Page 34

chapter thirty

CONTINUING PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Magical healing beyond the most basic first aid required a medical degree before they even let you try, and the insane amount of work required to be both a fully qualified magician and a fully qualified doctor meant that there were only about a dozen honest-to-God Healers in the country. Most of them were in lucrative private practice. Walden was quite surprised to wake up in a hospital bed, being watched narrowly by a doctor whose NHS badge had THAUMATURGIC CONSULTANT next to the name and headshot. “Er, good morning,” she said, and then she noticed that she didn’t have a right arm anymore, and felt a bit faint, and sort of lost track.

Next time she woke up a few more things registered, including the extensive defensive and protective circles chalked onto the floor of the otherwise empty ward—“All that for me?” Walden said aloud—and the display of bouquets and GET WELL SOON cards on the table at the end of the bed. She half-turned, trying not to pay any attention to her own right-hand side, trying not to notice the missing weight. Everything seemed to balance wrong.

The room had a frosted glass door. On the other side of it, two Marshals were standing guard.

“Ah, the stable door,” remarked Walden to herself, and then laughed a little, and told herself she did not sound at all hysterical.

The next time she woke up, her parents were there. They looked old, Walden thought vaguely, as Mum nattered bravely about the latest plumbing disaster in the Sussex cottage. When did my parents get old?

The time after that, it was her brother John and his wife. Not their children, which Walden ended up feeling was a bit of a shame. It would have been easier to handle the direct curiosity of her niece and nephew than the terrible, eyes-averted sympathy of her sister-in-law. Yes, I know, she wanted to say. It was my arm. There’s no point pretending it’s still there.

The hospital staff were very kind and friendly and competent and didn’t seem to know very much. Except for the THAUMATURGIC CONSULTANT , who was there a lot more often than could really be medically necessary, and who was clearly a dab hand with incursion wards.

“Oh, finally,” Walden said, when she looked up for a visitor’s arrival and found that it was Chief Ramamurthy. He was wearing a suit, not his Marshal whites, and a studied neutral expression. Walden recognised the look of an authority figure in investigative mode. She’d worn it often enough herself. Well, that meant he was probably the best person to ask: “Would you mind letting me know if this is protective custody or if I’m under arrest or what? The NHS can’t possibly want me still here taking up a whole ward. It’s not as if they can regrow the arm.”

The senior Marshal sat down. “You’re under observation, Dr Walden,” he said.

“Well, obviously, ” Walden said. “Please can you tell me what happened? The school—”

“Chetwood School,” said Chief Ramamurthy after a moment, “is also under observation.”

“Yes, but—” The thaumic engines’ collapse, the sideways slide into the demonic realm, the release of the Phoenix, four hundred children, and so many of Walden’s colleagues, all of it her responsibility—and the awful fate of Mark Daubery, a nasty man but still—and Laura. Laura . Walden hardly knew what to ask first.

“I can’t tell you much,” said Ramamurthy at last. “And I wouldn’t if I could.”

“I should have called you in January,” said Walden. “When I began to suspect the source of the problems. I had your card on my desk.”

“It was found there, Doctor. Left on one side, covered in dust.”

Walden looked down. “Yes. Well.” She forced herself to rally. “The school, Chief Ramamurthy. Please.”

“As far as we can tell, the site of Chetwood School is safe and stable,” said Ramamurthy. “For now.”

Walden breathed out. But that was not all. She made herself ask. “Were there casualties?”

There was a long pause. Possibly the longest pause Walden had ever experienced. At last, the Marshal said, “The most serious was probably yourself. Or Mark Daubery. But you both seem to have lived.”

Unfortunately, said his tone, but Walden just breathed out hard. “Thank you. Thank you. Do let me know… what I can do. If anything.”

“Magicians,” Ramamurthy muttered. “If it was up to me… well.”

Walden felt it would be impolitic to say something true but uncooperative like, You do realise that legally I can’t be held responsible for anything my body did while possessed by a higher demon. It was obvious that Ramamurthy knew that already, and didn’t much like it. Walden had some sympathy with his position. She felt responsible. She had been there all along. The Phoenix had been herself. Herself—and yet not.

