“If the history makes a difference, I’m surprised we’re not hearing anything off the water,” said Mark. “Rowing’s an old sport. The Ancient Greeks did it.”

“But the lake is on the other side of the school boundary. And water does not mix well with demons.”

Mark nodded, conceding the point. “Your report on the big incursion—you saw an echo of yourself in there, you said.”

“Yes?” said Walden suspiciously. “What about it?”

“Wonder if I’m out on that field somewhere,” said Mark. “Seventeen forever and covered in mud.”

Walden tried to imagine it, and found it surprisingly difficult. Mark’s overgrown schoolboy attitude didn’t make him an actual schoolboy. There was far too much sophistication and intentionality about the way he deployed the charming smile. Not an innocent person, she thought. But then, who is?

chapter seventeen THE HUNT

By this point Walden had admitted to herself that a planar patrol was a genuinely good idea. And Mark was here and he did seem competent—overconfident, occasionally, perhaps, but competent. So if the patrol needed doing regularly, he might as well be the one doing it.

They walked the school boundaries, following the lines of hedgerows and ancient walls, and then spiralled in, sweeping through the site. It was impossible not to comment on what they saw. Everything on the original school grounds, on this side of the road, was dense and solid with the buildup of centuries of magic. From the outside, the school chapel was practically identical in the demonic plane to its mundane incarnation.

When they ducked through its great oak doors they were lashed with colour. The nave was thick with dream or memory or ghost of two hundred years of sunlight poured through dizzying stained glass. It went slipping and sliding across the flagstones in a brilliant kaleidoscope. Those dazzling windows had been smashed to fragments in the reign of Henry VIII, and light like this had not been seen here in the mundane world since.

Four demons in the chapel: one largeish imp that flew screeching overhead in the form of an eagle and then perched suspiciously in the arched ceiling and glared at them. Two fifth-order demons on either side of the sombre board of the war memorial with the long list of slaughtered alumni, posing in the shapes of gargoyles. In the vestry they found one archdemon, eighth order, roughly human in shape, faceless, gowned in something scarlet that oozed. That one was reasonably challenging to banish. Mark did the busywork of keeping it distracted while Walden drew an array to anchor her spell. It was harder to focus than it should have been. She was right-handed, and her right arm itched, from the wrist to the shoulder, the whole time the archdemon was there. Under her skin, something with coiling feathers was flexing and shifting, trying to come awake. To hunt.

Your assistance is not required, Walden thought firmly.