Lennon packed in a hurry, dodging questions from Blaine all the while. “So where are you going again?” she asked for the third time that evening.

“Out,” said Lennon, fishing a pair of socks from the top drawer of her dresser.

“With Dante?”

“Yes,” said Lennon, exasperated, “with Dante.”

Blaine leaned against the doorframe, mixing a clay mask in a mug with a spoon. “And this is some type of…field trip?”

“If that’s what you want to call it, sure. It’s part of his standing in for Benedict. Why do you care so much anyway?”

“It’s just weird,” said Blaine. “You never leave.”

“That’s categorically untrue. I had classes with Benedict.”

“In Utah, apparently? Which I still don’t get. But what I meant was you don’t leave to go anywhere outside of your classes. No parties. No social events. Nothing. And now, all of a sudden, this.”

Lennon zipped up her duffel bag. “Why is it that when you disappear in the middle of the night, you’re not made to account for yourself, but when I do it it’s such a problem?”

“That’s a false equivalence.”

“How so?”

“I go out to work,” she said matter-of-factly. It was the first time she’d ever referred to her nightly absences as work adjacent, or referred to them at all really, and it took Lennon by surprise. She’d simply assumed she had some secret boyfriend, maybe a professor, that she didn’t want to own up to. Lennon was tempted to press her for more, but Blaine changed the subject before she had the chance. “This thing with Dante is different.”

Lennon stuffed a fistful of panties into her bag. “Different how?”

“I don’t know. A roguish young professor traveling alone with his charge.”

“Dante isn’t like that.”

“And you know this how?”

“I just don’t get that impression from him. He’s solid.”

“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. But I guess the better question is, are you?”

Lennon looked up, exasperated. “What are you getting at, Blaine?”

“It’s just…there are already rumors about us.”

“Rumors?”

“Rumors about why we got into Logos with the grades we had while others with higher grades didn’t. And with you in particular there’s the situation with Ian—”

“What situation?”

“Apparently, he’s furious that you got in and he didn’t. And even more furious, understandably, about how you put a knife through his hand and very nearly crippled him. Lennon, he’s saying things about you…and Dante.”

“What exactly did he say?”

“Nothing to me,” said Blaine. “But I heard he’s been running his mouth a lot. Saying you two hooked up and that you used him as a stepping stone to get into Logos and that now that you got what you wanted from him you’ve tossed him out and gone on to Sawyer or Dante or whoever else.”

Lennon felt a surge of fury at the thought. She’d known Ian was jealous and sometimes petty, but the Ian she’d known had been honest too. He knew she had talent, and she’d thought he was smart enough to tell that she wasn’t the sort of person who got ahead academically by strategically fucking her way up the social ladder. But then she remembered telling him—in the dark of night—about Wyatt and his house and his money and all of the therapies and doctors and treatments that he’d paid for. She wondered if she’d revealed too much, given him the wrong impression.

“That bastard,” said Lennon, shaking her head. “I fuck him a handful of times and he thinks I owe him my entire academic career? Fuck him.”

Blaine hung her head. Strangely, she looked ashamed. “We have to be careful. No one on this campus thinks we earned our beds here honorably, if you know what I mean. And now that you’re running off with Dante—”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” said Lennon, irritated now. She knew that Blaine was well-meaning, but couldn’t help but feel her line of questioning was a little intrusive, especially given her own frequent disappearing acts. “I’m not the one who spends every other night out doing god knows what. You call it work, but I have my doubts.”

Blaine flinched, looked away.

“I’m sorry. That was uncalled-for.”

“It’s fine,” said Blaine, in the clipped way that people do when they’re wriggling out of further conversation. She forced a smile. “Hope you have a good trip. Bring me back something pretty? I like cheap souvenirs. Bit of a pack rat in that way.”

“Yeah,” said Lennon, grateful to her for smoothing over the tail end of that awkward exchange. Blaine was good like that, forgiving. “I’ll see what I can find.”

Lennon left Logos House and found Dante on the stairs of Irvine Hall, smoking a cigarette, which he stubbed out on the head of one of the two gargoyles posted at the entrance. He flicked the filter into the chrysanthemum bushes as she approached. “Let’s head out.”

She followed him to the elevator that she’d first entered Drayton through. Dante pushed the down button and moments later its doors yawned open. They stepped into the cabin. It was mirrored on all sides, even the floor and ceiling.

“You might want to brace yourself,” said Dante, leaning forward to press the 7 button. As soon as he issued the warning, the elevator gave a violent lurch. Dante remained standing with his legs firmly planted, but Lennon staggered, only avoiding crashing headfirst into the elevator panel because Dante caught her by the arm. She managed to find her footing, adjusting to the pressure of the g-forces that seemed to bear down both from above and below at once, which was impossible.

She felt the aberration looking at her before she saw it in the mirrored walls of the cabin. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and a haunted feeling came over her, as though she was on the cusp of some horrible tragedy she couldn’t avoid. She turned her head, caught sight of its leering grin out of her periphery—

“Don’t look at it,” said Dante, his gaze locked on the doors of the elevator.

Lennon stared at him, stunned. “You can see it too?”

