Walden lifted the stasis and said, “Alfie, please wait over there. Thank you.” She was careful to turn away before the tears brimming in his eyes fell; he was already scrubbing frantically at them with the back of his hand.

Noor looked neither frightened nor unhappy. The corner of her mouth was pulling slowly upwards in a lopsided snarl that showed her teeth, fenced by braces. It was a child’s face, but not a child’s expression. Walden drew the second exorcism array larger, to keep herself well out of physical range. Every time she glanced up Noor had shifted, fighting ferociously against the slow-down spell, trying to get a little closer to Walden. She was not a big girl, but a child did not need to be bigger than you to hurt you—not if you cared about their safety, and they didn’t. This demon, aggressive and fiery as it seemed to be, probably had only a passing interest in keeping Noor herself in one piece.

Array complete. Walden took up a casting position at its northernmost corner, and activated it.

Should have made it bigger, said the Phoenix at the last moment. Walden grunted with effort as she dragged magic through the array, pushing the exorcism into action by brute force. This demon was fighting hard against being pulled out of its host. At last Noor’s worrying snarl fell away, and she cried out in pain and then started to cough horribly. The thing that emerged past her lips was slime, not smoke: gloopy, dark green, smearing over her chin and her red PE kit, blood-flecked.

Walden held out a commanding hand. The bulk of the slimy stuff gathered into a nasty globule of green matter and jumped into her palm. It felt slightly warm and completely disgusting. The image of the Phoenix darted down past the band of tattooed spellwriting at her wrist and slashed at it with shining talons. Third-order demon, Walden thought. Unsettling ooze was a common reification for something this size.

Where had it come from? How had it got here? Why didn’t Walden already know?

Noor’s coughing kept going and turned into awful wheezes. Walden lived inside her authoritative calm, immovable, sepulchral. “Noor, where’s your inhaler?”

Noor sat down hard on the floor, pointing, unable to make words. Walden retrieved the inhaler from the pencil case and handed it over. An asthmatic teenager usually knew what to do for their own emergency better than someone who hadn’t done the first aid training in several months. Noor took deep, slow puffs from the inhaler. From the other side of the room where she’d ordered him to wait, Alfie said, “Should I get the nurse?”

Sensible boy. He still sounded a little wobbly. Walden wasn’t letting him out of her sight until she knew where that imp he’d been carrying had come from. “If Noor can walk, we’re all going to go together.”