“At the very least, the three children in the incursion should have died, or worse,” said Laura in the end. “I wouldn’t even have tried to save them. And if I had tried, I would probably have failed. I don’t know how to explain to you all just how dangerous an eleventh-order demon is. A volcano probably is the best thing to imagine, or any kind of natural disaster—that’s what a higher demon is, a natural disaster. It’s not just a question of being brave or doing the right thing. To take on something like that, you need skills that most people simply don’t have. The Order of Marshals keeps track of the magicians in this country who do have those skills, and it doesn’t take much effort, because I could count them on my fingers.

“I want you all to be clear about what I’m telling you. Chetwood just lost an apex predator that’s been lurking in the school’s magical shadow for hundreds of years. That doesn’t mean the school is safe. It means it’s open season until a new higher demon moves in to claim that hunting ground—and there will be a new one. No demon can resist the sheer quantity of wild magic that a large group of teenage magicians is always going to generate as a matter of course. You need to substantially step up the magical security operation on the school campus. You need to increase the number of Marshals, and the new squadron should include at least two pairs of active-duty demon hunters. And it would be absolute madness to get rid of the only member of staff you’ve got who is capable of handling the problem personally if all else fails.”

Laura had scared them. Her blunt, abrupt, awkward speech—her obvious sincerity—had worked. The Chair of Governors didn’t actually say so, but as he laid out his compromise, it became clear that something had shifted in the whole room’s perception of Walden. They had thought of her as—well, as the person she was: academic turned educator turned school management. Which was to say, not real management—even people who sat on boards of governors were often a little unconsciously woolly about the fact that the people running a school were effectively the C-suite of a medium-sized business enterprise—but essentially the same kind of person they all were: an educated middle-class professional, doing a normal, everyday kind of job.