Chapter 45
Lennon slipped the card 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 the hell have 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 on Christmas, 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.”
“Can you get me a license plate number?”
“Not now. He took the car.”
“Took the car where?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a long pause. “Lennon?”
“Yes?”
“Are you in any danger?”
“No.”
“When you say it fast like that, it makes me think you’re lying.”
“I think I’m telling the truth,” said Lennon.
“You think?”
Lennon heard the garage door open.
“I have to go. If you need to reach me, call this number, and if I don’t pick up or I’m not here, just hang up, okay? Don’t leave a message, and don’t call back unless I call you.”
“And if I don’t hear from you? What then?”
“Then I’m probably dead.”
“Lennon, that’s not funny—”
“We’ll talk later,” said Lennon, just as Dante entered the house. She hung up the phone and went to greet him in the foyer.
“Who was that on the phone?” he asked, looking tired.
“Carly. I figured I should give her a call, so she knows I’m alive.”
“How was she?” he asked, and Lennon couldn’t tell if he was fishing for information or just trying to make conversation.
“She’s still not particularly enthusiastic about you,” said Lennon, trying to make a joke of it. But it landed wrong, and neither of them laughed. But the mood lightened when they found their way into the kitchen, where the cake was on display.
“Happy birthday,” said Lennon, scrambling to light a match. “I know it’s lopsided and the frosting looks like shit, but I did my best.”
Dante, caught off guard at first, smiled and blew out his candle. They ate large wedges of cake for dinner at the breakfast table.
“So, what did Eileen say?”
“She apologized for the rude intrusion this morning and we were able to discuss the circumstances of your return to Drayton. The conversation was…surprisingly productive.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Dante stared down at the floor, as if in search of the answer to that question. “The school wants some assurance that they haven’t misjudged you. There is…mounting concern that your existence is a threat not just to the school and the students in it, but to reality itself.”
“Because of Ian?” she asked, a pit in her stomach. She hated that even after killing one of her own classmates, she was worrying if the offense was bad enough to result in her expulsion, as if she didn’t deserve to be expelled for what she’d done.
“Yes, but also because as of leaving the campus, you’re no longer under the school’s jurisdiction,” said Dante. “And apparently, the chancellor isn’t entirely impressed by your progress thus far.”
“But I’ve done everything they’ve asked of me,” said Lennon, her voice cracking on those words. “I’ve been at the top of most of my classes, I’ve learned to call elevators on command—”
“You lack discipline,” said Dante, cutting her short. “I’ve told you as much myself. But their concerns are farther-reaching. According to Alec, it’s not just your gatekeeping capabilities that have been called into question. It’s your personality, your conduct with your peers at school, namely Ian but others too. Your mental health history was also a point of concern, as was your past promiscuity. In general, the school’s opinion is that you’re chaotic, unreliable—”
“And a bit of a whore?” Lennon snapped, her cheeks flushed hot with shame and anger. “Do you agree with their assessment?”
“Not all of it,” said Dante. “I do believe you lack discipline. Your feelings are intense, and they often dictate your behavior against what I believe is your better judgment. As for their concerns about your health history and who you choose to sleep with, they can shove it up their ass.”
Lennon relaxed, immediately, with that assurance. The faculty could loathe her. Her peers could hate her. But if Dante was in her corner, that was enough. “So what now? They’re not going to let me return, are they?”
“I don’t want you to just return,” said Dante. “I want you to go back to Drayton and graduate by the fall semester’s end.”
“What?” She was stunned. The thought of graduating from Drayton hadn’t crossed her mind once since she’d come to Dante’s house for the summer. Any hopes of graduating had died along with Ian in that elevator. “How am I supposed to defend my right to graduate when the majority of the school thinks I’m rash, incapable, and violent—”
“You prove them wrong.”
“But how, Dante?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Do you know why we were all so afraid when you opened your first gate?”
“Because it was dangerous,” said Lennon. “I mean, look what happened to Ian.”
“Surely you didn’t think that hearing was because we were worried you’d turn an elevator into a guillotine? You had to know there was a greater thing we feared.”
