“A couple of blips in a five-decade record of excellent arcane security,” said Walden, and then hated herself for it. “‘Blips’ is not the word. Even a minor incident is a terrible disaster when a higher demon is involved. But Chetwood exists to protect its students as well as to educate them. That’s true of any school, but it’s doubly true here. I think we do it well, on the whole. Tea?” The relaxation end of the staffroom—well away from the possessed photocopier—was all sagging, comfortable armchairs and institutional mud-brown carpet. There was a fresh pot of tea already brewed in the little attached kitchen.

“The work we do,” muttered Kenning, and then nodded yes to tea. “Listen, Dr Walden—” a pause, and then Kenning corrected herself, abruptly, “Saffy. I think we need a reset.”

“A reset?” Walden passed Kenning a mug of tea. Kenning started shovelling sugar cubes into it.

“I mean—” Did the woman always stop and start this much when she was talking? “Look. You’re not my boss. I know you don’t like that, but it’s true. Marshal work, my team’s work, it’s not the same as the kind of magic you do. You don’t understand the work we do.” Walden raised her eyebrows—she could have said Actually I wrote a rather well-received paper on—but Kenning was barrelling on. “You’ve been a magician probably all your life, and you’ve never been a demon hunter. You’ve never seen the amount of damage these fuckers can do to a normal person’s life. But I get that you’re good at this and you care. Well, I’m good and I care too. We ought to be working together. We can disagree like grown-ups, probably.”

“Would you say that we haven’t been grown-up until now?” asked Walden.

Kenning gave her a Look. “‘It’s only a very small demon,’” she said.

Walden remembered saying it, but she didn’t remember sounding quite so condescending. “‘Good evening, Ms Walden’?” she answered.

Kenning snorted. “Sorry. Your face—well. Yes, all right, childish. You agree we’ve been childish?”

“It’s the school environment,” Walden said. “It brings out everyone’s inner teenager.”

Kenning laughed faintly, and drank some tea. Walden noticed, again, that she was gorgeous. This was out of character for her. She needed more of a non-school social life, probably, which was something she would add to her to-do list as soon as she had the time. “A reset, then,” she said. “We can share expertise more productively. I couldn’t agree more.”

Share expertise productively, Kenning mouthed, and then took another mouthful of over-sugared tea in apparent despair.

Walden decided to ignore this as leftover childishness. “Shall we start by setting up a standing meeting? I have a slot on Sunday afternoons.”

“You work on Sundays?”