An Academy for Liars

Chapter 20

When Lennon came to, she was barefoot, standing shoulder to shoulder with a handful of her classmates—Ian, Sawyer, Nadine, and a few students down, Blaine, her head hanging, cheek cradled against her shoulder, eyes screwed closed. They stood motionless, as though their feet had been tacked to the floor.

Seated before them, behind a long oak banquet table, were members of Logos, among them Claude, who was smiling; Emerson, dragging on a cigarette; Kieran (who winked at Lennon and gave her two thumbs up); Adan; Yumi; and three others. They were all murmuring among themselves over glasses of wine and spent cigarettes smoldering in overflowing ashtrays. The air was blue with smoke. There was a glass apparatus, filled with greenish liquid, that had three spigots. Beside it were eight, frosty glasses, one for each student standing in front of the table, and a candy bowl filled with folded slips of paper.

In the dead center of the room—between the members of Logos and the line of initiates—was a small wooden card table with two chairs, a folded switchblade placed in front of each of them.

Emerson’s voice—high and clear—cut through the din of conversation. She was pinching a clove cigarette; it looked like a stick of charcoal burning low between her knuckles. Smoke wafted across the room, the lacy tendrils forming a number of words: primordial , wiles , ripe , ubiquity . It smelled, strangely, of burnt tea leaves. “Let’s just get on with it.”

Kieran stood up: “Fine.” He cast his gaze on the row of underclassmen standing before him. “Tonight will most assuredly be one of your worst at Drayton. Maybe one of the worst of your life. I won’t say it’s worth it, but I will say that none of you are here because you lack the drive you need to succeed. You’re all hungry, and that hunger is what got you through our doors tonight. But what will allow you to stay is something more: genius. What you do here tonight will prove whether you’ve got it or not.”

“Is…this s-some type…of hazing?” Lennon slurred and, to her intense embarrassment, dribbled spit onto the Persian rug beneath her bare feet. Her tongue felt numb, swollen fat behind her teeth.

Emerson stubbed out the nub of her spent cigarette, and immediately fished another from the pocket of her blazer and lit up on the candle flickering in front of her. “I thought you tied them,” she muttered around the filter.

“I did,” said Kieran, casting the words over his shoulder with a snarl. “It must be wearing off.”

“Or maybe you didn’t tie her off tight enough?” Claude suggested. “Do you need a refresher?”

“Shut up.” Kieran wheeled back to face the students. “Consider this an audition. You have one chance to prove yourself worthy of joining our ranks here at Logos. You step forward. You drink the absinthe.” He motioned to the fountain and the glasses arranged around it. “Then you pull a paper from the fishbowl. Read the name of your opponent out loud and take a seat at the card table. The opponent will then step forward, drink themselves, and take a seat. No redraws. No do-overs. Nothing. Understood?”

Nobody spoke. No one but Lennon could, what with the tongue ties still firmly in place.

Emerson tilted her head to Kieran. “Cut them loose, will you?”

“Fine.” He snapped his fingers, and the row of students slackened to the point of collapse, falling to their hands and knees. Lennon, for her part, felt as though her legs had gone to sleep. The pins and needles were so severe it was as though her legs had been paralyzed. She thought for a moment she might fall too, but somehow managed to stay on her feet.

“Are any of you familiar with the knife game?” Emerson inquired. “If not, the rules are pretty simple. You’re going to splay your nondominant hand on the table, making sure there’s space between your fingers. Then you’re going to pick up the knife and pierce it into the table between your fingers as fast as you can without stabbing yourself. You’ll play two at a time, using persuasion to manipulate your opponent into stabbing themselves. Winners are initiated. Losers are out. Which is to say, half of you won’t make the cut. We’ll go left to right, starting with Blaine.”

Blaine, who stood at the far end of the line, froze. It was the first time Lennon saw her look anything less than entirely composed. She staggered forward, her bare feet scuffing across the carpet as she approached the table. She filled one of the glasses to the brim with absinthe, downed it in a single swallow. Her hand shook as she lowered it into the candy bowl. She withdrew a slip of paper near the top, read the name aloud: “?‘Felix.’?”

Felix flinched and paled at the sound of his name but stepped forward. He drank his absinthe, took a seat, and put his left hand down on the scarred tabletop, fingers splayed wide apart. Blaine did the same, and picked up the knife, and Felix, pausing to wipe a sweaty palm on his pant leg, followed suit.

“Pierce the table to the rhythm of this beat,” said Emerson, and she began to strike the table. “One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Begin.”

They began to stab the spaces between their fingers to the rhythm of Emerson’s counting. It started out slow, and Lennon began to relax a little, suspecting that perhaps this game wouldn’t be as gruesome as she’d initially expected it to be. But Emerson’s counting picked up speed, and Blaine frowned with concentration. Beads of sweat formed above the dip of Felix’s cupid’s bow. Blaine’s attack was quick and incisive: one moment their knives were dancing between their fingers in unison, and the next, the tip of Felix’s split through the knuckle of his middle finger with a grisly crunch. He cut a cry that made Lennon’s heart seize in her chest, and ripped the blade free of his hand.

Blaine—looking pale and sick to her stomach—pushed sharply away from the table and stumbled to her feet.

