Right now I didn’t want to have the luxury of feeling safe. I needed to feel fear, the good electrifying kind of fear that kept me sharp when my life was on the line. I needed to know I could function, that I was still fast and could still kill, and that I could handle Atlanta on my own. That I was still me.

“I know you’re worried. I need to do this. Either I go or I might as well pack it up and retire,” I had told him. “I’ll be careful.”

“You should wait,” he had said.

“How long?”

The answer had been clear in his eyes: forever. I had to go, because I wouldn’t always have the luxury of having him with me and we both needed to deal with that.

“Promise me that if you run across another giant, you won’t go after it until I get there,” Curran had said.

“I promise.” A giant was an anomaly. Running across another one was highly unlikely.

“I mean it, Kate. You can’t take another stroke.”

And neither could he. “I give you my word.”

Now we were in front of the Biohazard Division. I hoped my arms and legs would work as well as they did before all this mess happened.

“How do they get ‘Biohazard’ out of CMCDP?” Julie asked.

“The Center started as a division of the Atlanta Police Department. Before the Shift, whenever there was a murder or some violent altercation, people would call crime scene cleanup crews. They cleaned up blood, body decomp, animal feces, that sort of thing. Biohazard.” I got out of the car and started toward the building. Julie caught up with me.

“At that time, magic was new, but it quickly became clear that its little presents had to be studied and contained. Nobody quite knew how to do that, and the APD ended up creating its own Biohazard Division. They gave it a familiar name, probably because it made them feel better and everybody knew what it stood for. Over the years, Biohazard expanded, until finally the governor separated it and brought it under state authority by an executive order.” I stopped by the wall and pointed at a dark shiny spot in the granite. “Do you know what this is?”

Julie squinted at it. “No.”

“Dark tourmaline. This building is made with Stone Mountain granite, which has natural tourmaline inclusions. Why?”

Julie wrinkled her forehead. “Tourmaline is frequently used in purifying. It can generate a weak electrical current when rubbed or heated by the sun, and it is a good magic conductor, which makes their wards stronger.”

“What else?”

She looked at me. “Uhh . . .”

“Scrying,” I told her. “It’s used as a scrying stone. It helps them with their research. Come on.”

We walked to the big doors. A ward squeezed me, cutting off my breath for a moment, and then the pressure vanished. We were through.