The sorcerous battleground is far enough from Scrubs that no one looking out the windows can make out exactly what is happening. The night porter takes the sensible precaution of locking the doors from the inside after the first group of children comes downstairs to report mysterious flashes of light. He telephones the school Marshal barracks first, and then the police.

…

Laura hits you with flashbangs of combat magic, bright lights and loud noises and—a nice trick, this—grenades of dizziness, aimed at your inner ear. This strategy is cheap, in terms of spellpower expended, and it slowed down Old Faithful substantially.

Old Faithful was not human. You are.

You were not such a fool as to discard the living tissue of your new self in favour of an easily mastered rotting death-puppet. You are Sapphire Walden, alive and whole, and this is your body. You instantiate fine dark membranes to protect your eyes from the bright lights. You miniaturise magical shields for your ears, so the booming of displaced air shrinks to a distant drumming thud. The dizziness is harder to manage. You feel vaguely nauseous. But you command the earth under your feet to rise up and hold you steady; and then, because this is your territory, your land, your school, you extend the ripple in the earth outwards and smile meanly as Laura stumbles and falls.

You intend to cut off the localised earthquake before it reaches Scrubs. Mundanity is slower to respond to your will than the infinitely bendable raw magic of the demonic realm, and besides, you are busy. A few aftershocks slip from your attention. The tower of scaffolding at one end of the concrete edifice sways and creaks alarmingly. Because you lived in California for several years, you are distantly aware: 1960s poured concrete foundations are almost certainly not earthquake safe!

(Stop that, snaps Walden, with the frantic impotence of a person well past the limits of their authority. Stop that at once!

Somewhere at the edges of your attention, Lilly Tibbett comes running out of her ground-floor flat in pyjamas and trainers and an old hoodie, tells the night porter, “We’ve got to get them over to the other side of the road,” and slams the flat of her hand into the nearest fire alarm.)

This place is yours. This place is yours! How dare she—

And then Laura is on you, and that sword is a keen line of white fire, an extension of her arm. Here is the other half of unconscious competence. The Phoenix has been making Walden’s panting middle-aged meat sack run laps of the rugby pitches for six months. Laura Kenning has been an active-duty demon hunter for fifteen years. She knows so much more about having a body than you do.