Page 89 of An Academy for Liars

I think of you often. Stay the course.

With love,

Eileen

Lennon slipped thecard back into the envelope, got up, walked very slowly to the kitchen—as if to keep herself from running—and called her sister.

Carly answered after four long rings. “Who is this?”

“It’s me,” said Lennon, whispering even though there was no one in the house to hear her. She was safe, but she didn’t feel like it. Alec’s veiled accusations had unsettled her, yes, but the letter from Eileen had almost disturbed her more, for some reason. Something ominous in the way it was written, a promise there, a threat that she couldn’t yet decipher. But it was undeniably present, like the ghost of magnolias scenting the paper. A kind of darkness behind her words that Lennon didn’t yet understand.

“Where thehellhave you been?” Carly demanded. “We haven’t heard from you in weeks.”

“Do you remember that man who showed up on Christmas? My advisor?” Lennon asked, uncertain. When she’d persuaded them onChristmas, she’d been careful to leave the memory of Dante untouched, wanting to avoid as much interference as possible.

“Face of Adonis with the eyes of a serial killer? How could I forget?”

“Dante, yes. I’m at his house for the summer.”

Carly gave a dry, hard laugh. “Of course you are.”

There was something about the way she said it that made Lennon’s cheeks burn with shame. She had the sudden urge to defend herself and Dante, to tell Carly that the situation between them wasn’t what it seemed like. She wanted to tell her about how for once she had been chosen and how that meant something, even if Carly was unwilling to see it. But she swallowed all of that ego down, suppressed it.

“So,” said Carly, “you want me to do some digging?”

“What?”

“I mean, that is why you’re calling, right? We’ve been through this before, Lennon, with Wyatt and the others before him. You start dating a new guy. At first things are great, but then it goes sour, you get suspicious or afraid, and then you call me.”

“I’m not suspicious of Dante.”

“But you are afraid?”

“I’m not afraid or suspicious,” she snapped. “I just…I want to know more about him.”

“That’s what internet stalking is for.”

“That won’t work. He’s a bit of a ghost online.” She’d checked over Christmas break, thumbing through her phone (all cellular devices had been returned, dead, by the school for the duration of Christmas break). But she’d found next to nothing on Dante, or for that matter any of the faculty members at Drayton.

“If I was going to dig—”

“I’m not asking you to,” said Lennon hastily.

“But if I was, what kind of digging would you like me to do?”

“I don’t know…” said Lennon, and this much at least was honest. “Just, you know, find whatever you can.”

“What I find depends on what you already know.”

“I know his name is Dante Lowe. He has a house here, on the coast of South Carolina, at least I think he does. I mean, I guess it’s possible the house belongs to the school—”

“Do you have the address?”

Lennon gave it.

There was the sound of a pen scratching over paper as Carly wrote it down. “What does he drive?”

“An Audi. Something old. Vintage, I think. I don’t know the model.”

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