Lennon wakes in Dante’s office, and she can hear Emerson telling Dante what happened. Lennon was gone for 15 minutes while Sawyer tried to open the elevator himself. The students who witnessed the events were Emerson, Kieran, Sawyer, and Blaine. When Dante realizes that Lennon is awake, he tells Emerson to go deal with Eileen while he speaks with Lennon. Lennon tells Dante what she saw—the boy, and the frost on the ground. He tells her that it’s about to get ugly, meaning there will be a hearing to decide Lennon’s fate. He knows she’s confused, but he cannot explain more. He advises her to tell the truth about what she saw, but to omit the details about the frost and the boy. Lennon agrees.

At the hearing, Dante is late. Eileen questions Lennon about what she saw in front of Dr. Lund, Benedict, and Dr. Ethel Greene, the art professor. Lennon says she went in the elevator while intoxicated on mushrooms and saw only a different part of campus. Eileen pushes for expulsion, as Lennon summoned the elevator while she was intoxicated. Dante arrives and tells the group that Lennon is the first natural gatekeeper since Irvine. Lennon is confused, and Dante informs her that she, too, can persuade matter in the same way as Irvine. He tries to convince Eileen to allow him to train Lennon, but Eileen holds a vote for expulsion. Everyone, except for Dante and Benedict, votes to expel. Before the hearing finishes, the phone rings after Dante looks at it, and then the chancellor informs Eileen that Lennon will stay and study her gatekeeper powers under Benedict.

Dante and Lennon leave the hearing, and Lennon asks if he was the one who called the chancellor. Dante states that he was, and Lennon asks what would have happened if she was expelled. Dante says he would have taken her memories using persuasion. Lennon is horrified, but Dante says the power can be used for good. Lennon finally asks Dante about the strange incident on the night of convocation, when he fell and smiled at her strangely. He admits that persuasion has a cost, and sometimes a version of himself he does not like breaks the tether. He was tired that night, and the other version of himself took over. He doesn’t say more about it, and he tells Lennon to keep that a secret, along with what she saw in the elevator, if she wants to keep her memories.

Irvine himself crafted the elevator in Irvine Hall, and it can take people anywhere in the world. Lennon takes the elevator to Benedict’s house in Utah for their first lesson and meets Claude, his apprentice. Benedict then arrives and explains the apprentice system at Drayton, where a professor can select an exceptional student to be their successor. Someday, Claude will take over protecting Benedict’s house, which serves as one of the portals to Drayton. Dante is Eileen’s apprentice and will soon choose an apprentice of his own. Many thought that he would choose Emerson, but Lennon’s powers make her a potential apprentice choice.

Benedict explains Lennon’s powers. Some people possess special persuasion powers that allow them to create illusions that become reality. Dante, like John Drayton, can create powerful illusions, but they are not as powerful as Irvine and Lennon, who can bridge space. Irvine’s first gate appeared like a door, and when he first saw an elevator, the gates became elevators. The door and elevator serve as physical conceptualizations of the gates they open. Benedict tells Lennon she must learn to open the gates herself. She struggles to do so, and Benedict ends their lesson looking troubled.

The next day, Lennon sees Kieran in the dining hall. Kieran is a famous student, as he was a chemistry prodigy who attended Stanford until he was busted for operating a meth lab out of his mother’s apartment. The drugs he crafted led to several students overdosing. He was expelled, and his arrival at Drayton is murky, but he’s been a student for six years. Lennon approaches him, and Kieran offers her more of the drugs that helped her open the gate in exchange for a favor: He wants her to kill a rat named Antonio; Kieran gave the creature a soul after giving it drugs during his persuasion course. The rat was confiscated, and Kieran says he wants the rat killed because rats are not intelligent enough to live with the weight of a soul. Dante hates Kieran and would not allow him close enough to the rat to kill it, and Kieran thinks that if Dante knew the rat was sentient, he’d keep it for experiments. He tells Lennon he’ll know when she’s killed the rat. Lennon thinks about the fact that she’s never killed anything before—once, when she was young, she even stopped another child from pouring boiling water on an ant hill.

After persuasion class, Lennon sneaks behind Dante as he leaves class to go to the building that houses the labs. She enters a room behind him and is shocked by the number of rats in cages. She looks until she finds an unusually large rat with intelligent eyes, which she thinks is Antonio. She takes the cage, but before she can leave, Dante calls to her, revealing he knew she was following him. He asks why she’s taking Kieran’s rat, and she says the rat is suffering. Dante tells her that he wouldn’t let a creature suffer and that Kieran is guilty about the harm he caused in his life. The rat is fine, and Dante questions Lennon about why she is doing Kieran a favor. She tells Dante she wants more psychedelics to help open a gate. Dante warns her that addiction is a possibility; he says she even risks opening her mind in a way she cannot close or severing her psychic tether to her persuasive powers. Dante doesn’t stop her from taking the rat, though, explaining that she tends to wound herself and must learn to stop doing that.

Lennon goes to Kieran’s room and explains that the rat is not suffering, and Kieran is instead feeling guilt. She encourages Kieran to try to forgive himself and leaves Antonio with him. Kieran gives her the drugs and tells her that if she needs anything else, he’s there as an associate, which Lennon realizes means as a friend. He advises her to take the drugs with four other people around—two to restrain her, one to intervene psychically, and one to distract anyone who might overhear.

