The next evening, Lennon went to Dante’s office, only to find it empty.

“I’m afraid Dr. Lowe isn’t in right now,” the secretary said when Lennon inquired about his whereabouts. He was the same peculiar man who’d delivered their sandwiches, months ago, during her first meeting with Dante. Looking at him, Lennon realized she couldn’t guess his age. He might’ve been sixteen, or he might’ve been fifty-six. So many of his features contradicted themselves—the lines that bracketed his mouth contrasting with the baby-smooth alabaster of his skin; his eyes, large and blue, seeming at once to hold all of the innocence of a child and the gravity of an old man. “Would you like to leave a message with me?”

“No need,” said Lennon. “I’ll come back.”

She was turning to leave when she spotted Nadine by the door. Lennon was surprised to see her. She’d assumed that she’d left campus for Thanksgiving like the majority of those at Drayton did.

“Are you looking for Professor Lowe?” she asked.

“Yeah, actually. Have you seen him?”

“Every day,” said Nadine. “He spends what seems like half his nights in the chapel and most of his mornings. He’s probably there now.”

Lennon wasn’t even aware that the campus had its own chapel. She’d known there was a chaplain, but only because Nadine spoke so highly of her. Apparently, she was slated to become the woman’s apprentice—all but securing the position during the early weeks of her first semester at Drayton. But Lennon had always assumed the chaplain occupied a room in Irvine, like the ones you’d find in an airport or a hospital.

“I’ll walk you there,” said Nadine, clutching her books close to her chest.

Lennon found the offer strange. She liked Nadine well enough, but she wouldn’t have called them friends. And the distance between them—which wasn’t small to begin with—had only widened since Lennon had been inducted into Logos and Nadine had not. “I don’t want to trouble you.”

“I don’t mind,” said Nadine, starting to walk. “Follow me.”

For a long time, they walked without speaking, Lennon staring at her feet and Nadine humming something that sounded like a hymn. They were halfway across campus when Nadine finally broke the silence. “I saw Claude this morning.”

“You were at the infirmary?”

Nadine nodded. “I go to pray with patients once a week. Claude included.”

“And how did that go?”

Nadine flashed a smile. “About as well as you’d expect. He’s the most deeply sacrilegious southerner I think I’ve ever met.”

Lennon laughed. “He’s something else. I’m worried about him.”

“Me too,” said Nadine. “Is it true what they’re saying? About Benedict?”

“Depends. What are they saying?”

“That he was murdered. In cold blood.”

“I don’t know.”

“You were the person who found him, right?”

Lennon nodded, wishing they could talk about something, anything, else. She was relieved when she spotted the chapel, the building half swallowed by a grove of blooming magnolia trees and live oaks so large their lower branches rested in the dirt. Here the well-tended lawn of Drayton Square gave way to waist-high grass that moved in the wind. It was so overgrown it looked almost intentionally concealed.

“I’ll leave you to it,” said Nadine.

Lennon nodded and made for the doors.

“Lennon?”

She turned. “Yes?”

“I slept with him.”

Lennon faltered. “Who?”

“Ian.”

“Oh.”

“I—I just thought I should let you know.”

Lennon waited for some feeling—jealousy or possessiveness, insecurity—but there was nothing to that end. Ian wasn’t hers, and she’d never wanted him to be. But she was troubled by this, for an entirely different reason. “I thought you were going to be a nun?”

“So did I,” said Nadine, and her mouth wavered with the effort of holding back tears. “You know, I used to think that God’s greatest gift was His love for us. But I’m not so sure anymore. I think that maybe His greatest gift to us is free will. The ability to choose who and what we are. But if that’s true, then…is it possible that what we do here is evil? Innately?” She looked down at her feet, as if embarrassed.

“I…I don’t like to examine things through the lens of good and evil. It’s reductive.” Christ, Lennon thought to herself, she sounded just like Dante.

Nadine ducked her head, nodded. “I’ll see you around?”

“Sure,” said Lennon, and, a little shaken, she turned to enter the chapel. It was dimly lit, and the air smelled strongly of incense. On a pew in the shadow of the altar sat Dante, legs braced apart, eyes on the cross pinned to the back wall above the altar.

He turned his head when the door opened, stood when he saw her approaching.

“Where the hell have you been?” Lennon demanded, striding down the aisle, and she wasn’t exactly sure how it happened—Dante certainly didn’t initiate it—but before she had the chance to stop herself, she pulled him into a tight and fast hug. After a half beat, they parted, Lennon feeling the strange and sudden need to cry. She swallowed hard. “I was worried.”

Dante pulled away first, motioned for her to sit beside him on the pew.

