men. They were imposing and tall enough to blot out the light of the streetlamp at the alley’s end. “Savannah’s not a safe city anymore.”

“Leave us the fuck alone,” Lennon snapped.

And one of the men, the taller and drunker of the two, screwed his face into a boyish frown. “You don’t have to be so aggressive about it. We just wanted to invite you out for a drink. Can a man invite two ladies out on a Friday night, or is that not allowed anymore—”

Lennon strangled him. There was no other way to say it. She induced a reaction that was not unlike anaphylaxis, a cruel application of persuasion that Lennon had picked up in Dante’s class. One moment the man was on his feet, the next he was doubled over and turning red, with a series of desperate, raw gasps. The artery running up the side of his neck fattened to the point of bursting. He opened his mouth, and Lennon saw that his tongue had swollen to the size of a crab apple, lodging itself so firmly against the roof of his mouth there was no way for air to pass through.

He dropped to his knees, his cup falling through his hand, beer splattering all over Lennon as he fell. His friend dropped beside him, smacking him on the back frantically as he writhed and gasped for air, scrabbling helplessly at the cobblestones.

Lennon stepped past both of them, shooed Blaine away from the fallen gate, and attempted to call one of her own. But when she extended her mind to Drayton, there was nothing on the other side. As if the school itself didn’t exist.

Panic washed through her and then rage after it. She gave the door a vicious kick, and the wood broke and splintered.“Goddamnit.”

“Lennon,” said Blaine, putting a hand on her arm. “I think you’re killing him.”

Lennon turned to see the man unconscious, his face gone blue,froth collecting at the corners of his open mouth. His friend was on the ground beside him, fumbling with his phone.

“Fuck,” said Lennon, and she stepped right over him, snatched the phone from his hand, tossed it to the ground, and stomped on it, shattering the screen. She cut the choking man loose. There was a long silence—and for a moment Lennon thought she might’ve actually done it, that she may actually have killed someone—but then he stirred to life with a juddering breath.

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