Lennon limped back to 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 her knees. “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.”

There was a knock on the door, and it opened before Lennon could even say, Come in. She wasn’t entirely surprised to see Claude; she’d expected he’d reach out to her at some point, given his closeness to Benedict. But she hadn’t expected it to be so soon. The night was still young, and Dante hadn’t been gone for long.

“You heard?” Lennon asked him.

“Bits and pieces,” said Claude, looking troubled. “Fill me in.”

“Ben compelled her to stick her fucking hand in a fire,” said Blaine, sitting up, angrier than Lennon had ever seen her. “So if you want to know what happened, I suggest you talk to your boyfriend.”

Claude actually smiled at this, a cruel grin that made Lennon want to hide under the blankets. “You’re one to talk.”

Blaine paled a little, half turned to Lennon. “Look, I have to go—”

“I’m sure you do,” said Claude, but Blaine chose to ignore him.

“Claude’s going to sit with you while I’m gone.” Blaine glared up at him. “Isn’t that right?”

Claude nodded. “I’ll stay with her. Wouldn’t want her to die of a scraped knee while you’re gone—”

But Blaine was already out the door. Claude sat down on the edge of Lennon’s bed, slumped back against the wall. He had a strange thrall—Lennon could never quite decide whether she liked him or not. He could be so rude and yet in the next moment, entirely charming and sincere. It kept her on her toes. She could never be bored around him, but she could never be entirely at ease either. No wonder Benedict liked him so much.

“Dante’s pulled a lot of strings for you, hasn’t he?”

When Claude spoke, his warm breath smelled of booze—whiskey or something equally strong—which usually Lennon would’ve found a little gross. But somehow, when it came to Claude, these small imperfections only added to his charm.

“He’s a good advisor.”

Claude smirked. “I think he’s got a soft spot for you.”

“What are you trying to say?”

Claude shrugged. “Exactly what you think I’m saying. Don’t worry, it’s a safe space. I’m not one to judge.”

“Well, it’s not like that.”

“I said the same about Ben, at first. I lived in a state of utter denial that bordered on delusional for months. It was kind of hot. Like sex with a blindfold on. When things came to a head, there was all of this angst and buildup to fuel us.”

“How did it start between you two?”

“The way these things always do,” said Claude. “I thought he was brilliant. He thought I was precocious, which in turn made me feel almost as brilliant as I believed him to be. You know the story.”

Lennon did. She’d lived that story, with Wyatt and half of the other older, emotionally unavailable men that she’d loved and fucked and obsessed over.

“The beginning isn’t the interesting part, though. It’s what comes after. You probably know that too. You have to come up with who you are and prove it to a person who already knows themselves because they’ve had all these years to figure that out. But it’s unfair because you haven’t yet and then you’re trying to catch up to them. The whole time you’re hoping you don’t fuck it up and become less precocious and, in doing so, unfuckable. That’s a real risk when you get older. The expectations are higher when you’re not young anymore. You go from unusually bright to just…pretty smart, or not dumb or whatever, and then before you know it, you’re not remarkable anymore. You’re nothing special to them or to anyone else.”

Lennon had the sudden urge to clamp a hand down, tight, over Claude’s mouth. To make him eat the deluge of words he’d just regurgitated onto the bed between them. Why was it that almost everything Claude said—not just then but on other occasions too—was so blunt it hurt? It felt like he was always looking for a bruise to press on, just for the pleasure of watching her squirm.

“I am sorry about Ben,” said Claude, relenting a little. He sounded almost sleepy. “He was in a bad way today. I’m sure whatever he said or did, he didn’t mean it. You know how it is. The people here, they’re not quite right. Ben’s no different.”