Laura’s expression was dark. “At the end of the day, it wasn’t anyone else’s job. It was on us to do that follow-up. Such a stupid basic lazy fuck-up. If someone had followed up, it would have saved three lives. If one person had gotten a good look at just how powerful those kids were getting and how fast—all it needed was an incursion ward with an alert on it somewhere in the family home, and the Marshals would have been there in time. But no one followed up. No one cared. No one takes the outreach and prevention side of the job seriously. It’s just ‘school security.’ An easy place to put people out to pasture when they’re too old to fight demons and not ready to retire.” She sighed. “My squad aren’t bad demon hunters, you know. They’re not. Some of them were damn good demon hunters, five years ago, ten years ago. But when you’re over sixty and you know your reaction times aren’t what they were, you can’t draw your pension yet and you’d like to live long enough to spend some time with your grandkids…”

“I understand,” Walden said.

“Anyway. That’s why I got into this, and it’s why I’m still doing it. Though it was the shock of my life when I got to Chetwood and—you know, I had this picture in my head for years, this little seven-year-old scrap who just lost her whole family. Every time I wondered if I was really wasting my time, I’d remember. It kept me going. And then suddenly I’m here and she’s five foot nine and doing her GCSEs.”

Walden took a sip of tea to hide the fact that she suddenly didn’t know what her face was doing. The sudden and forceful respect she felt seemed hard to express. Instead, she said, “They do that. Grow. The passage of time, you know. It shouldn’t be allowed.”

“It really shouldn’t,” said Laura.

Walden smiled at her. The warmth of respect was still in her thoughts, and Laura’s repeated protests about Nikki’s magical studies were taking on a new tone in her memories: not obstructive, but protective. Still wrong, of course. “Thank you for telling me,” she said. “I am grateful. If you hadn’t been there tonight, I would be dead or possessed by now.”

“Still not sure about your pet tattoo monster,” Laura said.