Walden had no intention of discussing the Phoenix with Mark Daubery. She had not discussed it with anyone for many years, and there was no reason why that should change. She had already added an item to her mental to-do list: double-check all Phoenix spellwork. Just in case. It was odd that the demon should try to speak to her. It never had before; not even when she first summoned it as the culmination of her doctoral research. It had lived reified on her arm and barely even stirred in the many years since then. But the encounter with Old Faithful had clearly set off some reaction, and she urgently needed to understand it better.

None of that was Mark’s business. “Absolutely fine, thank you,” she said. “Let’s continue.”

Mark watched her, she thought, as they worked their way around the rest of the school. The ribbon of tarmac that was the main road separating the two halves of the school site manifested in the demonic plane as a grey riverine space, blurred and painfully empty. On the other side, after an initial boundary walk, they checked the school coach park. The humped forms of minibuses loomed through magical mist like a collection of ancient monoliths. Walden insisted on checking each one separately, and then sweeping the whole coach park in depth. A combustion engine was a terrible temptation to a demon, and few possessions were more potentially threatening to human life than the selfhood, power and completeness inherent in a vehicle.

Nothing. Not even an imp. “All right, that just leaves Scrubs and the Bursary building,” Walden said. “And the sports hall, of course.”

“It’ll be pitch dark by the time we get back,” said Mark. “At least we’re not getting rained on.”

“Where’s your umbrella?”

“Do you know, I’ve got no idea. Must have left it somewhere.”

Walden suppressed a sigh. “Well, let’s—”

The shriek in her thoughts was raptor-scream, demon-howl, a flash of lightning across her vision. Her arm burned. Walden shouted in pain. The Phoenix cried, Turn!

Walden turned, just in time. Her hands were moving before her thoughts did, so that as she lifted them a shining pale shield of magical force broke from her fingertips and pushed the attacker away. Mark was yelling something, but she could not hear it over the Phoenix’s clamour in her head. What am I looking at? she made herself think; Hush, you, let me work through it!

Let me hunt it, let me kill it, let me, let me, let me, I shall hunt and kill and feed, I am hungry, I am made of hunger—

“You,” said Walden, summoning all her professional authority, “shall wait to speak until it’s your turn. Thank you.”