“It’ll all be fun,” said Mr. Peters, the head of PE. “The children like a bit of fun.”

Everyone looked at him as if he was a complete simpleton.

But he was right. Most children did like a bit of fun, and if you counted as fun seeing bad men ripped apart by demons, hearing prophecies about your best friends’ deaths, almost dying because you have run out of magical energy, having to confront your worst fears, being expected to fight evil and traveling to other worlds from which you might never return, then yes, some of the children in this school knew all about fun.

“Everyone loves the Winter Fair,” said Dr. Cloudburst.

This was true. During the Winter Fair, stalls sprung up all over the Old Town, selling hot chestnuts, fermented doughnuts and marmalade made from foraged fruits. Every well-known shop had its own stall. The Esoteric Emporium brought out some of its dustiest vintage wines and oldest jars of sauerkraut to sell by the warmth of its little ovens, in which fresh sourdough bread baked gently. Madame Valentin brought her exotic snakes, all of whom were planning to escape again this year. The puppet man displayed his very best marionettes—many of which were too frightening for children under ten to look at. Luckily there were also roasted marshmallows and lots of glittery decorations.

The main thing was that the Winter Fair made people forget the cold and the dark as the northern hemisphere hurtled unstoppably toward the shortest day, and the various Midwinter celebrations that would keep people cheerful until the Turning of the Year, when mass depression would set in again, as it always did. It was almost as if our world—or, at least, this part of it, for it was Midsummer elsewhere—became a bit more like the Otherworld, just for a time. Not that most people believed in the Otherworld, of course.

Alexa Bottle closed the door of Mrs. Bottle’s Bun Shop and began walking the hundred or so yards to the house where she lived with her mother and father. She was only slightly late, which was unusual. Normally she was very late. It wasn’t her fault—she just found her after-school job making magical remedies extremely absorbing and never quite remembered to look at the clock. At the moment she was also revising for various M-grade tests, and trying to remember the differences between all the old apothecaries’ systems of weights and measures. By Monday, Lexy had to know how many granums went in a scrupulum, and how many of those made a drachm. How many minims were in a fluid scruple? Twenty. At least she’d remembered that. Maybe Dr. Green would even be pleased with her for once.