Page 19 of With the Key in the Office

“We need to understand,” I said, working my thoughts out. “The charm. The night work. The quiet emails. All of it.”

“Yes,” Maple said, relief and nerves colliding in a rush. “Ask what you need but give me ten seconds first because the third glyph on the west endcap keeps drifting and if I don’t pin it now the net will slap someone’s curious hand tomorrow and I hate writing incident reports that say the shelves bit a student.”

She shifted her weight, still clutching the pendant. Her heel touched the chalk. The ring brightened as if pleased by the attention. Maple flinched and stepped backward into the inner circle. The pendant flared. A ripple of pressure rolled out from her chest in a quick wave that lifted hair and rattled the nearest covers. The push looked too much like an attack for my body to decide otherwise. Robbie moved first. He put himself between me and the wave before I could scold him. Jaylyn’s hand flew toward her wand and stopped a breath from the grip.

Maple went pale. “No,” she blurted, words tumbling over each other until they found the path. “Not for you, not at you, for the room, for everyone, I bumped the lattice and the countercharm pushed back and you were in the path because I didn’t map for visitors, which was rude and ridiculous and now I want to sit down, but I can’t because I’ll smudge a circle.”

Okay, that might make sense. She planned to do this spell alone and us being here created a complication. It was one way to look at the situation, but another was this was the start of some kind of horrible spell meant to silence us. We could be on the cusp of figuring out her plan, and she might be using her magic to stop us before we can.

Jessie kept her voice even. “Stand still. Breathe. Then explain it to us.”

Maple nodded and did both, small sips of air, knuckles white around the pendant as the glow faded back to a manageable pulse. The shelves answered with a softer sound, more content cat than cornered dog. When her words came again, they landed in order.

“I’m not summoning and I’m not stealing,” she said. “I’m reinforcing the bindings on a handful of volumes that went sourafter the key incident. They’re dangerous if left unbound. Day hours don’t leave me enough quiet. Students lean on tables and cough and hum and fall in love behind dictionaries and all of that is gorgeous, but it frays the edge of delicate work, so I do this when the room allows it.” Her mouth twisted, apology and defiance sharing one corner. “I should have told someone.”

Jessie stepped closer to the line, careful not to cross it. “Which titles?”

“The Weeping Grimoire,” Maple said again, tipping her head toward the pulsing stack. “Two lesser cousins that mimic, the sort that learn your handwriting if you leave a pen alone with them, a travelogue that eats place names when it’s bored, and a slim wretch about knives that thinks it’s a poem. They stirred when the wards under the school did. The key’s presence then absence made a hole in the delicate wards that need fixing. Holes teach other things how to misbehave.”

Robbie glanced toward the dark windows as if the night might be listening. “Your pendant flares when the strain spikes.”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s why people see me clutching it and decide I’m conspiring with my own jewelry. It hums when the net pulls taut. I’m using it as an early warning and a rhythm, tap tap adjust, tap tap adjust, until the stacks stop testing me.”

Jaylyn’s gaze moved across the chalk as if mapping a song. “You’re good at this,” she said, plain and sincere. “Most of us would have left scorch marks and a headache.”

Maple blinked hard, then gave a crooked smile that made her look younger and braver all at once. “I’m good at exactly this,” she said. “Give me a wand and I’ll light a sleeve on fire. Give me a catalog that bites and I’ll teach it to purr.”

A deeper throb rolled through the shelves, not angry, just insistent, and the pendant brightened to answer it. Maple adjusted two marks with the tip of a pencil and the air loosened. The glow in her hands softened to a steady shine.

“Again,” Jessie said. “Why at night?”

“Because silence is part of the spell,” Maple answered. “Also because if I put up a sign during the day that said please don’t enter the librarian’s circle of protective chalk, three students would wander in to ask whether they could borrow a pen.” She grimaced at herself. “And because I thought if I asked for help, I’d find myself on a list I didn’t want to be on. Hunters mean well, but their questions sharpen everything.”

Before Jessie could respond, the far doors banged open. Mr. Vanderflit strode in with rain on his shoulders and a temper he held in check by habit, not by lack of reason. He crossed half the room in six steps and read everything as he came, the chalk, the sigils, the glow, the way we stood just outside the line with our attention pointed where it belonged. His eyes landed on Maple, then on her hands, then on the spiral that had finally decided to stand straight.

“I felt that flare from the stairs,” he said, and the choice of words made Maple wince and then square her shoulders. “Maribelle Maple, you could have called me.”

“I almost did,” she said, honest to a fault. “I wrote three drafts in my head and one on paper and then I started another because the first line apologized for existing. I’ll send the solid one as soon as I finish here.”

He planted a hand on the back of a chair instead of running it through his hair, which was how you knew he was tired andalso trying not to scare us. He read the endcap Jaylyn had been studying, nodded once at the turn she’d suggested, and then addressed us, not loudly, but with his full weight.

“You thought Maribelle Maple was behind the theft,” he said. “She’s the reason you can still study in this library without being devoured by half the stacks.”

I kept my chin up because my mother raised me to hold it that way when I’d made a mistake. Jessie didn’t blink. Jaylyn went very still. Robbie shifted enough to block me from a draft that hadn’t actually moved.

Vanderflit let the silence sit long enough to matter, then softened the edge. “We hired Maribelle after the wand chaos because she speaks library magic,” he said. “A handful of dangerous volumes live here. They require tending.”

Maple’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “I’m used to being underestimated,” she said, words thin and brave. “I don’t mind it most days. Tonight I minded. It stung, then I told myself to grow up, then I remembered that grown-ups could say when it stings.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, because hiding the apology would have been smaller than the truth. “We came prepared to catch you doing something wrong. You were doing the work that keeps us safe.”

Jessie added her apology without flinching. “I should’ve asked more questions before I built a theory,” she said. “We’ve been chasing a thief who wears Cendi’s face. It made me jumpy.”

Jaylyn nodded. “I should’ve trusted the part of me that recognized a lattice set by a careful hand.”

Robbie raised a palm. “I didn’t accuse you out loud,” he said. “I did it in my head. That counts. I’m sorry for that too.”

Maple looked at each of us in turn, then pressed the pendant flat against her sternum. “Thank you,” she said. “I will accept the apologies and repay you in lemon bars and overdue fee forgiveness, which I just decided I can grant even though the system says I can’t.”