Walden had been expecting it to be a disaster. Laura was such an abrupt and awkward person. She didn’t have the years of practice addressing a group that any teacher got as a matter of course. Besides, there had been several mistakes in how they’d handled Old Faithful’s incursion. Walden lay awake at night thinking about them. If she had just paid more attention to Nikki in the days following that summoning gone wrong. If she hadn’t let herself be worried about Mathias, and distracted by the need to scold Will, and then caught up in the countless meetings and observations and phone calls and emails that were also her job. If she’d taken more time answering Aneeta’s question about Old Faithful’s whispers that day. If she hadn’t given Nikki the book.

There were several mistakes in the handling of this incident, Laura had begun, in an abrupt and awkward way.

Then she’d thrown herself on her sword.

Walden had felt fairly awful listening to it. Laura had clearly done her own share of lying awake. What was the good of a Chief Marshal on a school site, if not to protect children from demons? Insufficient threat analysis, Laura said. A historical culture of carelessness regarding the eleventh-order demon known as ‘Old Faithful’—like sitting on a volcano and assuming it would never erupt, just because it hadn’t for a while. Lack of personnel. Lack of preparedness among those personnel who were on duty. Lack of leadership by the Chief Marshal. Patrol schedules too heavily focused on the student dorms and known hot spots, requiring school staff with little training or experience to cover gaps on an ad hoc basis. Frankly, she’d paused, and looked grim, and finally said, a lot of people should have died.

And then, while everyone still looked solemn about that, she’d gone on: The only reason this incident was just a frightening mistake, and not a horrific tragedy, is Dr Walden.

Walden hadn’t been expecting it. She did not quite know what to do with her face for the next part. You could not sit there and smile blandly while a person called you a hero; it was too awkward. Laura gave a stripped, professional account of their trip into the incursion to recover Will, Nikki, and Mathias. Somehow, she managed to make it sound like Walden had been tremendously efficient and highly competent the whole time, instead of full of adrenaline and making it up as she went along.