When Walden spoke, she spoke softly. She had always prided herself on being able to control a classroom without raising her voice. “May I have your attention now, thank you,” she said. ‘Thank you,’ not ‘please’: a trick she’d picked up from her first teaching mentor. Don’t ask them politely to cooperate. Assume they already have, and thank them for it. Be courteous, be kind, let them feel good about it; but leave no openings. Your authority is not optional. It had made sense, and come naturally, to a magician who had been studying formal demonic invocation since she was fourteen.

And it worked. Charlie’s body looked up sharply.

Walden let the Phoenix take over.

This was not, now, a fight between a higher demon and two outmatched humans. It was a fight between two higher demons. One of them was older and stronger, but it had trapped itself in the body and brain of a schoolboy who had never even finished his A-levels. The Phoenix was much younger but only a little smaller, and it had a tremendously unfair advantage. It had Walden, and Walden’s expertise, and Walden’s self-discipline, and Walden’s years of experience in outwitting schoolchildren.

Walden was the fellow traveller now. She watched her own hands casting spell upon spell with some wonder. She recognised all the pieces that went into the Phoenix’s use of magic, but not the way they were being used. The higher demon regarded Walden’s knowledge of the limits of spellwork as a collection of flimsy little birdcages, meaningless at the best of times, utterly laughable in the demonic plane. It knotted together disparate strands of invocation and evocation and instantiation into effortless, fluid expressions of will and power. Microsummoning, thought Walden, recognising that some of its spells were being powered by imps who appeared and disappeared in mere heartbeats, far faster than any human could have worked through an invocation. Molecular instantiation, as the Phoenix discovered with satisfaction the lithium batteries of an abandoned toy car on the kitchen counter and blazed through them in seconds, leaving dust in its wake and a great wash of power in its hands. Classical evocation—Did Walden have any idea how much power she was carrying around in her great sack of water and meat, the hidden potential of her blood and bones, the coiled kinesis lying in wait in her muscles?

Watch out, I’m not—!

The Phoenix, outraged, was discovering the displeasure of a pulled muscle. It did not speak—not in words—but Walden felt its disapproval at the waste of such a fine natural advantage. It was the first time a demon had ever told her she ought to be stretching daily.