Page 31 of With the Key in the Office
Inside, the tavern kept the lights low on purpose. Tables leaned. The bar wore scars that had names. A chalkboard menu tried to be jaunty about clam chowder and gave up halfway through the exclamation mark. A narrow stage at the back held a mic stand and a piano with a missing C key. On the stage stood a woman in a gown poured out of black velvet and starlight, hips like a promise, hair piled high and anchored with something that glittered. She held the room the way a magnet holds filings. Conversation tilted toward her. “Darlings,” she said, and the word slid across our boots. “You wore your knees out getting here. It would have been more efficient to send flowers.”
“That will do, Lucifer,” she said. “Drop the frock. Explain why you wanted the key.”
Lucifer? The singer wasLucifer? The witch who was behind the stolen key was a man we knew all too well? How was that possible?
As if in answer to my unspoken questions, the temperature shifted by a hair. The pretty black dress shimmered and collapsed, becoming a suit that had never seen a wrinkle. The wig on the singer’s head softened into dark hair. The painted mouth turned back into a smirk. The singer, no longer a pretty woman, but someone else, stepped to the edge of the stage and gave us a bow that did not apologize for anything.
“Ava,” Lucifer said, amused. “You’re really incredible at ruining the theatrical.”
Ava didn’t blink. “Answer the question. Why that key?”
He spread his hands, suddenly acting like a generous host. “Completion,” he said. “There’s a gap on my wall that has annoyed me longer than your Academy has had stair polish. An empty spot in an otherwise full wall of keys. A constant reminder of my unfinished collection. I could not steal the key I needed directly without inviting consequences, so I came up with a plan. A chameleon can pass through thresholds. They can do everything that I could not in fear of the repercussions. I offered Seraphina a draught to still the outer teeth of your wards and told her to borrow Cendi’s shape.”
Fizz gave him a look that promised a thousand paper cuts. “And when I asked why I had to take her form, you did that thing with your mouth and called it destiny. Try the truth this time.”
He shrugged. “Because,” he said to both of us. “Ms. Cendi is bonded to the key. By the time I found the key, her blood has already infused with it, making it impossible for anyone else to take it.”
I was about to ask what he meant before a memory surfaced from where we went to the crazy diddle land to save Jaylyn. When we found the key, I cut my finger. I suspected it meant I was bonded to the key, I didn’tknowthat it meantonlyI was bonded to the key.
“So you did this all for… your collection of keys?” I asked in shock.
He waved to the wall behind the curtain. “If you saw it, you’d know why these steps were so necessary.”
Jessie’s chin tipped toward the curtains behind him. “Show us the wall. If we have to endure your craziness, we might as well see what this was all about.”
His smile brightened, and he snapped his fingers. The back of the stage peeled away to reveal a white room with no shadows and a hum that sounded expensive. Three sides held ranks of hooks and shelves, each was home to a key or something that had decided to be one.
We did not cross the threshold. We stood where we were and looked. A blue glass key floated in a bell jar and shed condensation that never dripped. A thin steel piece had teeth on both ends and spun slowly as if arguing with itself.
A brass ring held ten tiny keys like charms, each stamped with a day of the week, and they chimed very softly in the same order every time Luci walked past. One long sliver of black wood stitched with silver wire hummed a low note that turned theskin on my forearms into a field of attention. A squat copper key winked and produced a puff of harmless smoke that smelled of oranges. A delicate lattice of wire wrote a cursive L in the air, then unwrote it with a shy flicker. At the far end a heavy iron key grinned with a skull set where the handle should be, tiny sparks sneezing from its sockets.
Ava’s voice went dry and precise. “He collects the weirdest crap,” she told the others. “Locks, bargains, conclusions. He cannot help himself.”
Luci drifted to an empty cradle the size of a hand. A placard beneath it read in neat script Key for a Door that Refuses the Ordinary Kind. The shelf already held a faint outline, as if the space knew what wanted to live there.
“This gap keeps me awake,” he said. His eyes slid to Fizz. “May I see the guest of honor.”
“No,” I said. “You can look. You cannot take it.”
“Agreed,” he said, as Fizz took the key out of her pocket and unwrapped it from the silk cloth she stored it in. He didn’t reach. He waited until she set the key in his palm. Even though he hissed in pain, he didn’t put it down. Instead, he weighed it as if he had been handed a newborn story and did not dare breathe too loud. “Ah,” he whispered. “That solves several hypotheses.” He returned it before Ava could ask twice.
“We’re done,” she said. “Close your showroom. Cendi needs the key so you can’t have it.”
I swore I saw a slight pout from the devil, but it quickly vanished as he waved a dismissive hand. “Very well. When you’re using it for your purpose, please call on me and I’ll collect it. Keep it safe until then.”
“So is this it? We just leave with the key now?” Robbie asked, sounding shocked.
I mirrored his feelings. Luci was powerful, but surely, he would have some sort of consequences for all the trouble he caused, right? The hunters wouldn’t just let him walk away?
Ava gave us all a very serious look. “Don’t worry, we’ll handle him. You can head back to the academy.”
The devil flicked his hand. The vault folded away. “At least let me save you a walk,” he added, and opened an oval portal near the door. Through it, the Academy’s entry hall glowed with familiar lamp light and a table that had somehow kept its bowl of apples alive another week.
Fizz handed me the key. “I guess I’m free?”
Luci nodded. “You are free to live your life, but we better not hear about you stealing anything else or using your powers for trouble. Your name is mostly certainly on our lists now.”
“Understood,” she said, nervously.