“I see,” said Walden. She understood now why Aneeta had bypassed housemasters and tutors and come straight to the school’s Director of Magic. Doubts, desires, insecurities: Who had more of those than a teenager? Their unwelcome visitor hadn’t been able to get a grip on Walden’s own mind during that summoning gone wrong, but she had not stamped hard enough on Aneeta’s question about its whispers. In a class with Mathias in it, it was easy to forget that all of them were vulnerable. She needed to set up a one-to-one meeting with Nikki in the morning—probably she needed to telephone School House tonight, in fact; Ebele would still be up—best to check in on Mathias too—even Will—

“And she said I mustn’t tell,” said Aneeta, “and she wouldn’t talk to me anymore, but,” and she pulled from the pocket of her puffy pink coat a dog-eared, ancient paperback, now decorated with dozens of pink Post-it notes.

Nielle’s Arrays. Walden’s undergrad copy. She reached out and Aneeta passed it to her with rapid gratitude, as if she was handing off a large spider. Walden opened at the first pink Post-it. Chapter eleven, triple arrays, meant for summoning archdemons. Nikki’s familiar looping handwriting on the Post-it said, CHECK how big is big enough???

“She left it on the table at lunch,” Aneeta said. “I don’t think she knows I’ve got it. But I looked at her notes and … she wouldn’t, but what if…”

What if. Nikki had been asking aggressive, high-level theory questions all week. She had tried repeatedly to go off topic in lessons and pick Walden’s brain on advanced summoning. She had been acting differently, in a way that Walden had not perceived as worrying because it was consistent with what she already expected from her best student. She hadn’t said Why are you asking, Nikki? She’d given her a book of advanced summoning arrays.

Walden closed Nielle’s Arrays carefully. She couldn’t let Aneeta see how frightened she was.

“I’ve been thinking about it all day,” Aneeta said. “Maybe I’m just being silly, but—I went to bed and I was lying in bed thinking and then I read the book some more and I looked at her notes and—I know Nikki’s loads better than me, but I’m not bad at invocation. I think I know what she’s— And then I texted her. And she didn’t text back.”

Walden knew she hadn’t fully controlled her expression this time. She said, “Thank you, Aneeta.” You should have come to find me hours ago, but there was no use telling her that now, when she was already here and already in tears. Walden picked up the office phone and dialled the extension for School House.

No answer.

She tried again. She felt herself willing Ebele or Ezekiel to pick up.