“Do you think it was a suicide?” she asked.

“That’s what it looked like,” said Dante.

“Claude isn’t taking it well. I thought he’d get better with time…but it seems like he’s only getting worse.”

To this, Dante said nothing at all. But there was something peculiar in his expression. A kind of conflict that put a crease between his eyebrows and pulled at the muscles along his jaw. “Let’s light candles. One for Claude and one for Ben.”

It took Lennon by surprise. She’d never thought of him as sentimental in that way. “What’s a candle going to do?”

“We’re in a chapel,” Dante reminded her, a gentle scolding. “Have some respect.”

He stood and went to a nearby table that was covered in melted candles. Strangely, there were no matches, so Dante fished a cigarette lighter from his back pocket and lit two candles up himself. One for Claude and one for Benedict, and then a third.

“Who’s that one for?”

“One of the rats died,” he said. “Ian’s. I found it chewing off its own leg. He was gone a few hours later.”

“Ian must’ve pushed it too hard.”

“No, it’s my fault. I should’ve intervened. But to be honest, we lose a few with every crop of first years. I always try to avoid the inevitable and then I feel like shit when I don’t. You were right to be worried at the beginning of this semester. They do suffer.” Dante delivered this last bit with his eyes on the candles, as if he was too ashamed to look at her when he said it.

“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth to begin with?”

“Because I thought you’d quit if you knew, and I believed—still believe, even more than I did before—that you have too much potential to waste.”

This was perhaps the highest praise that Lennon had ever received from Dante. She’d expected to feel proud, but all that welled up in response was the stern conviction that he was somehow mistaken. That she needed to do better, be more, push harder.

“The gate to Benedict’s house is down,” she said, diverting the conversation. “No one’s been able to get back there since the day we found him dead.”

“Eileen shut it down,” said Dante. “It would be dangerous otherwise. Anyone could get into the house when it’s unguarded and come here to Drayton. When we install a new faculty member at the house, it’ll open again.”

“I thought Claude would inherit the position.”

“Is he currently fit to do that?”

“Not now, but…he’s grieving. He’ll get better.”

Now Dante looked down at her. “Will he?”

“Well…yes. I mean, I hope so.”

Dante let it go, but in silence his point was made. The conclusion was obvious: Claude was unfit for the role he was supposed to inherit as Benedict’s apprentice. He would be let go.

“Claude said something strange to me. I need to know if it’s true.”

“Ask your question.”

“Did you threaten Benedict’s life when you went to speak with him, that day after—”

“After he abused you? It’s okay to put a word to what it was. You won’t combust if you say it.”

Lennon wasn’t sure why she was so reluctant to admit what she knew was the truth. Was it because it made her feel weak? Or was she simply sanctifying Benedict out of pity now that he was dead? “He was trying to provoke me. He warned me that there would be pain.”

Dante appeared, for a moment, elsewhere. It was like the opposite of what happened when his aberration surfaced all those weeks ago, during her first night on campus. If that was a personality stepping forward, this was a stepping back. In the absence of himself, his face took on a softer quality. It made him look younger and somehow more familiar. “Claude was correct. I told Benedict I would kill him if he hurt you again. He was violent with you and—acting in my capacity as your advisor—I responded in turn.”

“Claude thinks you killed him.”

“I can understand that, given what he might’ve heard.”

The candles, stubby to begin with, were burning dangerously low now, the wicks threatening to extinguish themselves in the melted puddles of wax.

“I didn’t kill Benedict,” he said, “if that’s where this is going.”

And with that he walked back to the pews and sat down. When he was deep in thought, he had a way of pressing his palms together, lining up his fingers. He did this now, staring at the ground.

Lennon sat beside him. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer that question, but she could feel his gaze on her mouth as she spoke.

Dante had taught her how to infiltrate the minds of rats and men alike, and Lennon had learned dutifully under his careful instruction. But despite her skill, the inner workings of his mind had remained a mystery to her. She’d never been privy to his thoughts or succeeded in her efforts to decode them. Not until this moment, as she watched him want her, for the first time. His desires, previously hidden from her, now took shape in what little space there was between them.

Lennon became aware of a heat between her thighs, and between them also, a charged quality on the air like cracking static. All of the heat trapped within her body went straight to her head, and there it became a thought. That thought was that she wanted to kiss him, or taste him, more precisely. So she shifted a little closer, narrowing that slit of charged air between them, angling her head, her lips parted.

She closed her eyes and was surprised when their brows met, instead of their lips. Dante was angling his head down, so that his mouth was a little lower than hers. When he spoke, she could feel the brush of his lips at her chin. “I’m sorry. We can’t.”

He drew away and left the chapel.