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.

Now she’s trying to get you with a sword and it’s very scary! Fear is a feeling distinct from a demon’s normal threat assessments. Fear makes the body sweat and tremble and try to run away. How is she so fast? How does she move like that? She catches you glancingly across the thigh—so much for that skirt, while your tights, already laddered, are rapidly going to ribbons—and it’s a cut, it bleeds, it hurts. This is your body! You need that blood! And you cannot pause to heal it because the banishments and abjurations engraved in the blade are giving you the world’s worst headache and you will not, you will not, you will not be sent away.

This place is yours. It is alive, and it is powerful, and it is yours. You demand that power. You draw it screaming from the world. The green grass under your feet shrivels and browns, and the browning spreads outwards, a world burned, a world consumed. The birch tree planted in Charlie’s memory abruptly drops all its young green leaves. They are crumbling to dust already as they fall. Oh, but you are mighty, you are mighty! There are burn marks growing around the magical siphons on your left arm, but you ignore them. You have resources. You won’t hurt the children, no, you won’t even hurt the staff, but you can feed on the green and gold loveliness of this place. You can burn it all up and then let anyone try and stop you—

The dead grass sparks. The fires begin in half a dozen places. Fire is your nature. On the far side of Scrubs, half-awake frightened children are being shepherded across the road as fast as the handful of night staff can make them go.

(The ache in your chest is hers, not yours. This is her school. This is her world you are burning. Whatever else Chetwood is, it has always been green and beautiful. It has taken years, decades, in some places centuries of care, to make it look like this.)

Laura has to fall back from the blaze of you. She is shielding again, shielding as hard as she can. Her forehead and cheeks glow scarlet in the heat. Sweat is dripping down her face. She cries out, “Is this what you want?”

“You don’t know what I want!”

“Is this what she’d want?” Laura shouts, voice sounding clear above the bonfire roar. “Do you really think you’re her?”