Phil and the Death Machine

Retro Urban Fantasy from a Hugo nominated author. It's 1986. We're still in the Cold War, it's still cool to stencil the hammer-and-sickle on your pencil case, and students still get grants, not loans. Phil Wolseley-Jones is starting his first year of Applied Parapsychology at Kingshampton University. He wanted to do History, but after he told his interviewers that Mexicans were all Spanish nowadays, he was told his talents lay elsewhere. Kingshampton was founded in the Middle Ages as a thaumaturgical, demonological and necromantic recruiting ground for the British monarchy, though nowadays, in more enlightened times, the masters of its various colleges do so hate to use the word 'magic'. The only students recruited for Applied Parapsych are, admittedly, those who can see things ordinary mortals can't. But the catch is, the things they can see can see them back...