Charlie as she’d known him, bright eyes and crooked smile, grinning down at his girlfriend, who was a desperately tiny waif with violently bleach-blonde hair. “Oh,” Laura said behind her. Walden remembered that dye job, done herself in a Scrubs bathroom while a friend kept watch for patrolling teachers. She watched her teenage self—had she really looked that young?—go up on tiptoe to say something in Charlie’s ear. She couldn’t remember what she’d said, but whatever it was, it made him laugh. Teenage Saffy was laughing too. Then the two of them went on, hand in hand down the hallway, past Walden and Laura as if they were not there and further into the depths of School House: a pair of giggling children who had never met a consequence that mattered.

It was amazing how stupid teenagers could be, Walden thought, with enormous, grieving fondness. She knew she wouldn’t change them for the world.

chapter eleven REFLECTION AND TARGET-SETTING

Walden stepped through the doorway feeling tremendously relieved; the incursion was shrinking behind them, and would collapse itself before long. But outside School House there was a depressing scene of chaos. No one seemed to be in charge. The two people with direct responsibility for leading magical security at Chetwood had both been inside.

She had a whole ten seconds to take in the scene of useless milling about around the edges of School House’s lawn. There were far too many people, including an ambulance crew and an additional squadron of Marshals who seemed to be arguing with Laura’s second-in-command. Ebele and the younger children were gone, but Ezekiel was still there, his power sunk into the magical perimeter, his face a mask of effort and exhaustion. Several younger magician teachers were holding the perimeter too; they must have been woken up from their comfortable beds in the Scrubs flats. Lilly Tibbett was wearing purple plaid pyjamas and enormous fluffy slippers. Then Walden’s attention was arrested by the sight of Nikki, Mathias and Will, sitting in a glum little circle on the grass with foil first-aid blankets over them—good grief, why had no one got them out of here? At least Will seemed to be conscious—

And then she spotted the lurking figure on the edge of things whom she recognised, with a sinking heart, as a self-appointed journalist from the Chetwood Village Inquirer. Oh God, no.

Silence fell when the crowd finally noticed Walden and Laura on the steps of School House. Walden took an assembly every other week and was used to an awkward hush and a lot of eyes on her, but just now she did not feel strong enough for it, not at all. She closed her eyes for a moment.

Her school, her students, her responsibility.

“Everything is under control,” she announced, pitching her voice to carry through the night and the crowd. “The demon is dead and the incursion is closing.”