“Is an animal a person?” Ezekiel asked.

“An animal could be a person,” said Alec. “Like a dolphin, or a gorilla. If an animal is as intelligent as a person—”

“Oh, wait, what about aliens?” said another boy. “Could you do magic to an alien?”

“Obviously an alien would be a person!”

“Would it, though?”

“But even if an animal isn’t a person,” someone said over this, “you still can’t just—”

“What if it’s a bug? What if it’s a worm?”

“You mean like if an alien was a worm—”

“Sir,” said Alec over all of this, “I was just wondering—”

“Let me ask all of you a question,” Ezekiel said, and waited until the room was quiet, focused on him. Then he asked, “Is a demon a person?”

Walden looked up from her keyboard.

“That’s what I was wondering,” Alec said. “Is it?”

And there was silence in the classroom. No one knew the answer. Walden would have been extremely surprised if they did know. The exact nature of demonic sapience was one of the most contested questions in modern invocation. But Ezekiel let the silence stretch—letting them think about it.

“Demons are so stupid, though,” one girl said.

“Is a stupid person not a person?” asked Ezekiel.

“Because,” said Alec—no hand up, this time, and Walden thought he was too absorbed in the question to remember classroom manners—oh, he was going to be a good A-level student—“everything we do in Invocation is about doing magic to demons.” With demons, Walden thought, but it was a fine distinction. Alec’s point was fair. “And if it’s wrong to do magic to people without their consent, and demons are people, then—”

“But it’s got to be all right,” objected a small girl sitting near the front, “or you wouldn’t be doing it, sir.”

“Ah yes,” said Ezekiel, and tapped his clerical collar. “I called up God and had a quick chat about the issue, and he told me it was fine.” He smiled at the class. “Is that what you wanted me to say?”

Laughter, embarrassment. “Um—”

“Well, this is a question that the GCSE syllabus doesn’t bother asking, but I think it’s a good and important question,” Ezekiel said. “I could give you a potted summary of my thoughts on the matter, but as it happens, we have someone in the room with us who did a doctorate on this sort of thing. Dr Walden, take the hot seat, help us out. Is a demon a person?”