“No,” said Dante. “But I know you have one. Everyone does.”

“Where’s yours?”

“It’s here,” said Dante, eyes fixed on the doors. “Invisible to your eye but present nonetheless.”

“What are they?”

“John Drayton believed they were the shadows of our better selves. Freud might’ve called them images of the id.”

“And what do you call them?”

“A glimpse of what we’ll become if we lose sight of ourselves,” said Dante.

“If everyone has one, why are we the only ones that can see them?”

“The short answer is that we’re not everyone,” said Dante. “The long answer is that those of us with the ability to persuade are more closely aligned with the ego and, by extension, the id. Some theoretical persuasionists even believe it’s the source of our power. According to them, an unnaturally strong id lends us the ability to manipulate on the level that we do. That’s also why particularly talented persuasionists see their ids more prominently, why they…struggle.”

Lennon thought of the other Dante, whom she’d encountered her first night at the school. Had that been his id? A projection of his darkest self?

The doors of the elevator slit open with a hiss and wheeze, as if the cabin had rapidly depressurized. Lennon, reeling, stepped out into the warmth and light of a full day, and onto the cobbled streets of Amsterdam. There were bike bells trilling and the chatter of birds flocking in the trees that lined the canals. The air smelled of grease and pollen and, faintly, cigarette smoke, and the sun was so bright that for a moment after stepping off the elevator, she couldn’t see.

“I still don’t understand how this is possible,” said Lennon, and her own words sounded like someone speaking from far, far away. As her eyes adjusted to the sunlight, the scene before her—the glittering waters of the canal, the tall townhomes with gleaming windows, a smear of blue sky—appeared strange and bulbous, as if she was seeing everything through fishbowl lenses. She began to feel like she was going to throw up, or possibly lose her mind. She staggered.

“Hey. Stay with me,” said Dante. “Ground yourself.”

Lennon tried to comply, but her breath came fast and shallow. She felt like she was going to pass out. Dante caught her by the elbow, and her heart thrilled a little at his touch. A kind of force—like sharp heat—emanated from his fingertips. It made her feel even dizzier, but she still didn’t want him to let go.

Lennon closed her eyes, drew a breath, and when she opened them again, all was as it should be. They were on peaceful cobbled street. A boat moved by along the canals.

Dante dropped his hand.

Amsterdam was one of the most beautiful cities that Lennon had ever seen. Every street they strolled down looked like something from the high-gloss pages of a luxe travel magazine. They passed the brick row houses, walked along canals flocked with ducks. Dante stopped by a small shop and bought them herring sandwiches (which tasted a lot better than they looked), small cups of espresso, and stroopwafels, larger than Lennon’s face, still warm from the waffle iron.

Jet-lagged, but hungry, Lennon tucked into her food, eating and observing as they wandered the streets of Amsterdam. She noticed that Dante had intentionally slowed his pace. Later, she would come to suspect that he took the longer, more scenic route to their hotel, to allow her a better view of the city. She even stopped by a small stand where she procured a miniature canal house as a souvenir for Blaine (Dante put it on his card).

It was easy to believe, walking with him through the streets of Amsterdam, that this was something it wasn’t. In fact, Lennon indulged in that very something, allowed herself to imagine what it would be like to be with him. How it would feel to slot her fingers into the spaces between his, or to trace the outlines of the moth tattoos on the backs of his hands. She knew, of course, that it wasn’t real, but in the moment, it almost felt like it.

They spent some hours exploring the city before finally checking into a small inn by a narrow stretch of the canal. The suite was on the third floor. It had two bedrooms and a small living room, with a balcony that overlooked the canal. It was the sort of hotel with chocolates on the pillows, the towels folded into the shapes of swans.

Upon entering, Dante stepped out onto the balcony to take a call, while Lennon washed up in the bathroom. It was strange, but despite the fact that the time she’d spent in the elevator had been relatively brief she felt no less tired than she would have after the seven-hour flight it would’ve taken for them to travel there otherwise.

When she emerged from the bathroom—hair wet, in a cloud of steam, but fully dressed—it was to Dante sitting on the couch in front of the TV, his phone in his hand, forearms braced on his kneecaps, head hung heavy. He looked up at her and she thought she saw something—a flicker of surprise, held in his eyes like the reflection of a flame—before it died into his usual stoicism.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

“Fine, just family stuff.” He pressed to his feet, slipped his phone into his back pocket. “I’m going out for a few hours.”

“A few hours? What am I supposed to do, sit here and watch TV?”

“There’s a pool downstairs, and if you want you can take a walk. Just be careful—”

“I didn’t bring a swimsuit, and we already took a walk. I want to go with you.”

“Lennon—”

“You brought me here so I could learn something, right? Tell me, what am I supposed to learn sitting around in a hotel room all night twiddling my thumbs while I wait for you to return from hell knows where?”

“Patience would be a start.”

Lennon rolled her eyes. “I’m going with you.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“You should have thought about that before you invited me.”

To Lennon’s immense satisfaction, Dante looked rather pissed. She knew then that she’d won this battle of wills. “Fine. We leave in five minutes.”