Lennon walked, by the force of Alec’s will, to Dante’s office. The hold of her persuasion professor slackened only when the door snapped shut behind her. Weak in the knees, Lennon stumbled forward and caught herself, sloppily, on a nearby bookshelf, clearing half of its contents with the violence of her near fall. A set of brass bookends, a picture frame, and a tin of cigars clattered to the floor.

“I’m going to let you start,” said Dante from behind his desk.

Lennon, stepping tersely over the mess she’d made, recovered herself enough to make her way to the empty seat in front of Dante. “Ian is a dick.”

“And you were sloppy.”

To this charge, Lennon—slumped low in her seat—said nothing. She pushed at a molar with the tip of her tongue. It was loose, so she opened her mouth wide and pried it free. It looked small and jewel-like in the flat of her palm, a malformed pearl slick with blood and spit.

Dante got up and went to the cocktail cart beside the fireplace. He poured her a glass of something dark and set it down on the desk in front of her. “Rinse.”

Lennon didn’t touch it. She dropped the tooth into the drink with a small splash. It sank down to the bottom of the tumbler, a few tendrils of blood ribboning from its root.

“How did it start?” Dante asked.

Lennon wiped blood from the corner of her mouth. “You want a blow-by-blow?”

“No,” he said, looking bored. “I want to know how and why it started.”

“He called me a whore and I hit him,” said Lennon, and she realized this was the only part of her fight with Ian that she really cared about. “When he said it, it felt so…pointed, I guess? He could’ve called me almost anything else and I wouldn’t have cared.”

“But you did care about that one word, specifically. Why?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does if it provokes you to violence.”

Lennon narrowed her eyes. “Look, am I in trouble?”

“Not with me,” said Dante.

“Then why can’t we just let it go? We fought; it’s over—”

“But the memory isn’t. And come morning everyone will be discussing the blow that you threw to begin the fight. You made him look weak, and now he has a target on his back that can only be removed by putting you firmly in your place. Which is exactly what he’ll attempt to do before the semester’s end. That’s why you need to be ready. And not just for him, but for everyone who is beginning to grasp what I’ve known since the day we first met.”

“And what is that?”

“You’re dangerous.”

Dante was one of many men who’d said this to her. The first time she’d heard it, she was thirteen, and walking home from school. A man had winked at her and said just that—“Well, aren’t you dangerous”—and men had been saying that to her ever since. When they said dangerous, Lennon knew they meant she was jailbait, a guilty pleasure, a potential homewrecker, someone who could derail their life. But Dante said it differently, without smugness or innuendo. When he called her dangerous, it was stated like a simple fact. Her eyes were hazel. Her hair was curly. And she was dangerous. It was as simple as that, and yet Lennon found that she liked the way he said it, so much so that she almost wanted to ask him to say it again, just so she could watch his lips move around the words.

Dante didn’t make her call any elevators that evening. Per his instructions, she left his office, with the tooth in the cup of brandy, and went straight to the infirmary. A talented persuasionist, Dr. Nave was able to refit the roots of the tooth and constrict her gums tightly around it, both stopping the bleeding and holding the tooth roughly in place. It would’ve been almost agonizing, but he numbed her mind to the pain of the procedure, kept her comfortable.

“Ice it and stick to soft foods for the next few days,” he said, sounding exasperated. She could tell he’d seen more of her than he would’ve liked between her overdose months before and now this.

Upon being discharged, Lennon stepped out of the infirmary and collided almost immediately with Blaine. On that night, she wore a cocktail dress, riding up high. Her makeup was smeared and running, like she’d had a good cry and tried to clean herself up with a wad of toilet paper but had given up halfway through.

“What the hell happened to your face?” said Blaine. “Are you okay?”

“Ian and I fought. With fists. What about you?”

Blaine blinked rapidly, picked a crusty bit of mascara from the inner corner of her eye, and flicked it away. “Boy trouble.”

It was as close as she’d come to confirming Lennon’s long suspicion that she was conducting a secret affair with someone that she couldn’t, or didn’t want to, claim. More than once, Lennon had considered the possibility that she was involved with one of her professors. A married one, maybe. But if that was the case, she wondered why Blaine had never confided in her. Surely she knew her secret would be safe. After all, Lennon had divulged to her in detail about her not-relationship with Dante, had even told her about their near kiss. And Blaine had nodded and listened and comforted her through it all, while never breathing a word about her own romantic situation.