“Welcome to Logos,” said Emerson, as two other members of the house escorted Felix out of the room. “Let’s keep going. We don’t have all night.”

Kieran stepped forward to wipe down the table and Felix’s knife, sopping up all the blood. When everything was clean, Nadine stepped up to the front of the room. She filled the glass of absinthe, pinched her nose tightly shut, and swallowed it down. She looked for a moment like she needed to throw up, but when she recovered herself, she pulled a slip of paper from the candy bowl and her chin immediately wrinkled with the effort of holding back tears. “?‘Sawyer.’?”

Sawyer stepped forward, filled his own glass of absinthe, which he drank down slowly, like it was water. They both sat down at the table, picked up the knives, and the game began again.

“One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four…”

This proved to be one of the longest rounds that was played that night. It felt like watching a game of tug-of-war between two people, equally matched.

“One, two, three, four…”

The game picked up speed, and Lennon watched as both Sawyer and Nadine surrendered to a kind of trancelike state, their hands moving of their own volition as their minds toiled away at the great and gruesome work of bending the other to their will. It was Sawyer who prevailed in the end, though: with a strangled little cry he forced the hand that Nadine held pressed to the table a half centimeter to the right. The point of the blade clipped her pinky, and a small bubble of blood welled from the wound and trailed onto the table.

Emerson gave a slow clap. “Welcome to Logos, Sawyer.”

Nadine left the room in tears.

Ian stepped up to the front of the room. He didn’t look even remotely worried, which made sense given that he was easily the top of their class, and even as a first year was widely considered to be one of the most competent persuasionists on the campus. First, he filled his glass and threw back the shot of absinthe. Then he turned to the bowl, rustling through the slips of paper—a theatrical gesture—taking longer than he needed to select one, given that there were only a couple left. He smiled even, as he unfolded it, but the expression froze on his face when he read the name written there.

“Lennon,” he said, his gaze flicking up to her, then casting sharply away.

Lennon felt as though the floor had dropped beneath her feet. When she stepped forward, she thought for a moment that she was being persuaded to do it. As instructed, she filled her glass of absinthe and drank it down. It was strong and herbal, bitter enough to burn her throat when she swallowed. Then she sat down opposite Ian.

“Well, this should be quick,” said Kieran with a shit-eating grin that made him look more than twice as punchable as he usually did, which was already quite punchable.

Across the table, Ian could barely look at her. His face—pale to begin with—had drained of almost all color so that he appeared nearly jaundiced in the wan lamplight. Before the game had even begun, he forced a thought into Lennon’s mind: Don’t fight. I’ll make it painless. Just a nick.

At the sound of his voice in her head, Lennon flinched and fumbled the knife. It struck the floor, and she picked it up, to a chorus of snickering. Ian withdrew from her mind, but she could still feel the greasy residue of his presence within her, a kind of violation. And who the fuck did he think he was telling her to go belly-up?

“Poor thing,” she heard Yumi whisper to Emerson. “I hope this is quick.”

Lennon pressed her left hand to the table, spread her fingers so far apart they hurt.

Ian pressed his left hand down. Humiliatingly, he didn’t even bother to spread his fingers wide like she had. It was clear he wasn’t expecting anything remotely close to a proper fight, and that sparked something in Lennon. It made her angry. It made her want to win , not just to earn a bed in Logos but to make Ian eat the very words he’d forced into her mind.

Her hand tightened around the blade. Across the table, Ian—grimacing—gave her a curt nod. Emerson began to count: “One, two, three, four…”

Lennon pierced the knife between her fingers, firmly embedding the blade each time. The idea was to get used to the rhythm, to give herself over to the trance of it before she made any attempt to breach the confines of Ian’s mind. But her strategy was wholly based around the fact that Ian didn’t see her as a threat. He wouldn’t seize violent control—he had no need to. She’d given every indication that she would surrender to him, which meant that she had the element of surprise. Not him. When Ian’s first move did come, it would likely be gentle—he didn’t want to hurt her; he’d made that clear. He was expecting nothing less than full compliance. But Lennon knew that the moment she fought back, or even raised her defenses, Ian would realize that she was contending with him, and the ruse would be broken.

She had to act fast, before he knew that she was fighting.

“One, two, three, four.”

Lennon summoned her strength, honed her focus—and drove her will toward Ian. She had intended a simple gesture, a jerk of the hand that would’ve done nothing more than clip the knuckle of his index finger. She was more stunned than horrified when the blade went through Ian’s hand—piercing cleanly between the tendons and pinning it to the tabletop. He didn’t scream, but his mouth wrenched open, and his good hand slithered from around the hilt of the knife and fell limp to his side. He stared—wide-eyed—at his own hand nailed down to the tabletop, the dark puddle of blood spilling out from under his palm and leaking through his fingers. Ian started to say something and passed out cold. His weight pulled against the knife blade, tearing the wound a little wider. Lennon sprang forward to help him, ripping the hilt free of his hand. Ian slumped low in his chair.

“Holy fuck!” Lennon shrieked, dizzy at the sight of what she’d done. “ Help! Someone help him—”

But no one moved. Everyone remained frozen there. Even the logicians at the table looked on motionless and in shock. It was Emerson who broke the silence, staring at Lennon with narrowed eyes. “Congratulations on your acceptance to Logos.”