Page 22 of With the Key in the Office
Jessie lifted a hand for quiet, her expression cautious. We didn’t need the warning, but we took it anyway. The faint smell of lavender chalk and polished wood hung in the air. Someone had cleaned wand racks before dinner, and the scent clung to the grain.
Another whisper. A door creaked.
We moved as one. Robbie angled to my right and half a pace ahead. Jaylyn drifted left where the shadows layered thickest. Jessie kept to the center, both palms easy at her sides, a teacher before anything else.
A cluster of small figures crouched near the display case that held practice wands for tomorrow’s class. They wore dark clothing and shoes and had the confidence that belongs to kids who had watched too many heist movies. Three heads turned toward us at the same moment. A fourth stayed bent over the case, fingers busy at the charm that tethered the latch. The slightest click answered those fingers. It lived right at the edge between success and trouble.
“Evening,” Jessie said, softly, as if she had walked into the wrong room and wanted to give everyone a graceful way out.
The heads froze. The fourth hand stilled without lifting. The kids looked between each other and then toward the exit, as if they could sprint through a locked door by believing in it very hard.
A shadow peeled away from the wall, small and quick. It scampered toward us on silent feet, then dropped to the floor and condensed into a puddle of fur. A golden kitten stared up with startled eyes, more brash than afraid, tail twitching. The kitten sneezed, shook, and lengthened. In the space between one breath and the next, a girl stood where the cat had been, chin up and hair in a mess. She could not have been more than eight.
“Don’t scream,” she said. “I can explain.” Her eyes darted to the wand case, then back to us. “I can explain some of it.”
Jessie did not blink. “I prefer explanations to screaming,” she said. “Names first.”
The girl straightened. “Goldie,” she said.
Two other kids slunk forward, one with pigtails and knees knocking through tights, the other taller with a new mustache he had not decided whether to keep. A third stayed near the latch with stubborn devotion to the job.
“We weren’t going to take a real one,” pigtails blurted. “It’s a dare. We had to bring back a wand to prove we’re brave. We were going to use it to stir tea and then put it back. We’re not monsters.”
The tall boy nodded so fast his hair flopped. “We brought napkins,” he added, and then shut his mouth with both hands as if the napkins were the bad part.
Jessie stepped closer to the case, careful not to spook anyone. “You’re not monsters,” she said. “You’re also not thieves, not tonight. That case belongs to the morning lesson. If you spring that latch, the alarm tattles in three rooms and I have to lecture you until you think sitting on your hands is a luxury.”
Goldie winced. “I told them the tether would gossip,” she said, guilt and pride tangling in her tone. “I almost had it anyway. It would have been neat.”
Robbie leaned against the wall and folded his arms without looming. It takes a kind person to take up less space when somebody else is scared. “Whose dare?” he asked, his tone mild.
A chorus of names tumbled out that included at least two cousins, one older sibling, and a neighbor who had once set a stew on fire with a spark charm and now had authority she did not deserve. The names carried affection. The dare didn’t carry any malice. It carried the itch to prove you can walk through a dark corridor and steal a trophy and still sleep.
Jaylyn crouched to meet the kids’ eyes, slow and gentle. “Next time someone tries to pull courage out of you with a prank,” she said, “ask them to build a better test. Bravery does not always mean breaking a rule.”
The tall boy stared at his shoes. Goldie took that in like it was food. Pigtails nodded as if she had been waiting for a grown up to say the thing she already knew.
Jessie glanced between us with a question. I tipped my chin toward the case and then toward her wand, barely a breath of movement. She understood.
“New plan,” she said, and her tone shifted from scold to teach without passing through a door. “If you must walk back to your friends with something that looks like a wand, you will take one that harms no one. You will keep your stride quiet through the Godmother wing because some of us actually use curfew to rest, and you will not open any cases that scream.”
Goldie perked, halfway to a grin. “You’re going to help,” she whispered, as if saying it too loud would break it.
Jessie touched her wand to the air. No flourish. No drama. A shimmer gathered above her palm the way steam gathers over a pot, and then lengthened. Wood came into being with a grain that looked warm enough to hold, a subtle twist, a faint gloss, a weight that would convince any child who wanted to be convinced. The wand caught the light, and the light behaved.
She handed it to Goldie and did not let go until every eye had watched the transfer. “Non-magical,” she said. “It looks perfect. It does nothing. If anyone asks you to prove its power, say no and bring it back. If anyone calls you a coward, turn around and walk away. Cowards need audiences.”
Goldie balanced the fake in both hands and breathed out a little sound of delight. Pigtails touched it with reverence that belonged to museums and kittens. The tall boy reached and then thought better of it and put his hands behind his back.
I rummaged in my cardigan pocket and produced a small charm coin someone had given me weeks ago, a bit of glitter meant to anchor a glamour for practice. “I can give you a shadow,” I said. “No noise. No glow. It will nudge attention away from you while you walk.”
Jessie nodded approval. She tapped the coin with her wand and whispered a line that wrapped the kids in a soft version of darkness, not invisible, only disinterested. You could look straight at them, and your gaze would slide along to the next thing.
Robbie lifted his phone, which had never been his first tool at the Academy and still knew how to be helpful. He made a note we would not forget to check in before lights out. Jaylyn looked at each of the kids in turn and said their names back to them, the teacher trick that turns trouble into memory.
When the kids were out of sight, we crossed back through the gallery with the quiet of people who had used up the night well. The lamps thinned to single points of light. The windows showed our reflections and a smudge of weather dreaming above the hills. In another wing, someone practiced a lullaby on a flute and improved by three notes between the first landing and the second.
At my door, the cats voiced opinions about bedtime. Tilly circled my ankles with righteous indignation that dissolved the second food hit bowls. Simon leapt to the dresser, then to Robbie’sshoulder, then to the bed, then pretended he had meant to end up there all along.