A howl over Walden’s head. The minibus demon was starting to look worryingly solid, much more so than the other misty humps of silent buses occupying the demonic plane’s echo of the school coach park. It brought its red-and-white fists together and hammered them down on the magical shield directly above Walden’s head. A shower of bright sparks flew off in all directions, and she smelled burning rubber. She had to get the Phoenix under control before she could deal with this. And then she was going to have to take the day out tomorrow—oh, the cover manager would be very annoyed having that dumped on her first thing Monday morning—and go over her leashing spellwork with a fine-tooth comb.

For now it just needed to be placated. With, apparently, a potted summary of the first three weeks of teacher training. “Students respond best to structure and clarity,” Walden said, dragging what had long since become professional instinct out of the back of her memories. “Break large tasks into smaller ones, and model the steps along the way. Control the environment, maintain a sense of purpose, provide space to fail safely; then, of course, provide clear, encouraging, and actionable feedback—”

The attacking archdemon backed off and flung itself flat on the ground. Parts of its steel frame shifted around. Before Walden’s horrified gaze, the huge tyres that had been decorating its torso moved back to their proper places. The shape of a school minibus rose like an animal gathering itself to spring. The grumble of the engine deepened. It was going to charge her. And yes, this was the demonic plane, there was no physical vehicle there, but there was still an archdemon about to accelerate into Walden’s shields at the best part of eighty miles an hour—

Model, said the Phoenix in Walden’s head, and it took control of her hands.

It could not hide its profound impatience as it went slowly through what it felt were a perfectly obvious set of steps. Connect: this was Walden’s territory, her place, where she belonged and where she controlled the boundaries. The spellwork on the back of her staff pass shimmered, and at the same moment she felt an answering shimmer on every other lanyard on the school site: Mark’s where he was crouched and breathing hard next to the misty shimmer of another minibus, Todd’s as he chugged down the drive on the green gardeners’ quadbike with a trailer full of bagged-up compost behind him, Lilly Tibbett on duty in Scrubs chatting with a Year Nine and shivering a little in the November chill, all the other teachers and assistants and cleaners and gardeners and kitchen staff and Annie in the office who really didn’t need to be in on a Sunday but she’d thought she’d just drop by and get a couple of things finished off …