“Can you confirm that the concealed curseworkings we found in several places around the school site were the work of Mark Daubery?” Ramamurthy asked.

“You sound like you already know,” Walden said. “How many exactly did you find?”

“Enough,” Ramamurthy. “Yes, I know. I know his bloody handwriting. We’ve never been able to pin anything on him.”

“I can…” Walden began, and then said more honestly, “I’m not sure.”

“Define sure .”

“There was a cursed umbrella,” Walden said. “It had a demon lure on it. That was the one I found. It shook me badly enough that the Ph… the higher demon I had leashed was able to break loose. I feel fairly certain that was Mark, yes. I don’t know about any others.”

“An umbrella. Right. What colour?”

“Red. With a school logo.”

“We’ll start looking. Have another of these, Dr Walden.” He took out a card and left it on the end table next to the get-well-soon bouquets. The flowers were wilting. “Do call me if anything else occurs to you.”

The person Walden had been six months ago would have asked more questions, lots of them, immediately. Now she just felt tired. Mark was exactly the kind of person that Chetwood School existed to create: powerful, free, capable of anything, capable of getting away with anything. Maybe Chief Ramamurthy would stop him from getting away with what he’d done to her school. A cynical part of her soul doubted it very much. It should have made her angry, but it didn’t. She was just exhausted. She still felt distantly, glumly awful about what the Phoenix had done to Mark; and she hoped she would never see him again.

Chief Ramamurthy paused by the door. He nodded at Walden’s truncated right arm. The stump was above the elbow, though she remembered seeing Laura’s shining blade go through the joint. The surgeons had had to tidy up the amputation afterwards, apparently, and take a bit more off to—avoid infection, or something? Walden needed to have a proper conversation with someone about it, obviously. She needed to be practical. But it was all a little hard to think about.

“Marshal Kenning’s report was interesting reading,” the senior Marshal said. “That was the most sensible thing you could have done. I hope you know that.”

“I do know that,” Walden said. “I’m not stupid.”

He snorted. “Define stupid. Magicians .”

The most sensible thing you could have done ; the words stayed with Walden. They were somehow a lot more comforting than anyone else’s kind, awkward sympathy. The next time a nurse came in, she asked for pen and paper. If she was going to be left-handed for the rest of her life, it was time to start practising. No one ever learned anything by sitting around feeling sorry for themselves.

She was stuck in the hospital for another week. She had to be costing the NHS a fortune just in wasted space. During visiting hours on Friday, someone knocked on the frosted glass door and Walden called, “Come in!” without looking up. She’d managed to get hold of a ream of lined paper which she had propped carefully on her knees, and her attention was on writing with a cheap biro: R r R r R r, until the letter came out looking right every time. Her left hand was clumsy, and her bandaged left arm twinged. The Phoenix had been making ample use of those spell-siphons, especially once it started panicking at the very end. Apparently the burns had been quite bad. Walden didn’t yet know how much was left of her tattoos. She would have been happy to discover that the spells she had spent so long designing were gone forever, but it did seem a shame to lose the flowers.

A memory: the tattoo artist, that handsome bearded man in San Francisco, about five foot two—even shorter than Walden—and as serious about his art as she was about hers. He’d done such lovely work. Irreplaceable.

Lots of things were irreplaceable.

Walden was trying not to think too hard about what she’d really lost: more than twenty years of practise at freehand spellwriting. Speed and confidence and precision so deeply ingrained that in the lessons where she taught new summoning arrays, it always took her longer to demonstrate something that was intentionally wrong . Now she was stuck with childlike wobbles and inaccuracies just writing the alphabet. She did not trust herself to safely summon even a first-order imp. Effectively, she was not a magician anymore.

Well. Her left hand might not have the skill, but the knowledge was still in her head. She would get it back.

Writing on a whiteboard, as well. She was going to have to stand the other way around. Assuming, of course, that she ever got to go back to the classroom at all.

The final R went off into a useless scrawl and the biro fell out of Walden’s fingers. She made a frustrated sound.

“Should I go?” said Laura.

