Page 21 of With the Key in the Office

“Light,” Lynn said. “Sound. Certain kinds of memory. You could borrow a shape long enough to cause a gasp, never long enough to hold a key unless the man who made the key was a fool. You could push a door a hair, never open one that does not answer to you. You could make people cold. You could make a cat hiss. You could not take a teacher’s desk apart and vanish with the heart of it unless somebody breathing moved the parts.”

Robbie leaned back, thinking through the implications. “The thing that took the key did not glitch,” he said. “It used corners and shadow and the fact that people see what they expect. That reads more like a projection tied to a body.”

Ava shifted her stance. “Granddad, talk about anchors, so they have the full picture.”

“Every ghost has a tether,” Lynn said. “Sometimes it is a room. Sometimes it is a person who remembers hard enough. Sometimes it is a bit of iron in the wall that sang when they died and now sings to them forever. I haunt this castle because my work and my blood live here. I cannot go to the town square to buy a newspaper because I want to.”

Ava closed the folder with a soft thump. “Here is where this leaves us,” she said. “So the culprit being a ghost is ruled out.”

Right. But there has to be more information than that.

“So what or who took the key? And how do they look like me?” My questions were more me thinking out loud and not directed to anyone in particular.

Jessie tapped her pencil against the table. “What about motive? We still don’t have one.”

Drew rolled that into the plan with a nod. “We also need to ask who gains the most by stealing the key.”

Lynn rose from the chair without disturbing it. The act of standing looked like memory resuming its height. “I can only help so far,” he said. “But I can walk halls and listen. Ghosts hear the way old houses hear. Bring me a name and I will watch it for you.” He looked at Ava and the softness returned.

He lifted two fingers in a farewell and thinned into the corner’s shadow until the air held only the room again.

Silence settled. It did not feel empty. It felt like a deck cleared for a new spread of cards. Jessie drew a grid on a fresh page and wrote in tidy letters. Shifter. Projection. Operator. Motive. Opportunity. Under motive she listed the chamber under the castle and the rumor that the key opened more than a door. Under operator she wrote unknown and circled it twice.

Then I asked, “What about a shifter?”

Drew shook his head. “Shifters can only shift into their animal spirit within them. So a shifter is out, too.”

Jessie drew a line through the shifter on the paper.

Ava looked toward Maple. “We’ll keep working quietly,” she said. “Can you let us know if any bindings complain louder than expected?”

“Of course,” Maple said. “I will write it in a way that gets sent this time.”

Drew stood. “We have enough to brief Beth and John,” he said. “Now, I want a list of students we’ve disciplined for glamour tricks who might be better than they confess.”

“Marcus and Alicia already confessed,” Jessie said. “They built a projector and got a lecture. They did not have the skill to take on Cendi’s form though.”

“They are off the top of the stack,” Drew said. “Not off the list. We check everyone twice.” He lifted a brow at me. “Keep your circle tight. Do not walk alone. If someone asks you to follow them into a stairwell you do not recognize, do not go be polite about it. Shout.”

That was unsettling. What did he think was going to happen to me? Still, it was probably good advice.

“I can shout,” I said. “I am very good at shouting when needed.”

Robbie nodded. “She is,” he said, proud in a way that made me want to kick his ankle under the table.

Ava stood and stretched her hands as if shaking water from them. “We’ll be around. Lynn will be too. Don’t summon him for parlor tricks, please.”

“Never,” I said. “He deserves better than party questions.”

We watched them go, and I sagged into my chair. We were no closer to figuring out who or what had the key. The scary partwas, what did the creature want with a key that could open any door? And why did it need to wear my face to take the key?

12

CENDI

Later that night,we cut through the long gallery after leaving the library, the four of us moving with the easy rhythm that comes when you have nowhere to be except together. It reminded me of my days in high school, where life was all about friends and fun. Yes, we had a mystery to solve, but this was far better than my days spent alone in my house, looking back at the past and feeling alone.

A whisper sounded from the far end of the hallway, making me pause. I knew it wasn’t the wind nor was it the building settling. Soft words that I couldn’t quite make out were hushed and urgent. Shadows slid at the corner beyond the mentoring classrooms, then stilled in a way that suggested that the movement was from a body trying to pretend it belonged to a wall.