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Medenham Hall — As an erstwhile AfterEllen writer has pointed out to me, all anyone ever does at this school is play football, drink, and shag. And here are the footballers again, the very picture of youth and health (despite all that drinking, apparently), as we go inside to the Headmaster's office. There we see a man writing out a cheque; it's for Ella's fees, plus a bit of a contribution to the Headmaster's fund. Ella shows up and stares and smirks and says nothing. Meow. The cheque-writing man has brought her an ornate box of some sort; Ella's wearing the key round her neck. "All very mysterious," says the clueless Headmaster.

Back in her room, Ella opens the box, revealing a dusty tome. Thelma arrives just in time to behold Ella's treasures. No, not like that! At least, not yet.

Thelma scolds Ella for sending Cassie right back to Azazeal. Thelma then grabs some pieces of some sort of zapping/electrifying/special-effects-generating rod or wand — and I can call it that because she's just assembled it and blasted a vase to bits.

Thelma: "Well. Bet that makes your eyes water. Hey, whatever floats your boat."

Snicker.

Ella tells Thelma to leave things alone, but Thelma's already opened the book, which is titled "The Vision of Orokiah." A little light reading, then?

Ella just wants to be left alone, but Thelma's not done yet. She tells Ella, "if you'd shut up one time, you wouldn't be kebabing a baby, and Cassie would be home and dry." She declares Ella "a bit rubbish," and what happens next is anything but rubbish.

There was a dagger or short sword or whatever in the ornate box, and Ella's now slinking towards Thelma, the aforementioned dagger at the ready. Thelma gets nervous, but Ella just smiles and thrusts — I'm sorry, that's really the only suitable word — thrusts the dagger right up behind Thelma's ribcage. Before you can blink, they're breast to breast:

Ella: "The blade must go beneath the ribs, up into the heart. It's a precise length: 8 inches. Enough to cleave the body and soul of any mortal."
Thelma: "Cleave the body and soul... so size is important, right?"
Ella: "In death, as in life, size is always important."

She slips the blade back out, and Thelma offers her own brand of smirk.

Azazeal's lair — Cassie's still worried about the demon-baby's welfare, and Azazeal's still trying to convince her that she belongs with him. He says he imagines Cassie felt privileged to carry his child, but he's really just winding her up, probably because anger sometimes equals passion. But she storms off again anyway.

Supposedly handsome — The new teacher, whose name is Jez, has whetted Roxanne's appetite. I know, I know: it doesn't take much. But really: this guy? He's just kind of there. He's about as handsome as a paving stone. I mean, one can appreciate the usefulness of a paving stone, and nobody really minds it, but who would call it handsome? Roxanne would, it seems. She puts on her specs and tries to look studious.

Leon and some guy mock the whole thing, but Roxanne tells Jez to ignore them: "They're on screensaver, the lot of them." Yeah? Well if they're on screensaver, you're on power monitoring — all hard disks have spun down. That was way too geeky to be funny. Sorry.

The den of iniquity — Cassie's still hanging out with her favorite demon boys. The dialogue is too inane for me to summarize or transcribe.

A sanctuary of hope — Ella and Thelma go to a church to get some sort of supplies for the sacrifice of the spawn-son. Ella's wearing that long leather coat that would make anyone more interesting — who can blame Thelma for leering, really?

But soon Thelma's screaming — she sees a frightening shadow on the wall. She does her best impression of Willow Rosenberg as she explains the dire straits to Ella: "It was like bleeaaah! and I was like aaaah! and it was like whoosh whoosh!" Ella scoffs at first, but then she sees the shadow too, and puts her lightning rod together. But a voice from the balcony reveals that there's no scary demon here: only Jez, who's a priest as well as a teacher.

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