“Oh!” said Walden, finally looking up. “Sorry, I—”

Laura was wearing jeans and a plain grey T-shirt, and carrying a battered old rucksack in one hand. She’d had a haircut. The short back and sides was crisp and tidy. She bent and picked up the biro from where it had rolled under the bed, dumped the rucksack next to the green plastic visitor’s chair, and gave an assessing glance to the chalked incursion wards. Walden could see that nothing had scuffed or faded. “I can see you’re busy. Should you really be doing that yet?”

“None of your business,” said Walden.

“Saffy.”

Walden cleared her throat. “Sorry. Unnecessarily aggressive, yes, I know, sorry. I—well, if I wasn’t doing something, I think I would just start screaming and not stop. I’m very bored.”

“And you’ve been through it,” Laura said. She sat down in the plastic chair. “I know.”

It was me and not me. I was there. I had to watch. I couldn’t move. “Sorry,” Walden said. “It’s lovely to see you. Thank you for stopping by.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t, when—”

“Sorry,” Walden said. There just didn’t seem to be anything else to say. She looked down at her scrawled page of R r R r and then decisively turned it over. Blank lined paper: much better. No evidence of anything.

Eventually she started counting in her head. Thirteen—fourteen—fifteen —

Laura had never stood at the front of a soundless classroom waiting implacably for someone to give in and put their hand up. She cracked first. “This has got to be the most awkward silence we’ve ever had.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“I told you to watch that fucking bird.”

“Thank you, Laura,” said Walden. “I do appreciate a good I told you so .”

Laura put her face in her hands. “I’m doing this wrong,” she said, muffled. “Sod it. I’ve got something for you.”

“Cards and flowers go on the table there.” Walden had mostly stopped looking at them.

“You want to read this one.”

“Really—”

Laura pulled an envelope out of her rucksack. The envelope was large and pink. Walden took it with some surprise. Large and pink didn’t seem very much like Laura.

DOCTOR WALDEN was written on the envelope, in looping silver pen, underlined. Walden looked at it for a few seconds. Then she opened the envelope and pulled out the card. It was an oversized GET WELL SOON card with colourful lettering. She had several similar already. When she opened it, a folded sheet of A5 notepaper and several photos fell out.

The photos had been printed, unmistakeably, with Chetwood’s school library printer. It always did a streak of black ink in the top corner when you printed colour, and no one could work out why. Walden didn’t even need to read the card. She had spent enough time marking their homework; she knew their handwriting. Looping Nikki, neat Aneeta, Will’s flashy schoolboy signature and Mathias’s scrawl.

The photos were from the Leavers’ Ball. There was Nikki, dazzling in a sequinned white evening gown that Ebele must have picked out with her. Aneeta in a beautiful pink-and-gold sari, flushed and laughing. Mathias looking taller, and actually rather smart, in his dark suit and sombre tie. Will had gone for a white suit—ridiculous boy!—and matched his tie and pocket square to the scarlet-and-silver of Nikki’s earrings.

INVOCATION SQUAD! one of them had written under the standard teenagers-having-fun photo of four grinning eighteen-year-olds with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Similar slogans had been scrawled under the other photos. Mathias and Nikki toasting each other with midrange prosecco. Aneeta unflatteringly mid-bite of a canape. Several of Will on the dance floor looking increasingly drunk, and one of Will and Nikki dancing together, captioned with a gel-pen heart symbol. Walden could picture Aneeta drawing the heart, teasing, and Nikki’s glare.

Other shots showed the rest of the party: the dancing, the drinking, the demolished buffet table. Above all, the leavers: Year Thirteen, en masse, looking delighted with themselves in their formalwear. As usual, not every teenager had quite got the hang of formalwear yet. Walden saw badly fitting suits and a number of ill-advised cummerbunds. Several girls had worn cocktail dresses so shockingly short that they would probably look back in amazement at their own daring in a few years’ time. And here was Mathias on the dance floor in a cheering group, and here Aneeta and Nikki were joining hands to spin each other. And here was Will with Nikki again, the lights turned down low for what must have been the slow dance, and another gel-pen heart.

Good for them.

In the background, Ezekiel and Ebele were dancing as well.

