Page 27 of With the Key in the Office

“Morning,” I said, as if they had come for cookies and not lessons that might save fingers. “Please make sure your shoes are dry, your hands are clean, and your mouths are ready to say please and thank you to anything with a pulse.”

Goldie aimed a grin at me, then at the sprites. “We’re good,” she said. “We’re very good. We’re the best.”

“You’re alive,” I said. “We’ll work from there.”

We started with names to make everyone feel more comfortable. I learned that Pigtails answered to Mina and the tall boy to Devin, and the small serious one with the tidy braid was Leila, and the boy with the silver ring on a chain was Ezra, who badly wanted to be fierce, and had kindness leaking out of him. I stated the rules out loud. No tapping glass. No reaching into enclosures without an invite. No showing off. If anyone says pause, we pause.

“Miss Crayne,” Mina said, hand already half raised. “Are the puffs chew safe?”

“For you or for them,” I asked. “Because the puffs are straw chewers, and the straw is fine. Your shoelaces are not.”

She looked down, realized her laces were on display, and tucked them into her shoes with the efficiency of someone who had learned that lesson before.

I talked them through a lesson on camouflage. Devin volunteered to stand against the map of the northern woods while we matched his sweatshirt to the darkest swath and watched the rest of his outline vanish under suggestion. Leila explained mimicry more clearly than some college students, and the sprites preened at being used as a positive example. I wroteon the board with a student’s old glitter marker and pretended not to love it.

Then chameleons. I made my tone even and careful because this part mattered. “What’s the difference between a shifter and a chameleon,” I asked. “Goldie.”

Goldie squared up, pleased to be both a cat and a student. “Shifter turns into an animal,” she said. “Chameleon turns into different people and a shadow of the room around them. They don’t get memories when they change, so they have to lie to convince people they are who they’re pretending to be.”

“Good,” I said. “They’re not better, just different. What keeps you safe?”

Leila raised a hand halfway and then committed. “Show proof of self with a tell,” she said. “Like the way my brother taps his pencil. Or the scar on Ezra’s knuckle where he burnt himself baking bread. Or the teacher’s joke that’s always the same.” She looked at me, a challenge and a question tucked together. “Do you have a tell?”

“Several,” I said, trying not to wince. “I say please too often when I’m scared, and I draw boxes around lists. Also my left eyebrow goes up when people who should be in bed tell me they’re out for a quick walk.”

Goldie snickered. Ezra checked his knuckle and blushed, caught and oddly proud. Devin tried to raise one eyebrow, but it just did a bit of a jig.

We practiced spotting tells. I let them watch each other for a minute, then switch partners. I made them write three things about their partner that a chameleon could learn and one thing a chameleon would miss under pressure. They worked in a hushthat meant they took it seriously and savored the work. A sprite landed on the top of my marker and flicked its wings without leaving glitter. Small blessings.

Halfway through, the smaller puff woke, sniffed the air, and toddled toward Mina’s shoe. She didn’t see, Devin did, and he set his palm down flat on the straw. The puff climbed aboard and sat, interested in the new elevation. I praised him for offering a safe platform and rewarded the puff with a dry apple cube the size of a pea. It took the cube with solemn dignity and sneezed cinnamon dust.

We closed with a short demonstration that required everyone to listen with their eyes. I slid on a glamour like a shawl, nothing heavy, just enough to blur me at the edges. I walked the length of the room, then stopped and asked who knew it was me even when the light went strange. The answers they gave were perfect. My stride. My do-what-I-shoulder, which is apparently a thing. The way I plant my feet when I’m about to ask a question that matters.

“And the room?” I asked. “What about the room?”

Leila pointed at the space near my elbow. “The light bends wrong there,” she said. “A shifter wouldn’t change the light.”

Smart children undo me. I kept my voice steady and called it a win.

When the bell chimed, we reset the lids, thanked the sprites for tolerating us, and wiped the straw off our knees. Ezra hung back to tell me he was going to apologize to his neighbor for the stew-fire brag that turned into a dare, and Mina asked whether puffs could learn to fetch, and Devin tried one more time to raise a single eyebrow. Goldie drifted near the board and read thechameleon section I had left open like a trap with a note that said don’t stick your hand in here without a teacher.

“Miss Crayne?” she said in a lower tone. “That’s what happened to Ms. Ault, isn’t it? A chameleon wore her and ran?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said, and the honesty landed because it was clean, “but that page is going to live in my head for the rest of the day.”

They filed out with waves and small dignities. I latched everything twice and returned the glitter marker to the board tray like a treasure. The room exhaled. My jacket of calm slipped off. The doubts stepped in to fill the space I’d kept for them without meaning to. Was the pacing right? Did I ask too many questions? Did Leila’s eyes widen because she was interested or because I pushed? Did Devin pretend to understand to save face? Did I spend too long on chameleons and not enough on exit routes?

Enough.I packed the binder, locked the lab, and crossed the courtyard into a wind that couldn’t make up its mind about whether or not it was just wind or if it wanted to be rain too. The castle’s long hallway carried murmurs and shoe squeaks and the clatter of someone running late with a stack of plates. I cut through the Godmother wing and found Cendi and Robbie in the small lounge that pretended to be a kitchen, the kettle already thinking about boiling.

Cendi had lengths of string laid out on the table for a lesson about tether magic. Robbie had a knife in his hand and an apple he was threatening to turn into a rose. They both looked up and read my face more quickly than most people read signs.

“I heard you were covering for a class,” Cendi said. “How’d it go?”

“Good,” I said. “Lower division survived with all fingers, and two puffs napped through chaos. More importantly, I want to add a word to our list. Chameleon.”

Robbie lowered the knife. “Wait… we read about them a little bit. They’re not animal shifters, right? They’re human-mimic.”

“Exactly,” I said. “The lower division’s text spends more time on chameleons and shifters than the godmother program does. Shifters change into bodies that aren’t human. Chameleons wear people. They blend not just color but posture, pattern, the way light expects to land. They don’t get the person’s memories. They have to bluff to act like them. They miss little things under pressure and certain ward edges don’t catch them. Nets slide.”