That was the moment when Walden should have offered to do it, but she didn’t own a car. Mark grinned at her and then got to his feet with a theatrical ooough of pain. “Let’s get out of the demonic plane before I attract something else by bleeding all over the place,” he said. “Not that there’s anything to be scared of when I’m standing next to you. That was it, wasn’t it? The higher demon you’ve got leashed. Your Phoenix.”

“Er, yes,” Walden said, a little startled—and more than a little flattered—to be on the receiving end of such direct admiration. She knew the Phoenix was impressive. Most other people … well, either they didn’t know about it, or else they didn’t know enough about magic.

Mark knew. His knowledge lit up his face. His smile was not the charming mask but a grin of real enthusiasm, brilliant even as he clutched at his injured arm. “Spec-fucking-tacular,” he said. “Beautiful, beautiful magic. Bravo, Dr Walden.”

chapter eighteen ROMANCE

The thing about November: the days went horrifically slowly every year, and yet the awful month seemed to disappear in no time at all. Walden taught her lessons, rapidly packing in theory and practicals, somehow carving out a week in the December scheme of work to do revision before the mocks. She wrote the A-level Invocation mock examination, and a mark scheme for it. She did her share of the planar patrols, trading off with Mark, occasionally scheduling a joint patrol—even looking forward to those, a little, because Mark was now gratifyingly admiring about Walden’s demon expertise. She attended some meetings and chaired others. She did risk assessments, marked homework, delivered assemblies, spoke with colleagues, phoned parents, dealt with the constant stream of emails and the constant stream of tasks they represented; she tuned the thaumic engines weekly, and added a standing meeting with the new Chief Marshal—Laura’s former second-in-command—to her roster. She followed up with Ebele about her pastoral concerns over Nikki.

A couple of times she found herself on Facebook, looking at Roz Chan’s page. It was rather quiet these days. There were few photos. Roz and her wife lived in a pretty house in San Francisco and seemed to be doing well. Once, and only once, Walden caved and went looking for Laura, who turned out to be a few years too young for Facebook; she had, instead, a rarely updated Instagram. When Walden, at 11 P.M. on a school night, found herself looking at an eight-years-ago photograph of twentysomething Laura posing with a motorbike, she thought You are much too old for this to be anything other than embarrassing.