Walden had glimpsed several other teachers on the periphery of the photographs as she went through them. The ball was never officially run by the school, but Year Thirteen usually invited their teachers. They did all the planning themselves, with a grant from the Parents’ Association and additional funds chucked in the pot by their actual parents. Much easier to answer the question of Can we serve alcohol? when there were no official risk assessments to get through. Adults made their own choices about these things—and this was a party finally, officially, for adults.

They looked so happy. They looked so grown-up. They’d thought of Walden; they’d sent her the photos. She wiped her eyes with a corner of the bedsheet.

Good for them.

“Are you okay?” Laura said.

“Yes,” said Walden, wiping her face again. “Yes, thank you, yes. How did this get to you?” She’d had kind and carefully neutral cards from a few coworkers—Ebele, David—but nothing from students.

“Aneeta knows where I work,” said Laura drily. “She’s a strong character, that girl.”

Aneeta, when Walden started teaching her, at the beginning of Year Twelve, had been quiet and well-behaved with a marked tendency to disappear into the background of any lesson. ‘Character’ was one of the things that every school claimed to instil and that no school could really control. Walden was not going to keep crying. It was too embarrassing.

She unfolded the sheet of A5 notepaper. Dear Dr Walden, Nikki had written.

All right, so maybe she was going to keep crying.

“Um—” said Laura.

“Not bad news,” Walden said. “It’s hard to explain.” And then she remembered that of course Laura knew the context. They’d been arguing about Nikki for years. “Nicola Conway is going to Oxford. She says ‘if I get the grades,’ but of course she’ll get the grades. She was having a tricky time making up her mind—well. I’m very glad. I think she deserves it. I think she’ll do wonderfully.”

Nikki had written about the A-level exams. What Walden wouldn’t give for a chance to see the theory paper! She thought it had all gone well. Matty was happy because there were loads of array questions and he’s good at those. What was the date today? A-level results were usually the third Thursday in August—Walden was not going to rest easy until she knew if Mathias had pulled off that overall B—

Will to Christ Church, Nikki to Wadham, both for Sorcery. Aneeta to Imperial College London for an eventual MSc in Biochemistry. Mathias had decided on a gap year to work and travel, and then an apprenticeship instead of university. Did you know there’s a Marshal apprenticeship? They’re starting one with a BThau degree path —Walden had not known that; when had that happened?

Your students forgot you. It was natural for them to forget you. You were a brief cameo in their lives, a walk-on character from the prologue. For every sentimental my teacher changed my life story you heard, there were dozens of my teacher made me moderately bored a few times a week and then I got through the year and moved on with my life and never thought about them again.

They forgot you. But you did not forget them.

Thank you for everything, Nikki had written.

“Thank you,” Walden said, folding up the note, tucking it safely back into the card along with the photos. “Thank you for this.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” said Laura.

“Not really,” Walden said. “Not yet.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do now?”

“Technically I still have a job,” Walden said. “I think, reading between the lines,” that had been a difficult phone call, “that it would make David’s life much, much easier if I gracefully resigned. I can’t do my job. At least, not for the time being. And also… I don’t want to.” It was the first time she’d said it. She said it again to make sure, and heard the steady ring of truth. “I don’t want to go back.”

“Good,” said Laura. “Good.”

“Oh?”

“Not that it’s my business,” Laura said. “I know. But it’s about time.”

“Technically I left school in 2003,” Saffy said. “Realistically—”

“—no, you didn’t.”

“No,” said Saffy. “No, I don’t think I ever left Chetwood at all. When I was seventeen I watched my first love get consumed by a monster, and I knew that it was my fault. And then instead of getting therapy about it, I went and got a doctorate about it. So that explains,” she made a vague hand gesture, “most things about me, I suppose.”

“Give me some credit for being an adult, it was twenty years ago!” said Laura, and after a moment Saffy realised it was her own words being quoted back at her. But Laura didn’t seem to mean it unkindly. Saffy couldn’t remember the last time she had felt—or wanted to feel— understood, by another human being. It was a funny feeling. A little disorienting, when you had spent so much of your life trying to avoid ever getting too personal.

