Lennon and Blaine stepped off the elevator and back into Logos to find the house empty, the lights on despite the late hour, all the doors along the hall flung open. A cold breeze gusted in through the front door. Lennon and Blaine exchanged a horrified look and wordlessly raced down the stairs and out of the house to find the campus in total chaos. People stood outside their dorms bleary-eyed and wrapped in blankets, huddled close together to keep warm. The church bells were tolling.

“What the hell is going on?” Blaine asked, looking around in a daze.

“I don’t know,” said Lennon, wondering if there had been an ill-timed fire drill or perhaps a false alarm. But if that was the case, she had no idea why every building on campus seemed affected. Lennon also noticed that a few of those buildings had broken windows, and a couple of the magnolias around campus, and one of the live oaks, had fallen.

The two walked until they spotted the bulk of the first years, standing in the lawn outside of Ethos College. There was Ian, shirtless despite the cold, his arm slung around Nadine, who appeared to be wearing his shirt as a dress. Blaine approached, but Lennon, feeling uneasy after the fight with Ian, trailed after her with some reluctance. She was relieved when Nadine ducked out from under Ian’s arm and met them halfway, as if making a conscious effort to keep Lennon and Ian apart.

“What happened?” Blaine asked her.

Nadine half turned to face Blaine so that it was obvious she was only talking to her when she said, “The gates malfunctioned and there was some sort of quake—you didn’t feel it? The whole campus was shaking.”

“We were out,” said Blaine. Her expression was flat and blank, almost like she was wearing a papier-mâché cast of her own face. She half turned to face the trees, as if looking for something specific, and very nearly lost her balance.

Lennon reached out to steady her. “What do you mean they malfunctioned?”

Nadine very pointedly didn’t look at Lennon. She crossed her narrow arms tight over her chest, stomped in place to pump blood into her feet. She was only wearing socks, Lennon realized. “I don’t know. The ground started shaking and the church bells started ringing and we all came outside because we thought there might be an earthquake. Windows started breaking and it was so loud it woke everyone up and then the RAs came in and alerted everyone that we needed to evacuate to the center of the square. When we asked what was going on they said the gates were failing or something? That didn’t explain the shaking, though.”

“What did they mean when they said the gates were failing?” Lennon asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’d barely made it out to the square when there was this feeling of…dropping or moving. It brought everyone to their knees. A couple people even got so dizzy they threw up.”

“How long did it last?” Blaine asked, and she looked on the verge of tears.

“Not long,” said Nadine, and she began to rub slow circles into Blaine’s back. “It was nothing, really—everyone’s fine. No one got hurt, and only a few buildings have broken windows. I did hear that a downed tree might’ve clipped the chapel. But no one was hurt, and I think things are stabilized now, so—”

“Why did the gates start to fail?” Lennon asked.

“No one knows,” said Nadine with a shrug. “And the faculty aren’t answering any questions.” She nodded a few yards away. A small crowd of professors cut down the sidewalk, striding from their townhouses and moving across the campus, in the same direction that Blaine was staring. Dante and Eileen led the pack, their heads close together, talking in a rapid-fire exchange of whispers. They didn’t look at Lennon, but the rest of the professors did, their gazes snaring on her briefly as they passed by. Watching them go, Lennon realized they were heading toward the chancellor’s mansion, which took the form of a large plantation house on the far edge of the campus.

Lennon took off after the professors, running a little to catch up, and was winded by the time she matched Dante’s long strides.

“Hey,” she said, catching him by the arm. “What’s going on?”

“Not now, Lennon.”

“What happened to the gates?”

Dante stopped then. Eileen cut a glare over her shoulder that could’ve curdled milk but kept going with the rest of the faculty close at her heels, a few professors jockeying for the place by her side that Dante had abandoned.

“I don’t have time for this tonight, all right?” he said. “Go back and wait with your classmates.”

“Did the gates go down?” Lennon asked again. “And if so, is there any way I could—”

“No,” he said, the scrape of a whisper, unusually harsh. “You stay clear of this.”

“What do you mean stay—”

He turned and left before she could finish the question, catching up with the others in just a few long strides. Eileen immediately caught him by the arm and resumed their conversation. Frustrated, Lennon turned and walked back to her peers.

“What was that about?” Nadine asked, and it was clear she wasn’t the only one wondering. At least a dozen of her classmates were looking on, arms folded tight across their chests, murmuring among themselves.

“Nothing,” said Lennon, edgy, defensive though she didn’t know why—something about all those eyes on her then, and not in a good way. A couple of people—most of them from Ian’s clique—even cut her dirty looks and whispered behind cupped hands as if afraid she’d read their lips.

“It didn’t look like nothing,” said Nadine, and Lennon wondered in passing when she’d become such a bitch, or if she was just pretending to be one in defense of Ian. As if he needed any real defending.

“I was just asking about the gates,” said Lennon. “But he wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Hm,” said Nadine, lower lip ejected, slightly, beyond the upper. “You two really are close, aren’t you?”

“I mean, we have to be. He’s my advisor.”

“But it’s not just that. Is it true you vacationed with him?”

“It wasn’t a vacation,” said Lennon. She could feel her cheeks going red, and not from the cold. “It was a work thing—”

“A work thing?” Nadine raised an eyebrow. “What kind of work thing?”

“Why do you care so much?” Blaine asked, sobering up enough to defend her. “Are people asking?”

Nadine only shrugged and retreated back toward Ian, who was watching. He smiled at Lennon, his split lip tearing open a little wider as he did.