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“For one thing, Bradford, she lives here , and for another, if you’d seen what I just saw when I visited her home, you wouldn’t want anyone else taking her.”

Impatient, Albert had intervened. “Get on with it.”

With a grumble, Bertram-Mogg had carefully uncorked the little bottle and had let exactly one drop of the essence of sunlight fall to the surface of the pedestal. Instead of spreading like water, it held its shape like mercury and waited, a small, vibrating bead of burning gold light.

“Touch it,” Bertram-Mogg had instructed, extending the tip of his index finger to demonstrate.

“Will it hurt?”

He’d tutted. “No.”

“What’s supposed to happen?”

“It will be absorbed into the tip of your finger and, if you are indeed a witch, it will light up under your skin and show us how much power you have. Don’t expect much.

” He sniffed. “A single glowing finger is all some witches get. Even those of us from the best and brightest families are lucky to get a full arm.” And you, he might as well have added, are certainly not one of us .

With Chancellor Bennet hopping from one foot to the other beside her like an overexcited sparrow, and Albert watching from the corner with narrow eyes, Sera reached for the bright, quivering drop of light with a nervous finger.

It didn’t hurt, Bradford Bertram-Mogg had been right about that, but she got more than a glowing finger.

The light had spread under her skin, warm and a little tingly, shooting up her arm, shining so brightly you should see it through her clothes, flooding outward into every limb, every hair, every cell, until her body couldn’t contain all the light anymore and the three men had backed away in shock, shielding their eyes.

For one extraordinary moment, Sera was the sun.

“I’ll never forget the look on their faces,” she said to Luke. “They couldn’t look down their noses at me anymore. They couldn’t believe a nobody like me could possibly be that powerful, but that one drop of sunlight told them they were wrong.”

“To be a fly on that wall,” Luke said with a grin. “It seems to me that we could make a pretty good argument that essence of sunlight is special to you, don’t you think?”

“Oh, I do very much think,” Sera agreed at once.

Clemmie, who had jumped off the coop and stalked over to them, puffed up her russet fur in annoyance.

“Well, that’s all well and good, Mr. I Know All There Is to Know about Magic, but I’ve yet to hear how we’re supposed to get our hands on any essence of sunlight.

Are you going to go back to the Guild and get it? ”

“No,” Luke admitted, reluctantly. “The Guild doesn’t do the tests at the castle anymore.

Four or five years ago, after Bradford Bertram-Mogg kicked up a fuss about having to leave his country house every single time someone needed to be tested, Chancellor Bennet let him move the location of the tests.

His house is just about the only place we’ll find essence of sunlight, and no, Clemmie, before you ask, Bradford Bertram-Mogg is not going to give me any. ”

“What about your employer?”

“He doesn’t like Verity either.”

“Marvellous,” said Clemmie in a sour voice. “Great. Spectacular. So what was the point of this, then?”

But Sera was too excited to let this stand. She refused. She had not gotten her hopes up for nothing.

“So you’re saying the only way we get the essence of sunlight from Bradford Bertram-Mogg’s country house is by taking it,” she said slowly, ignoring the prick of the thorns as she searched her memories of her years with the Guild. “We’d only need a drop, wouldn’t we? He’d never notice it was gone.”

“We could need a drop, a bottle, or an entire blooming vat of it, Sera, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference,” Clemmie grumbled.

“It’s the taking it part that’s the problem.

The Bertram-Mogg manor is a big, ugly behemoth where, at any given time, you’ll find about a dozen Bertrams, Moggs, and Bertram-Moggs in residence and , I might add, a few dozen of their staff.

Unlike the Guild’s castle, where any witch is welcome—”

“Hardly,” said Sera.

“—they’re not going to just let anyone in,” Clemmie went on, undeterred. “ I might be able to sneak in unnoticed, but fat lot of good that’ll do when I haven’t got—”

“Don’t you dare say it,” said Luke.

“ Opposable thumbs ,” Clemmie snapped.

A possibility tickled the back of Sera’s mind. It was slightly terrifying, and undoubtedly reckless, but—

“It’s the sixth,” she said.

Luke and Clemmie stared at her.

Okay, that had been a little vague. “The date. It’s the sixth of December.”

“So?” Clemmie sounded well and truly ready to wash her hands of the whole affair.

“ So ,” said Sera, meeting Luke’s intent, steady gaze, “does Bradford Bertram-Mogg still host his winter masquerade in the second week of December?”

“No,” Luke said at once, icy, implacable, and more than a little incredulous.

“He doesn’t?”

“Yes, he does. No, we’re not doing what you’re thinking right now.”

“Why not? Professor Walter used to be invited every year, so now that you’re up there with her as one of the Guild’s best magical historians, you must be invited too.

” He didn’t deny it. It was all Sera could do to keep herself from squealing with glee.

“You could go! You could take me as your date! This is it , Luke. This is how we get in and get the essence of sunlight!”

“How we get in?” Luke growled. “ You can’t be seen anywhere near that house. You’re in exile.”

“It’s a masquerade ,” Sera pointed out. “Everyone will be masked, and it’s been fifteen years since any of them have seen me, so even if Howard Hawtrey or Bradford Bertram-Mogg or someone else who knows you recognises you, they won’t have any idea who I am.”

“No,” Luke said again. “Even if I thought this was a good idea, I would absolutely not be taking you.”

“No,” Sera said right back, fiercely. “You’d be risking everything you have.

You’re the one they’d recognise. You’re the one who would get in who knows what kind of shit for trying to steal something from one of the wealthiest and most prominent families of the Guild.

So no, you have to take me. I’m the one who wants this.

I’m the one who doesn’t have a place there anymore.

Besides,” she added, playing an ace she was pretty sure he couldn’t beat, “how many times have you been to that house?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I haven’t.”

“I have. I went to every winter masquerade when I was at the Guild. I know that house. I know where to find what we need.”

Luke stared at her for a long time, his arctic eyes dark and furious, but she could see he was thinking about it, that he knew how much it meant to her and how impossible it would be to change her mind.

After a minute, resigned, he said, “Albert will be there. He’s too powerful.

If we try sneaking off to steal something right under his nose, it could set off every magical alarm bell he’s got.

Besides, if anyone is going to recognise you after all this time, it’s him. ”

She nodded. “We won’t be able to stop him going. It’s the biggest night of the year. He won’t be able to resist the opportunity to show off.” She thought about it some more. “What if we could make him leave for a little while?”

“Oh, really?” Clemmie demanded. “And how, exactly, are you going to do that?”

“ I’m not,” Sera replied. “ You are.”

“I hate you,” said Clemmie.

Sera smiled. “And here I thought you’d spent almost twenty years longing for an excuse to break into Albert Grey’s house, spit in his favourite cognac, and knock over his obscenely expensive and dangerously fragile marble statue of himself.”

And Clemmie, the fox, showed all her teeth.