“You’re going to collapse the incursion?” Will demanded. His expression was wild. “If you collapse it with Nikki and Matty in there they’ll die.”

“Will”—what the hell are you doing here—“get back,” Walden said.

Will ignored her. “What the fuck are you doing!” he yelled at Kenning. “What’s the point of you people if you don’t even do your job and fight demons?”

This was more or less what Walden had just been saying, but that didn’t mean she was happy to hear a student shouting it at the school’s Chief Marshal. “William!” she snapped.

Will rounded on her. “You can’t just leave Nikki to die!” he said, and then his expression settled into determined lines. Walden saw what he was going to do the instant before he did it. She grabbed hold of him.

A spell, she thought afterwards. I should have used a spell. But when you saw them every day, when you were treated to a front-row seat for all their tantrums and absurdities and interpersonal melodrama, you knew they were children. And so it was possible to forget that a person who was seventeen was also very nearly an adult. It was possible to forget that they could, and would, make decisions without you. It was possible to forget that they were bigger than you.

The contest of strength—a short thirty-eight-year-old woman who hadn’t darkened the door of a gym in months, versus a tall seventeen-year-old boy who went rowing four mornings a week—went predictably. Will shoved Walden away. She fell on her backside into the grass. He dashed up the steps and through the violet magical maw that was the front door of School House.

“Will!” Walden shouted uselessly after him. Kenning helped her to her feet.

“Right,” said Walden. “Now there’s three of them in there. I hope you’re done arguing. Give me two hours. If I don’t come out, collapse the incursion.” She unpinned the owl brooch she was wearing from her blazer and slipped it into her skirt pocket. The blazer would restrict her arms too much if she had to cast a spell in a hurry, so she left it in a pile on the grass. She didn’t look back.

Kenning caught up with her on the steps. “What,” said Walden, exasperated.

“A demonic incursion is still a Marshal matter,” said Kenning. Her shortsword gleamed in her hand. Violet light danced, reflected, from the line of silver runes that ran down the blade. “You can’t go in solo. I’m coming with you.”

chapter seven THREE-STEP PLAN