“GET UP,” bellowed Laura Kenning, framed in the kitchen doorway, “AND GET OUT OF MY WAY!”

chapter ten PHOENIX

Walden had never before appreciated the motive force of a really good shout. She prided herself on being soft-spoken in the classroom. But the Chief Marshal’s roar triggered some hindbrain instinct that obeyed without thinking. Walden got up and dived for the cover of the kitchen table.

Laura let loose another blast of percussive magical force that drove Charlie’s body to its knees as it struggled to stand up. Then another. She was advancing with sword in hand, eyes narrowed. The blasts kept coming, each one dizzyingly bright and accompanied by a thundercrack of displaced air. Walden saw after a second what she was doing. Old Faithful might be possessing a human body, but it was not human, and all Laura’s spells were designed to hammer it right where a human’s physical senses would confuse it most: balance, vision, sound. It seemed to be working.

Oh, she was so, so good.

And she reached the kitchen table and scowled at Walden and said, “What are you doing? Run!” Old Faithful was up again now and casting; that thousand-knives blast, but Laura’s shield absorbed it without difficulty, the top layer flaking away and the next one coming smoothly up to take its place.

Walden said, “What are you doing? Laura, get out of here!”

Laura spared an instant to favour her with a speechless glare. She turned back towards Old Faithful and hurled another bombshell blast of combat magic towards it. Then she pivoted back again, grabbed a handful of Walden’s sensible October vest, and kissed her hard and fast on the mouth.

Walden spluttered. “Laura!”

“Busy,” snapped the Marshal, returning her focus to the demon. Charlie’s body was firmly back on its feet, face twisted in fury, demonic magic bubbling dangerously around him. “Doesn’t matter. Go.”

“I can’t,” Walden said. “I made a blood pact with it. If I don’t kill it here it can follow me anywhere—Laura, it’s no use, there’s nothing to be done—for God’s sake get out there and collapse the incursion— Did you just kiss me?”

“You have to kill it?”

“It’s eleventh order!”

“Fine,” Laura said. “Then we kill it.” But Walden heard the grimness in her voice. She already knew that Laura’s next words would be—or die trying.

Then they had to stop talking, because Old Faithful was on them.