There was a further moment of silence which was, Walden realised, everyone looking at the Marshal standing next to her for confirmation. Laura said gruffly, and not quite loudly enough, “Dr Walden is correct.”

Walden looked over the heads of the crowd and met Ezekiel’s eyes. He looked not at her, but at the house behind her—which was, after all, his home. After a moment he nodded gravely, and then she saw him release the power in the perimeter and sag with exhaustion. The other magician teachers followed his lead, and slowly the protective magical shimmer dissipated. Walden breathed out.

She would have liked to go and speak to him—to thank him, to tell him what had happened, to have a moment to express how completely dreadful all that had been to someone who actually understood—but it was impossible, because the entire bloody crowd was descending on the steps of School House at once.

It took ten minutes before someone appeared with enough of an aura of power to manage the mob. The power was not magical. It was something much more effective than that. It was the power of inarguable, hierarchical, institutional command. As the crowd fell back politely, Walden looked with enormous gratitude into the face of the Headmaster. As always, David Bern had an air of profoundly reassuring middle-aged solidity. He was in his heart the quintessential Geography teacher, unshakeable as the foundations of the earth, and despite being woken up in the middle of the night to the news that his school was under attack by a higher demon, he’d had the presence of mind to put on a tie. He looked warm and professional and more than capable of dealing briskly with the journalist. The last thing any school wanted, ever, was attention from the media.

“You’re dead on your feet, Saffy,” David said firmly. “Get to bed. I’ll handle this lot.”

“Thank you,” Walden said. “Mr Bern will answer all the rest of your questions, everyone. Good night.”

Then she slipped away through the crowd. She looked for Ezekiel, but he was already gone; to his wife and to bed, hopefully. Instead Walden rescued her blazer from its crumpled heap in the grass and put it on, feeling a bit of relief when she was no longer bare-armed in the October cold with her very unteacherly tattoos on display. But she still could not leave. There were three more problems to manage, and David had given her a firm instruction with a simple glance and nod. Walden buttoned the blazer with relief and, thus armoured in good tailoring—never mind the ragged mess that Old Faithful had made of her skirt—she marched over to the gaggle of Marshals.