The Christmas party was held at a venue in Finsbury Park, an uninspiring box of a room with gleaming chrome tables pushed against the purple-painted walls, a fake Christmas tree strung with purple tinsel in one corner, and two bored-looking young men working the bar. The thing about a work social with forty-odd teachers in more than a dozen disciplines was that they all only really had one thing in common. Once everyone had used up the what are your Christmas plans gambit, there was nothing much to do except get drunk and talk shop.

Walden, accordingly, did both.

A lot of people were interested in talking shop with her tonight, and not just classroom business either. They asked about the tattoos—even academic teachers could recognise spellwriting, when they lived at Chetwood School—they asked nervously after Nikki and Mathias, and they asked about Old Faithful. Walden had done a presentation at the all-hands staff meeting after the crisis, and she’d thought that had cleared things up. It turned out that the teachers of Chetwood were still nearly as shaken as the students. No wonder the school had gone so sullen and miserable towards the end of term. When adults were worried, children noticed.

“It was so big, right,” said Lilly Tibbett to Walden. The blonde NQT was flushed and earnestly tipsy. “I mean—I was on the perimeter—it was just so big. I could feel it trying to bulge out around me. I was sure it was going to come right for me when it came. I was sure.” She was right, Walden thought. If it had succeeded in killing Walden and breaking loose in mundane reality, Old Faithful would have spotted Lilly’s obvious uncertainty and slammed down hard on the weak point in the perimeter she represented. “I’m an evoker—that’s my thing, you know? I got an A in A-level Invo, but I dropped as soon as I could at uni. I don’t like demons. Like, the ones that skin people, and the weird-looking gross ones, obviously. But even imps, they just make my skin crawl. School has so many imps right now, did you notice? They’re just everywhere, like rats. I don’t know how you do it. We’re not getting another big one, are we?”