“Well,” she said, trying to make light of it, “after all, most grown-ups have baggage—don’t we?”

“No, I’ve spent my career trying to make up the Marshals’ failure to a sad little girl I glimpsed once when I was twenty-two for normal reasons,” Laura said. “Probably it’s all my mum’s fault, or something.”

“The good news is that Nikki Conway is going to Oxford,” Saffy said. “Where she’s going to become an absolutely first-rate magician, if I’m any judge. Which I am.”

Laura made a face. “The passage of time. It shouldn’t be allowed.”

“But it happens whether you like it or not,” Saffy said. Laura made a toasting gesture at her, and she answered—left-handed, without too much difficulty—by miming a clinking glass. Another thing that was terrible about being alone with your thoughts in a warded hospital bed: no one would bring you a comforting gin and tonic, no matter how medicinal you felt it would be.

“I don’t suppose you could tell me what happened to the Phoenix,” Saffy said.

“Oh, it’s still there,” said Laura. “Stuck into the school’s magical shadow in the demonic realm. I told you back in October that something was going to move into Chetwood’s territory. Chief Ramamurthy made me do a hunter’s assessment on how hard it would be to get rid of it again.”

“And?”

“It would be a complete fucking nightmare and we’d just have to fight something else the same size or bigger six months later,” Laura said. “And…”

She looked squirrelly. Saffy thought about the Phoenix. She knew it better than anyone else alive. And because no one had died—because she and Mark Daubery had been the two worst casualties—because Chetwood School was still in one piece, and Year Thirteen had finished their A-levels and thrown a party about it as usual—because, after everything, this had just been a disaster, and not a tragedy—she knew what had happened.

“It’s cooperating, isn’t it,” she said.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Laura said. “But it’s clearing out everything else in the area. It’s going to take them years to get a new system up and running instead of those old thaumic engines. The school ought to be crawling with demons. But instead the trouble has died right down. They’re not even getting photocopier imps anymore.”

“Of course not. The Phoenix is the photocopier imp, I think you’ll find,” Saffy said. “On a larger scale, of course. But the demonic realm is mostly not a very nice place. A good territory is worth protecting. And the Phoenix is a sentient creature with comprehensible goals that largely align with the school’s magical security needs. It should be manageable, and more or less benign, if people use a little common sense. Though I think it would be worth drawing up an employment contract. Demons take contracts very seriously.”

“More or less what Roger said,” Laura said, and at Saffy’s blank look, “Professor Rollins? He said you’d remember him. They’ve got him consulting.”

“Oh, the perfect person. But how on earth did the governors get Roger Rollins to agree to consulting work for a private school? He hates the whole concept. There couldn’t be enough money in the world, surely.”

Laura’s mouth tilted up. “He’s doing it for free. But Chetwood’s made a grant out of the school endowment to establish magical teaching departments at three state comps and a sixth form college. One close by, one in Manchester, two in London. Marshal-backed project, because you wouldn’t believe how much trouble kids get into teaching themselves magic from the internet instead. At least if they’re doing it at school someone can catch the idiots early.”

“Ah,” Saffy said, starting to laugh. Yes, that would do it. And then she said, “Hmm,” because, actually… if she could teach again…

She wasn’t going to assume her own helplessness yet. Of course she was going to teach again. Establishing a department from scratch sounded interesting. It would be mostly frontline teaching, rather than senior management, but with enough responsibility to keep her stretched. Less money, but she didn’t need the money, not really—

Laura was watching her with a hard-to-read little smile. “He did say I should mention it to you. Did I tell you I’ve been taking lessons?”

“It was very obvious that you’d been taking lessons,” Saffy assured her, and then realised how patronising that sounded. “I mean—because you’re getting so much better, so fast, and— Oh no, that sounds worse.”

“Just a bit,” Laura said.

“Stop laughing at me.”

“It’s all right, I’m used to you.”

“You’re genuinely very good!” said Saffy.

“Some of us don’t hang our self-respect on being the best at everything,” Laura said. “Don’t worry.”

“I don’t—well, not everything .”