Lennon racked her brain, trying to think of an answer, but came up short.
“Your gates are more than just a means of transportation through space. Or at least, they could be more. Some gatekeepers possess the ability to open channels not just through space but through time also. The consequences of such an act can be both deadly and far-reaching. That’s why everyone was so wary of your power…and potential.”
The hairs on Lennon’s arms bristled, stood on end. She was overcome by the feeling of being followed, like something terrible was lurking just behind her shoulder. “Well, they don’t have anything to worry about. I’ve never opened any channels through time, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. I mean, why would anyone risk dabbling with that when the cost could be so high?”
“Because the school is in danger,” said Dante. “The gates that currently surround it are failing. Soon they will fall and expose Drayton to the world.”
“I’m not following. Like at all.”
Dante heaved a sigh. “Look, for as long as you and I have been alive, the gates around the school have been weakening. You know this because you’ve seen it yourself. There have been more quakes since we left. The elevators malfunctioning. Officials at Drayton have been doing their best to stabilize the situation, but the school’s power, the power of the faculty who serve it, has its limits. They can’t keep the school stable for long. One day, the gates around the school will collapse entirely and expose the secrets of Drayton to the world. As you can probably imagine, the effects of such a collapse would be devastating not just to the school but to the world at large. What do you think will happen when nations start wielding persuasion like a weapon?”
“I—I don’t know—”
“Take a guess. What will the world’s worst people—the rapists and the warlords, the billionaire CEOs and the corrupt politicians—do with the power we possess?”
Lennon felt sick just thinking about it. “They’ll use it to their own ends.”
“Violent ends,” he said. “The results would be far-reaching if not world-ending. But I believe you can prevent that.”
“Why? If you and Eileen and the rest of the faculty can’t figure out how to keep the gates up and stable, then what can I possibly do?”
“You can raise a new one. You’re the only one who likely can.”
“But how? I open gates that move through space. But the boundaries around the school are different. Illusionary. They just shield it from the outside world. That has nothing to do with my elevators.”
Dante shook his head. “You’ve got the wrong idea. Drayton isn’t static. It’s alive. Moving through space and time.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that the boundaries that protect it from the world aren’t illusionary. They’re not keeping it invisible. Drayton is a reality of its own. You can think of it as a ship, moving along a river through space and time. The elevators we use to access it—even that long road that marks the end of campus—all of them are like small lifeboats carrying us back and forth between the reality on campus and that of the present.”
Lennon felt, with no small amount of discomfort, her mind stretching to accommodate this new information. “So you’re saying that the campus itself is kind of like one big elevator cabin?”
“Exactly,” said Dante. “And when that elevator fails, the cabin of the campus will fall back into the present.”
“Why the present? Why not the future or the past?”
“The future doesn’t yet exist. The past has already happened, so we would know if the campus had been revealed. By that logic, it makes sense to deduce that there’s no place for Drayton to land but the present reality, whatever that is at the time that it falls.”
As Dante said this, the truth came slowly into focus. The precarity of this new reality. “What makes you so sure I can even do this? My elevator cabins are small, and I can only sustain them for so long. But something on the scale of Drayton’s campus? I mean, that would take an impossible amount of stamina, not to mention skill that I don’t possess—”
“You don’t possess it yet . But I can help you,” said Dante. “It’s important to remember that your elevator gates are something more than what they appear to be. They only take the form of an elevator because that’s the easiest way to communicate the concept, a way for you to comprehend and express the ineffable. But the cabin itself, it doesn’t exist as a concrete reality. It can change forms, expand to become something different.”
“Like William’s doors did,” said Lennon, thinking back to one of her first lessons with Benedict. “His gates manifested as a hallway.”
Dante nodded. He had that light in his eyes that he often did when he was lecturing and was particularly riveted by the material. “If you can reach beyond the scope of your own understanding, if you tap into enough power, you can expand the uses of your elevator and change the way they manifest.”
“I can create a gate around the school,” said Lennon, understanding, “just like William did.”
