“Is there anyone else inside?” I called out.

“No. I am all there is.”

A woman sprinted from the side, running in the opposite direction to the crowd, her face frantic.

“Mom! Mom! Here!”

Julie. I whipped around in the direction of the voice.

A dark-haired teenage girl dashed out of the crowd. The woman threw her arms around her. A man followed.

Oh my God. That was the voice I heard on the phone. My Julie wasn’t in the Guild. This was somebody else’s Julie.

The relief rocked me. I sat on a chunk of the building, leaning against it. My arms hurt, my shoulders hurt worse, and the last echoes of the misfiring power words still rolled around inside me, clasping my insides in fiery internal cramps. It hurt to stand. To sit was an unbelievable luxury and so I sat, basking in the wonderful feeling of not resting my weight on my feet.

I pulled gauze out of my pocket and wiped my eyes. The gauze came back drenched in crimson. My power word had backfired. I had had a power word fail before. Ud, the word commanding something to die, usually didn’t work. To kill something with it, you first had to own your target completely. The first two times I tried it, the pain had been so excruciating that I was convinced I would die. This was worse. Aarh was a simple order to stop. It usually froze the target for about four seconds. I’d never had it misfire on me. Was I getting weaker? Was the giant too large? Was he immune to my magic somehow? I had all the questions and none of the answers. Ugh.

The red stream running from the giant’s neck finally stopped. He had bled out. It was over.

I closed my eyes and sat very still.

•   •   •

EVEN IN POST-SHIFT Atlanta, a giant was big news. The PAD was first to arrive, followed by a fleet of ambulances, which were still parked around the Guild. The cops examined the giant, determined he was dead but surrounded him with their tactical vehicles just in case, and interviewed everyone. They took my statement and then told me not to leave the scene. MSDU, the Military Supernatural Defense Unit, came next and promptly got into a jurisdiction war with the PAD, because the PAD wouldn’t let them explode the giant’s corpse and incinerate the pieces just in case. The MSDU also took my statement and told me not to leave the scene. When the Georgia Bureau of Investigation showed up, I told them up front that I had no intentions of leaving the scene and that I wasn’t going to answer any questions unless they produced a police captain who accused me of being a loose cannon and demanded my badge. They left me alone after that.