Laura looked at her thoughtfully. “I’m going to ask one more time. Are you all right?”

“Honestly?” Saffy said. “I’m about as well as you can be when you’re nearly forty, broadly unemployable at least in the short term, and learning to manage a serious disability.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologise.”

“I’m not sorry for cutting your arm off,” Laura clarified. “Clever of you to come up with it and I wish I’d thought of it sooner. I’m sorry about everything else.”

“You’re so sensible,” said Saffy wistfully. “It’s nice. Anyway, it could all be a lot worse. I’m lucky enough to have savings and family to fall back on. My parents gave my brother the deposit for his first mortgage and have felt guilty ever since that I never asked for one. Maybe I’ll buy a house. In any case, I can easily afford to take a year—maybe a couple of years—before I decide what I’m doing next.”

“Think you’ll be in London?”

“I could be,” Saffy said.

Laura didn’t say anything else. Saffy started counting in her head again. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…

In the end she had mercy. “Do you think this awkward silence is better or worse than the last one?”

“I’m not good at this,” said Laura. “And I’ve never asked someone out after chopping her arm off before.”

The absolutely beautiful swell of delight in Saffy’s chest. You grew out of most parts of being a teenager, thank goodness, but you didn’t grow out of romance. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“You know, you could make a move for once.”

“If you’re not good at this, I’m terrible,” Saffy said. “I spent months kicking myself that I never actually got your phone number.” Confession time. “I stalked your old Instagram.”

Laura made a choking sound of laughter.

“I know. I know!”

“Well,” said Laura. “How about it?”

“It does sort of depend,” Saffy said. “I think I’m… not really looking for casual. If you understand. I’m a bit too old for messing around, I think.”

Laura raised her eyebrows.

“Yes, all right, and I also just had a casual relationship with a complete wanker. It reminded me why you shouldn’t.”

Laura snorted. “I did tell you so.”

“You did. I also told myself so. Repeatedly. And yet.”

“Well,” said Laura. “All right. Let’s try it, then.”

“Just like that?”

“You don’t want to mess around, neither do I. We worked together for years. We can skip the getting to know you and give serious a go. Take six months, see if we hate it, go from there.” Laura hesitated, and then added challengingly. “You should know, though—I want kids.”

“Oh! Well. I think I could be persuaded, actually,” said Saffy. “Provided I’m not the one who has to get pregnant.” At Laura’s look, she clarified, “I do like children. Teenagers more than toddlers, but if you start with one you eventually get the other. And I think, well. I think it could be good.” Then she had to laugh. “Oh, listen to us, aren’t we awful? Shouldn’t we go on one more date first? Or at least, I don’t know, kiss ?”

Laura leaned over the bed, tilted Saffy’s face up with one hand, and kissed her.

“Are you sure you’re not trying to be the best at everything,” Saffy said breathlessly a few moments later. “No, come back here.”

It had been so long since she kissed someone she both liked and respected. It had been so long since she kissed someone she wanted . She had forgotten how it felt to want like this, want entirely, want with meaning, want more. And Laura kissed like she fought: courageous, decisive, expert, beautiful. “There you go,” she said, next time they broke apart. “That’s a kiss.”

Saffy let her go reluctantly. She wanted to keep her fingers scrunched into the fuzzy spikes of the shaved hairline at Laura’s nape. She said, “Laura.”

“You asked for it.” Distinctly smug.

“What have I let myself in for?”

“We’ll give it six months and you can see if you like it.”

Saffy started to laugh. “I’m very out of practice at relationships, I should warn you.”

“Saffy, I know.”

“And I’m a lot better at being a teacher than I am at being a person.”

“I know .”

“I don’t actually own any clothes that aren’t schoolmistress outfits,” Saffy confessed. “Except things from uni I should have thrown out years ago.”

“You can buy clothes in shops,” Laura said. “You can even order them online these days. I know you’re an old crone, but don’t worry. I can explain the internet to you.”

Saffy started laughing. “Yes, all right! I just think I’m not going to be very good at… well… life. Us. Everything.”

“Well, you know what they say,” said Laura, with generous, merciless affection. “You’re never too old to learn.”