“Hang on,” said Lexy. “Let me just get my crystals out, and my new bracelet, and my knife. . . . We’ll sort you out first, and then we’ll escape.”

As soon as Jupiter Peacock had left, Lexy had snapped out of her weak-maiden routine. What was it Wolf had said about strategy that time? Always let your enemy think you are weaker and more stupid than you are There is no greater weapon than surprise. And JP was certainly going to be surprised when he realized how he’d underestimated Lexy.

He’d been sleeping very well lately, mainly because of the valerian, lime-flower and fiveweed mixture that Lexy had been putting in his food. All she’d had to do was add the mixture to the pepper grinder. JP loved pepper and added it liberally to everything. And since Lexy wasn’t allowed to eat anything other than Turkish delight she was hardly going to be contaminated herself.

Because JP had been sleeping so well, Lexy had been able to sneak downstairs late at night and eat peanut butter–and–jelly sandwiches and make her plans. She’d charged all her crystals in moonlight—not quite as strong as the full moon, but it would do. She got all her herbs in order.

And she read as much as she could about being an alchemist.

Yes, JP really had chosen the wrong person to mess with. He had no idea that he and Lexy shared an art—alchemist—which meant that she’d been able to steal his most valuable boons in order to use them against him. This morning she’d pretended to have forgotten the small pearl earrings she was supposed to wear for the ceremony. He’d sent her upstairs to get them, while charming her parents by offering to give their daughter a lift to the university.

That was when she’d done it. She’d gone into his room, and taken everything she needed. His Orlov’s viper necklace, used by high-level dark alchemists to control the weather and create explosions. His travel cauldron, enchanted in such a way that powerful concoctions could be brewed in it, but which shrunk to the size of a ring when not in use. And the biggest prize: his alchemist’s knife: a solid platinum blade set in a walnut handle studded with black obsidian stones. There was also a thin gold bracelet with the same stones set in it. Lexy hadn’t actually left many of his things behind.

That evening when her parents had gone out to celebrate their anniversary and he’d made her go into his room, the objects had awoken something in her: her alchemist art. But this was not the sort of light alchemy that her Aunt Octavia did; it was something darker that had been lying dormant.