Now you begin to know your danger. What do you do? Which way do you go? It would be trivially easy to step through the door in your flat’s living room and lie in wait for Todd’s arrival with toolbox and sabotage in hand. And kill him, and eat him. The old man you have known since you were a child. The first one on the scene, that night when Charlie died.

You were never a child.

You go on the hunt. Your enemy, your huntress, your oathbound opposite—that is the threat. Once she is gone, the danger will be over. Then you can secure your territory at your leisure.

Laura’s not stupid, so—but this thought in the back of your mind abruptly cuts off, and the little voice of a failed self starts humming an irritating advertising jingle instead. You ignore it.

It is two o’clock in the morning. You are still dressed in your daytime clothes: the body, the stupid body, would not sleep for worrying about lost children. You step into the first footwear you see, which is the green Wellington boots. It is a May evening, so you take no coat or blazer. Thus attired in smart blouse and A-line skirt and a brooch from your grandmother’s jewel box, in 15-denier tights with a ladder climbing up the thigh and in slightly muddy old boots, you set out to answer the last oath that binds you.

You are going to kill Laura Kenning.

Your eyes are alight with sorcerous balefire. Your hair and fingernails glow gold. The red-and-black outlines of tattooed spellwriting stand out stark on your arms under semi-translucent white sleeves. You look like what you are: a demon in human form.

You hunt.

…

Laura Kenning is eyeing the old key Todd handed her with some doubt. “The chapel?” she murmurs. “The big gate?”

Good guesses, both. Six hundred years ago they would have been the right guesses; there is a reason that those are the physical doors this key can unlock. But the institution endures the same way anything stays alive: by changing. The school boundaries spread past the great oaken gate decades ago. And how many people really go to chapel these days?

It feels like instinct that nudges at her, but Laura is too canny to trust anything that feels like instinct when it comes to magic. “Are you possessed, I wonder,” she mutters to the Great Key as she hangs its tarnished chain round her neck. Another good guess, but there is no demonic intelligence ruling this territory save yourself. You would have noticed a rival. “Where’s the middle of it, then?”