“Do you want to go somewhere?” Lennon asked as they stepped outside. She was surprised by the urgency behind her own words. She’d meant to be casual, but it landed more like a need than a want. As if she were asking Blaine to jump her car or give her a last-minute ride to the airport.

“That depends,” said Blaine. “Where do you want to go?”

“Down to River Street, maybe?”

As a rule, students of Drayton were not permitted to go beyond the bounds of the school. But the members of Logos had special privileges. Their elevator could take them to a number of locations, including several within Savannah’s historic downtown. Of course, Lennon could’ve called her own elevator. But she was drained after her spar with Ian. Tonight she craved the ease of a quick trip and a drink strong enough to ease her worries, take the edge off the pain of her throbbing tooth.

“You want to get into trouble,” said Blaine, looking equal parts delighted and aghast. “What? Fighting with Ian wasn’t enough?”

Lennon shrugged. “I’d rather be drunk than sober tonight.”

“We can get drunk on campus.”

“Sure we can,” said Lennon. “But it won’t be half as fun.”

They decided to go to one of those tourist-trap bars on the riverfront that served oversized daiquiris in light-up cups. Despite the fact that it was freezing outside, Blaine persuaded a man to buy her some god-awful tequila slushy that stained her mouth a monstrous blue, and then followed that up with several rounds of shots, goading Lennon to drink along with her. Which she did, with some reluctance. She wanted to get a little drunk, not totally wasted, but she downed two shots anyway.

“Attagirl,” said Blaine, and she stamped a fat, wet kiss to the apple of Lennon’s cheek.

Sometimes, when she was around Blaine, Lennon got the distinct impression that they were playing at closeness. Pretending to be honest with each other, to be the sort of confidant that they needed in order to survive the constant stress and bewilderment that was their time at Drayton. But the truth was that Lennon knew very little about Blaine, and not for lack of trying. Whenever she attempted closeness—real closeness—Blaine held her just apart. She dodged questions artfully, wriggled her way out of vulnerability. With Blaine, Lennon never quite knew what she would get. It was part of her charm, and Blaine knew it.

“No one does coke anymore,” said Blaine, looking suddenly disappointed and very sad. “My ex-husband always got the best coke. That was one thing he was good for. He could be in a new city for less than an hour and he’d find the right dealer, at the right price. It was a real talent. Maybe his only talent.”

“Wait, you were married?” Lennon knew that Blaine was four years older than her, but it still took her by surprise that she’d ever been married. The construct seemed to suit her even less than it did Lennon. “To who?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, waving her off. “I don’t like him half as much as I like you. In fact, I think I almost love you. I definitely almost like you in a way that I shouldn’t.”

Lennon blushed despite herself. She’d never had feelings like that for Blaine, but you couldn’t listen to someone as attractive as she was say something like that without getting at least a little hot under the collar.

“What’s stopping you?” said Lennon. “From liking me in a way that you shouldn’t?”

“We’re too similar,” said Blaine. “If we ever got together, it would be more out of comfort and narcissism than any real attraction. Which is not to say you’re unattractive, because you’re not, of course—”

“In what way are we similar?” said Lennon, cutting her off. Blaine had a way of ranting when she was drunk, and she was extremely drunk tonight.

Blaine considered this question for a long time in silence before she deigned to answer it. “You and I, we like to play with people, don’t we? But we don’t like being played with.”

Blaine stared down into her shot glass, looking sad suddenly. It was Lennon who’d wanted to go out, but Blaine was outdrinking her more than three times over, and she looked all the worse for it. Maybe it had been a mistake to take her out when she’d clearly been in a bad way. Lennon had thought the drinks and the noise might cheer her up, but if anything, she looked worse, not better.

“I lied to you about how I came to Drayton,” said Blaine, in a soft voice. “I mean, not really. It was less a lie than a half-truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Before I came to Drayton, things with me and my ex-husband were sort of…volatile.” Blaine ran her index finger around the rim of the shot glass until it whistled. She smiled. “He used to hit me. But the night I left for Drayton—the night I got the call—I finally hit him back. Just once…on the back of the head. With a brick.”

