It looked completely different from normal. Usually it was full of old bits of fabric and yarn and failed projects of Hazel’s, but it had recently been cleared out in JP’s honor. Marcel had even given the walls a coat of magnolia paint and everything had been polished. How, then, JP had already managed to make the room look like a long-standing den of diabolical magic was something of a mystery. Apart from the fact that it was unusually dark, and that JP seemed to have installed his own black velvet curtains, Lexy noticed a medium-size cauldron, a pot of black ink with various feather quills lying near it, jars of unusual looking herbs and potions and something that looked worryingly like a voodoo doll. There was also a knife with a solid platinum blade set in a walnut handle studded with black obsidian stones that Lexy couldn’t take her eyes from.

“I see you are admiring my objects,” said JP, pronouncing the word the French way. Objays. “I have quite a collection. Look at this charming Viking locket for example. It is over two thousand years old and features in several little-known Norse legends. It has a whole dried snake inside. An Orlov’s viper: once the rarest snake in the world, and now extinct. Dried snake, as you know, is a powerful ingredient for darker alchemists and higher grades of healers.”

Lexy’s fear almost gave way to interest. It was true that you could do a lot with a dried snake, if you were lucky enough to get one, now that most of them were extinct. The older the snake, the more powerful it became. If this one was from actual Viking times or before, then . . .

“Would you like to touch it?”

Lexy did sort of want to. But she knew she had to get away. She hesitated.

“No thanks,” she said.

“Ah yes, I forgot you were in a hurry . . . to see my special outfit.”

Jupiter Peacock winked. Then he took off his black sweater and threw it on the bed. He ran his hand through his hair, smoothing out his pompadour. He grinned a horrible grin and then pulled off his T-shirt. His chest was incredibly hairy. In among the hair several nefarious-looking things dangled from different necklaces. There was something that looked like a tiny cauldron, and another locket a bit like the one with the dried snake. There was the ceramic bottle that supposedly contained the spirit of Hieronymus Moon. But why was Lexy still here, staring at JP’s vast, horrible chest? It was the objects on the necklaces and in this room that interested her, but she had no idea why. She felt bizarrely compelled by all of it—except, obviously, by JP himself, who repelled her.

“I’ll come back when you’re ready,” she said.

And before JP could do or say anything else, she fled to her room.

15