Lennon gathers Ian, Blaine, Nadine, and Sawyer. Blaine and Nadine agree to help, Sawyer is conflicted, and Ian is angry that Lennon would risk her life by taking drugs from Kieran. Lennon tells him that he can either help or leave, and he leaves. Nadine goes after him to make sure he doesn’t tell anyone what’s happening. Lennon takes the drugs, and as she becomes intoxicated, she feels the earth alive beneath her; she thinks there is something alive beneath the building. She runs outside and feels the earth breathing under her. She falls unconscious.

After three days, Lennon wakes after being unconscious from her nearly fatal overdose. Dante is sitting beside her bed. She discovers that Blaine saved her life with CPR. Dante visits her throughout her stay in the infirmary, and when Lennon asks him about what she felt when she was intoxicated, he hypothesizes that she felt something manipulatable in the earth when she thought the ground was breathing. He tells her that she can use it to make a gate when she is ready.

When Lennon gets out of the infirmary, she barely sees Blaine. When she returns to their room one night, she confronts Blaine about where she’s been. Blaine confesses she’s been spending time with Kieran and Emerson and says she is being courted by Logos. Blaine confesses to feeling lonely at Drayton, which surprises Lennon since Blaine is very popular. In the bathroom, Lennon looks in the mirror and at first thinks she is seeing an aberration of her reflection, then Blaine, and then she falls down unconscious.

Lennon wakes standing shoulder to shoulder with her classmates (including Nadine, Sawyer, Ian, and Blaine) in a room with an oak table, at which Emerson, Kieran, Adan, Yuni, and three others are seated. They welcome the students and warn them that this experience will be difficult and potentially traumatic. Emerson introduces the challenge: All students must play the knife game, spreading their hands out on the table and rhythmically stabbing in between each of their fingers. The students must compete against each other, trying to persuade the other to make a mistake.

First, a student named Felix faces Blaine. They each chug a cup of absinthe before starting. Blaine wins, making Felix slightly cut his hand, and she is welcomed to Logos. Nadine faces Sawyer, and Sawyer wins, with Nadine nicking one of her fingers. Finally, Ian and Lennon face off. Lennon knows Ian thinks she’s weak but won’t push her too hard. Lennon waits, letting Ian think he’s winning before psychically pushing him. Ian slips and puts the knife directly through his palm and into the table. He screams as Lennon watches in horror. No one moves until Emerson welcomes Lennon to Logos.

After the bloody initiation, Lennon finds her room in Logos House. It’s a single room instead of the shared room she had before, and the bathroom is only shared with one other resident instead of being completely communal. Lennon asks Kieran about Ian, and she discovers he needed surgery.

The new Logos residents spend the day cleaning the house as a hazing ritual. Afterward, Lennon goes into the hallway and finds Emerson exiting an elevator. Emerson explains it is the first elevator Irvine made. Lennon takes the elevator to Benedict’s house and tells him that she still cannot summon gates at will. Benedict is frustrated, and he instructs Lennon to enter her safehold in her mind through meditation; meanwhile, Benedict will attempt to break down her defenses and force her to put her hand in the fireplace. Lennon goes to her safehold, which is her childhood bedroom. Benedict then launches a psychic assault against Lennon that puts her in excruciating pain as she struggles against it. Benedict controls her body, forcing Lennon to her knees and her hand into the fire. Lennon screams in agony as the skin of her knees bursts open and her hand burns. She manages to open an elevator and scrambles into it as Benedict screams her name, the door slamming shut behind her.

Lennon arrives back at Drayton and tries to limp back to Logos in the rain. She sees Dante, who asks if she’s okay. Lennon bursts into tears, and Dante scoops her into his arms and carries her back to Logos. He takes her into the bathroom and cleans the wounds on her knees. Lennon tells him what Benedict did, and Dante promises to talk to Benedict and take care of it. Dante then leaves Lennon with Blaine. Blaine takes Lennon to her room and comforts her until Claude arrives. Blaine unexpectedly has to leave, so Claude remains with Lennon. Claude accuses Lennon of being in a relationship with Dante, since Dante continues to pull strings for her. Lennon points out Claude’s own relationship with Benedict. Claude has a pessimistic outlook on student-teacher relationships, saying that he, too, was once a precocious student enamored by his older teacher. He apologizes for Benedict’s actions and notes that the people at Drayton aren’t “quite right” (174).

Lennon hears nothing from Benedict or Dante for a week after the incident. Dante cancels his persuasion classes, and Lennon hears only rumors about his whereabouts. He returns over a week later without explanation. In their first class back, the first years practice taking a memory from their rat and then putting it back. Most students struggle, but Lennon manages it, and Dante praises her. After class, he tells her that he will take over from Benedict as her teacher, and he says that she must immediately accompany him on a work trip. He gives her 20 minutes to pack.

As Lennon packs, Blaine questions her about her relationship with Dante. She says Ian is spreading rumors about Lennon sleeping with Sawyer and Dante, implying that they got into Logos dishonorably. Lennon gets defensive and questions where Blaine goes at night. Blaine doesn’t answer, and their conversation ends with Blaine requesting a souvenir from Lennon’s trip.

Lennon meets Dante, and they take an elevator to Amsterdam. In the elevator mirror, Lennon sees the aberration of her reflection again. Dante notices and tells her that people with strong powers of persuasion can see and recognize the darker version of themselves—their id—that lives inside them. Lennon wonders if the version of Dante she saw smiling strangely on the night of the convocation was his dark reflection. When they arrive in Amsterdam, they eat snacks and drink coffee, stopping to get Blaine a souvenir. They check into their hotel after a long walk around the city, which Lennon thinks Dante did for her benefit. At the hotel, Lennon showers. When she exits the bathroom, Dante tells her that he has an errand to run and instructs her to stay up. Lennon insists on going with him, and after some argument, Dante acquiesces.