Lennon tried to mask her shock.

“He twitched on the floor for a little while. I’ve never seen anyone move like that. And then the blood, under his head, it just opened up, and this is weird, but do you know those old cartoons—like Tom & Jerry, Looney Tunes stuff—where a hole opens up in the floor? Well, that’s what his blood looked like against the tile. It was so dark and the puddle was so crisp it looked almost fake, and I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it, you know? I couldn’t get myself to believe what I’d done.”

Lennon swallowed dry.

“Anyway. I just stood there in a daze, watching him bleed out. I was just frozen there. I didn’t do anything.”

“It sounds like he had it coming.”

Blaine only shrugged. “The call from Drayton snapped me out of it. I remember stepping over him to answer it. I put my cell to my ear, and I heard my husband’s voice over the line, which didn’t make any sense because my husband was lying unconscious at my feet, bleeding out. I knew then that either what the operator was saying was true, or I was really going insane. Something I’d suspected for some time, to be honest. When they asked me to go for an interview, I said yes. I left my husband on the floor, packed half my stuff, and I just, I don’t know, I just went. They said if I passed the interview and entry exam, everything would be okay. And I did, and it has been.”

“What happened to your ex?”

“Oh, he’s alive. I think he lives in a care facility now. Somewhere. So it all worked out. I think that brick might’ve saved him from drinking himself into an early grave.” She said this like the brick just up and hit him itself, like the situation had no affiliation with her.

Lennon reached across the sticky bartop to squeeze her hand. “I’m glad you told me.”

“Why?” Blaine asked, looking up at her. “So you know what you’re dealing with?”

“So I know you,” said Lennon. “I’m not afraid. And I don’t judge you. I just…I just want to understand where you’re coming from, you know? And tonight, I feel like I do.”

“Do you?” Lennon could tell that Blaine took this as an insult. She hated being known, pinned down. “If that’s true—if you really understand me—tell me what I’m thinking right now. If you get it wrong, drink.” Blaine pushed another shot toward her.

“Are you inviting me to enter your mind?”

“Only if you can,” said Blaine. “But if you know me so well, you shouldn’t have to.”

Lennon squared her shoulders, tried to sober up enough to get a proper read on her. She began with the features of her face. Her lips were wet, and her breath smelled of malt and sugar. Her eyes were glossy, her pupils swollen fat so that they were barely limned by the blue of her irises. There was an urgency in them—Lennon was inclined to call it desperation—this desire to be seen and understood without having to say anything at all. After that, it became easy to sift through her thoughts, find the one that she wanted Lennon to see. But she was still surprised by what she found.

“You want me to run,” said Lennon.

Blaine’s expression fractured as soon as the words left her mouth.

Lennon often found that when she went out, there was a moment when the night went south, when whatever horrible outcome had been set into motion and the evening was doomed to end with her vomiting all over a curb or waking up beside someone who was about three times uglier than she’d thought he was when she was drunk.

This was that moment.

“I need to sober up,” said Blaine, and she appeared to go boneless, sliding off her stool. “Let’s take a walk.”

The two of them stepped out into the biting cold. There was a sharp wind blowing west off the river, tossing the greenish water into frothy whitecaps. Underfoot, the cobblestones were slick with slush and ice. It was one of the coldest nights Savannah had seen in some time, and Lennon’s knit sweater felt pitifully thin. She shoved her cold-stiff hands into her pockets, rounded her shoulders against the wind.

“So did I guess right?” she asked, shivering.

“More or less,” said Blaine, not looking at her. But it wasn’t that Blaine was avoiding Lennon’s eyes; it was as if she was seeing another, second Lennon, somewhere down on the ground among the cobblestones. “What I really wanted to know was if you’d run away with me tonight, if I wanted to go. Would you leave Drayton behind?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

Blaine didn’t answer.

Lennon took her by the hand. Her fingers were ice. “Why, Blaine?”

“Forget it,” she said, stealing her hand away. “We should be getting back anyway. It’s late.”

They walked back to the narrow alley that housed the Drayton gate. As they did, two drunk men began to tail them. They were subtle at first, but when Lennon and Blaine turned down the alley, they did too.

“Let’s hurry up,” said Lennon, and turned to face the rotting wooden door that concealed the elevator. But when Lennon drew it open, there was nothing behind it but a brick wall slimed with algae.

