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in all the classrooms, so it’s going faster.”
    Thank God. Seriously. I’m not particularly religious, not a true believer like my gran, but at moments like this? Oh yeah. I pounded up the last of the stairs, into the main hallway. It was illuminated by sunlight. The power had been cut, but every door in the place was open. I started to sprint for the main exit when I saw a flash of movement, a bit of color coming out of a doorway on my right.
    A kid. Small and dark skinned, with ribboned pigtails and huge dark eyes. What in the hell was she still doing here?
    I’d done enough running this morning that the bottoms of my hose were trashed, but I still skidded a little when I slowed to scoop her up. I didn’t even think about being in full vamp mode.
    She totally freaked out.
    “Vampire!” she shrieked, kicking and hitting at me. She was tiny, but she was fierce, fighting me for all she was worth. It made it hard to hold on to her without hurting her. I swore as sharp little teeth dug into my forearm. “Let me go! What have you done to my daddy?”
    “Willow?” Harris’s voice behind me sounded stunned, a little groggy, but at least he was talking. The cops dragged him, arm extended backward as if to touch his daughter, past the room at a run, expecting that I would follow.
    “Daddy!”
    “It’s all right, baby. I’m here.”
    It would’ve been touching if I wasn’t bleeding and in pain. Oh, and terrified. Let’s not forget that. Because the bomb was about to blow. I could feel it. The magic had built to a climax, power crawling across my skin in burning waves that literally stole my breath.
    Like all magic, the blast was taking the shortest route to air, straight up. The edges of the floor in front of me began to glow, power misting around the edges of each tile until they began dissolving in front of me. I was going to plummet into the basement carrying a child who wouldn’t survive the fall.
    I ran into the nearest room to escape the collapse, but the tiles were giving out here, too. No doors close enough. There was only one way out and it was going to hurt.
    It’s hard to describe the feeling of jumping feetfirst through a closed, reinforced-glass window. The shock to the spine is first as the metal wires try to slow down your momentum. But I’d put a lot of force into my flying kick, the magical explosion gave us an extra push, and the window gave way. It wasn’t a clean break by any means. I wrapped my jacket around Willow’s face and head as best I could as slivers of wire and glass tore at my legs and arms. My body did fit through the window opening, but the metal wasn’t kind to my shoulder as the blast pushed me through. I landed hard on my back on the asphalt and my shirt rode up as we skidded for a solid thirty or forty feet. Road rash isn’t a fun thing as it’s happening, but I couldn’t turn over or move my arms for fear of hurting Willow.
    So I endured it, knowing I’d be picking pieces of gravel and glass from my back and scalp for hours a week or more. At least it would only be hours rather than a year, with the accelerated healing.
    A pair of officers rushed forward to help, taking Willow from my arms and pulling me bodily toward the perimeter that had been set up across the street. I saw Harris and the other cops near the ambulances.
    Every muscle in my body ached and itched and I couldn’t seem to focus my eyes, which I worried about. Then I saw a friendly face. Julie Murphy came racing toward me as I cleared the yellow tape, her blonde pigtails flying behind her. She wrapped me in a hug. “Celia! They said you’d never make it out in time.”
    I let out a pained chuckle. “Never count me out, kiddo. I’m tough to keep down.” She pulled away from me and smiled. Then she noticed her arms, which were covered with smears of red. She started screaming for help. I guess I was bleeding and didn’t realize it. Oh, yeah. I should have realized I was bleeding from the pain in my