Page 17 of With the Key in the Office
We crossed under the arch and trailed the blue light into the orchard. Bare branches sketched patterns against the sky. The apparition threaded between trees with purpose. Every third step matched my own cadence, which made something inside me want to plant my feet and refuse to give chase. I kept moving. Answers never arrived for the people who stopped first.
“Talk to me,” I called. “If you’re a joke, the joke’s tired. If you’re not, tell me what you want.”
The me glanced back again and then pulled farther ahead, as if my words had brushed the surface and found no purchase.Whatever this thing was, it might look like me, but it didn’t care about me.
A soft thud of paws pelted across the grass from the hedgerow to our right. A fox broke cover and sprinted toward the woods. The me-ghost startled at the movement and swerved.
We followed it past the old stone well and down the slope toward the tree line. The castle shrank behind us to a dark mass that watched and waited. A second later the figure sharpened and headed for the far side of the clearing. We ran hard, hoping to catch it.
Jessie tried a binding that laced the air with pale gold. The glamour slid through the space between two strands and vanished into the darkness. When we reached the next line of trees, only night stood in front of us. The blue had gone out.
We stood breathing hard while our hearts tried to slow down. Mist curled low around our ankles. The world in the clearing looked bare. No ghosts. No glow. Just us and the sound of our own lungs and the whisper of wind through the needles.
A muffled giggle popped from behind a clutch of saplings on our left, followed by a hissed hush and another laugh that didn’t belong this deep in the trees. We eased toward the sound. Three figures stepped into the moonlight with hands half raised. Alicia stood front and center, tiny and bright in a short jacket, blonde hair tucked behind one ear and a grin already trying to talk us out of being mad. Marcus Abernathy hovered at her shoulder with a flat disk cupped in his palm, proud and sheepish at the same time. Edith brought up the rear with a tote bag, avoiding our eye contact.
Jessie didn’t blink. “Alicia. Marcus. Edith,” she said sternly, an accusation in their names.
“Please don’t end our academic careers,” Edith said, words tumbling the way they always did. “We were testing a glamour for morale. But seeing the looks on your faces, I’ve realized that it was bad timing, worse judgment, and we’re full of regret.”
Yeah, the giggles really sounded like regret to me.
My ribs had already started to loosen, which made room for annoyance and the sting under it. “You used my face,” I said, keeping my tone even. “You sent it sprinting past students and teachers, then you pulled us into the woods. Do you get why that lands wrong?”
Alicia’s grin collapsed. “I do,” she said. “I figured it’d be a dash past the greenhouse and a laugh. I didn’t think you’d follow. That isn’t an excuse. I’m sorry.”
“Why my face?” I asked.
“Because everyone keeps talking about the ghost that looks like you,” Alicia said. “We thought we’d turn a rumor into a joke. We didn’t think about the part where jokes land on people.”
“Here’s what happens,” Jessie said, drawing her shoulders back and looking every bit the teacher. “You walk back with us and tell Mr. Vanderflit what you did. You apologize to Ms. Maple for any ward spikes you may have caused, then you help in the library for a week. No complaints.”
Edith nodded at once. “That’s fair.”
We headed out of the orchard in a slow, awkward line. The castle rose out of the dark. Under the arch by the east grounds, Drewand Ava appeared with the alert look of people who’d jogged across half the campus.
“Report,” Drew said, quick and low.
“Classmates with a glamour spell,” Jessie said, just a hint of anger in her voice. “No ghost, no shifter. We got their story, and they understand the gravity of their foolish actions.”
Ava took in Alicia’s flushed cheeks, Marcus’s empty hands, and Edith’s embarrassment. “You three are with us for a short debrief on how not to end up on a hunter’s docket,” she said. There was no heat in her tone, which somehow landed harder than a shout. “We’ll return you to Ms. Crayne after we speak with Beth.”
Alicia nodded fast enough to make her hair bounce. Marcus murmured he’d send his notes. Edith thanked Ava for not yelling, which nearly pulled a smile out of me, and I kept it in.
We handed them over and kept walking. Robbie moved closer without making a production of it. Jessie exhaled through her nose, which meant the teacher part of her had won the argument with the part that wanted to shout.
“I’m sorry,” she said under her breath. “That bugged me.”
“It did me too,” I said. “But you handled it well.”
When we reached my room, Tilly and Simon met us with their usual outrage and forgave us when dinner hit bowls. Robbie poured hot water into mugs and pushed one toward my hands while I got out tea bags. Jessie leaned against the dresser and let her head fall back for five seconds before resolve returned to her shoulders.
“We didn’t learn anything new about the key,” she said.
I wrapped my fingers around the mug and let the steam work on the last of the sting. “I wanted an easy answer,” I said. “A fake I could scold and forget.”
“Not this week,” Robbie said. “We need to just keep going.”
“Agreed,” Jessie said. “When this is over, I’m sleeping for a year.” She squeezed my shoulder and offered the cats a formal apology for the late dinner before she left.