The gate that was supposed to take them back to Drayton was gone.

Blaine—eyes alight with panic—slammed the door shut and opened it again.

Still no elevator.

“What the hell?” she said in a thick whisper, her breath a white bloom of steam on the air.

The men at the mouth of the alley came closer, calling after them, waving. Lennon turned to face them.

“Whatever you want, we’re not interested,” she said, but the quiver in her voice undermined any authority she tried to channel with those words.

“We just want to talk a little,” said one of the men, leering. He held a cup of beer, and when he gestured at Lennon some of it sloshed over the rim and splattered the sidewalk. “You don’t like to talk?”

He was close enough now that Lennon could smell him, all beer and musky cologne. They were both relatively well-dressed—leather shoes, expensive watches flashing on their thick wrists. They looked like stragglers from a bachelor party. In their wake, Lennon felt like a small mouse, held between two cupped hands large enough to crush her. It was the same feeling she’d had that very night while sparring with Ian as he’d violated her mind and humiliated her in front of her peers. The same feeling when he’d told her to go belly-up, the night they’d been called to Logos.

“Look, we’re just trying to get home,” said Lennon, adrenaline spiking through her. Blaine kept fiddling with the door.

“There’s something wrong with the gate,” she said, panicking less because of the threat of the men, Lennon realized, and more because she couldn’t get back to Drayton. Here, in the real world, they were stranded until someone thought to look for them. But if she and Blaine couldn’t get into Drayton, there was a good chance that those inside of Drayton wouldn’t be able to get out either. Everyone would be trapped on campus, which to Lennon seemed preferable to being trapped outside of it, removed from the only world she’d ever wanted to be a part of.

“You two shouldn’t be out here alone,” said one of the men. They were imposing and tall enough to blot out the light of the streetlamp at the alley’s end. “Savannah’s not a safe city anymore.”

“Leave us the fuck alone,” Lennon snapped.

And one of the men, the taller and drunker of the two, screwed his face into a boyish frown. “You don’t have to be so aggressive about it. We just wanted to invite you out for a drink. Can a man invite two ladies out on a Friday night, or is that not allowed anymore—”

Lennon strangled him. There was no other way to say it. She induced a reaction that was not unlike anaphylaxis, a cruel application of persuasion that Lennon had picked up in Dante’s class. One moment the man was on his feet, the next he was doubled over and turning red, with a series of desperate, raw gasps. The artery running up the side of his neck fattened to the point of bursting. He opened his mouth, and Lennon saw that his tongue had swollen to the size of a crab apple, lodging itself so firmly against the roof of his mouth there was no way for air to pass through.

He dropped to his knees, his cup falling through his hand, beer splattering all over Lennon as he fell. His friend dropped beside him, smacking him on the back frantically as he writhed and gasped for air, scrabbling helplessly at the cobblestones.

Lennon stepped past both of them, shooed Blaine away from the fallen gate, and attempted to call one of her own. But when she extended her mind to Drayton, there was nothing on the other side. As if the school itself didn’t exist.

Panic washed through her and then rage after it. She gave the door a vicious kick, and the wood broke and splintered. “Goddamnit.”

“Lennon,” said Blaine, putting a hand on her arm. “I think you’re killing him.”

Lennon turned to see the man unconscious, his face gone blue, froth collecting at the corners of his open mouth. His friend was on the ground beside him, fumbling with his phone.

“Fuck,” said Lennon, and she stepped right over him, snatched the phone from his hand, tossed it to the ground, and stomped on it, shattering the screen. She cut the choking man loose. There was a long silence—and for a moment Lennon thought she might’ve actually done it, that she may actually have killed someone—but then he stirred to life with a juddering breath.

“He’ll be fine,” said Lennon to the other man, who burst into great blubbering sobs of relief. “And you’re going to forget this ever happened.” She made this true as she said it, snatching every memory of what had occurred in the alley, putting him to sleep beside the dumpster, curled fetal against his friend so the two of them would be warm enough to sleep through the night without any danger of freezing.

“Look,” said Blaine, and she pointed to the door. The birdcage elevator had appeared behind it, the bands and whorls of iron forming its door.

Lennon drew it open and the two of them stepped into the cabin.