“Exactly.”
Lennon humored the possibility, with some reluctance. But the idea still didn’t sit right with her. She couldn’t imagine herself as the kind of person capable of wielding that much power, with care and competence. She’d struggled to climb to the top of her class, unlike William, who was said to have been a known prodigy. And then there was Ian’s death, a scar on her name forever, a demonstration of her own weakness and volatility and, worse than that, the violence that seemed almost inherent to her. A kind of corrosive chaos within.
Lennon was no hero. And she wasn’t even sure she had the spine to call herself a villain.
She was just a coward. And she was very afraid.
“Something’s bothering you,” said Dante. “What is it?”
“It’s just…it doesn’t add up. If I have the potential to save the school with my power, then why did Eileen seem ready to expel me when she realized that I had it? Surely, she must’ve known that I had the potential to be useful.”
“She did,” said Dante. “But at the time it was just that: potential. Nothing more. To her you weren’t a particularly promising student. You almost killed yourself trying to raise gates through space, and raising them through time is an even greater feat and one that, to be frank, I don’t think she believes you’re capable of. Also, at the time of that hearing, Eileen didn’t have a dire need for the talents of a gatekeeper. The quakes hadn’t begun yet.”
“But now that the quakes have begun and she knows that she needs a gatekeeper, she never once asked me to intervene. Why? What are her reservations?”
Dante seemed reluctant to answer at first. “Eileen has never enjoyed sharing the spotlight, and she likes sharing power even less. If you become the person I think you can be—if you save the school and we’re all indebted to you—she’ll be forced to cede some of her power. To Eileen, I think that idea is almost as horrific as the school being exposed entirely. She doesn’t trust you, she doesn’t like you, and I don’t think she’s yet accepted the reality that she needs you. We all do.”
“But what if she’s right to be wary of me? If I begin to tamper with time, you say that the repercussions could be devastating, even deadly. It would be one thing if it was just my life that I was gambling with, but there are others at stake too. Do you really trust me with that after everything that’s happened? After what I did to Ian—”
“That was once and you had your reasons.”
“But what about all the other times I’ve screwed up? All of the times I’ve failed in your class, that I’ve come up short. I put a knife through Ian’s hand months before I killed him and felt so little in the aftermath it scared me. I scare myself. In the mirror, sometimes I can see what I am. I mean, you said it yourself: I’m dangerous. Why would you trust a dangerous person with the fate of the school, or for that matter, the world?”
“The gates will fall eventually. Maybe not this year, maybe not even in your lifetime. But they will fall, and you’re not the only dangerous person in the world, Lennon. What happens when all of the other dangerous people have access to the same power that you do? What will they do with it?”
Lennon swallowed dry, considering. It was a horrifying proposition. Her mind went to those two men in the alley that she and Blaine had encountered that night in Savannah. What would they do with the power of persuasion, if they could wield it?
“You should have told me about all of this months ago,” she said, beginning to process for the first time the hurt and betrayal over everything he’d been keeping from her. All this time she’d believed that the walls between them were slowly lowering, that they were growing closer. But in reality, Dante was just as cagey and distant as he had always been. She wondered what else he was hiding and how it could hurt her.
“I would have told you if the decision had been up to me, but it wasn’t,” he said, and while Lennon wanted to believe him, she wasn’t sure that she could. Even now—as Dante seemingly splayed his cards across the table—she had the distinct impression that there were still some things that he was holding back. “Eileen wanted to keep a lid on things for as long as she could. It was only today that I convinced her to consider this new possibility. She agreed to give you a chance at this, but now it’s your turn to decide what you’ll do with it.”
Lennon paused to consider her possibilities: a reality where the gates fell and Drayton was exposed to the world, or a reality where she did something to stop it. She had come to Drayton looking for a savior, and now she had the chance to become one. And if she did, perhaps it would be some small way to atone for what she’d done to Ian. To cement herself as something more than a killer and a coward. A chance to redeem herself.
Lennon looked to Dante. “When do we begin?”