When the spider didn’t move after several minutes of me staring at it, I realized that it wasn’t alive. It must have been one of Lord Henry’s specimens, and I suspected Rollo was the culprit. Although Flora would probably take great delight in tormenting me, I couldn’t imagine her willingly handling a giant spider.

The key would be not to react in a way that would reward Rollo, and I was glad I hadn’t screamed. I took a sheet of writing paper from my desk, slid it under the spider, then carefully slid my hand under the paper, cradling the spider in my palm. I marched to Lord Henry’s study and knocked on the door. When he opened it just far enough to peer at me, I held the spider out to him, saying, “I believe your friend got lost and ended up in the wrong room.” As soon as he took it from me, I turned to go.

He called after me, “Miss Newton!” I stopped and slowly turned around. “I am terribly sorry about this, and I will punish Rollo.”

“Don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I would prefer that he think I didn’t notice.”

“You’re not going to leave?” He sounded surprisingly concerned at the prospect.

“Over a little prank? Of course not.”

It wasn’t until I returned to my room that a glance in the mirror reminded me I’d taken my hair down already and had confronted my employer in that state of disarray. It hardly seemed to matter compared to everything else that had happened that day. Between dragging my youngest charge into conflict with the police, being narrowly rescued by a rebel, discovering the danger of being surrounded by magic, and earning what was likely to be the lifelong enmity of my oldest charge, it had been quite a first day on the job.

*   *   *

The next morning, I derived some satisfaction from the way Rollo studied me as though he was waiting for a reaction. He flinched every time his uncle spoke to him at breakfast and was overly polite to me on the way to school. He hesitated before entering the school, then blurted, “Flora made me do it.”

“What did Flora make you do?” I asked.

“The spider in your bed. I didn’t want to, but she thought it would be funny, and she said she’d tell Uncle Henry … well, there was something she said she’d tell him that I would rather he not know. But I wasn’t being mean to you.”

“I hardly noticed it,” I said, and then I turned to Olive and added, “and we don’t need to discuss this further with anyone. It will be our secret.”