Page 110 of Anchor

My mind spun. The questions kept on adding up and repeating themselves in my head over and over until I was sure I would throw up.

“Enough.”

My own voice startled me in the chaos that reigned inside my head. But it was enough. Taland was gone, and Taland was going to get his teeth knocked out because of it, and Taland was a fucking asshole for doing this to me, for leaving me here like this—but none of these things were going to help mefind Taland,which was the only thing that mattered.

It didn’t matter where he went or what he thought he was doing—by the goddess I was going to find him, and he was going to explain this to me even if it was the last thing I did in my pathetic existence.

“Through summer breezes,” I whispered to myself. “Through fucking hurricanes.” My heart ached. “You fuckingliar.”

I turned the engine on. I made sure I couldseethrough this rage, through this pain in my chest, and finally, I drove the car into town.

I had a plan, believe it or not. It might not have been the best plan, and I didn’t really have the details figured out, but I had a general idea of how I was going to go about finding Taland.

The first part of this plan was the most obvious—go to the town to make sure he wasn’t there, hiding, or that he hadn’t been arrested or something—or maybe at the bar, drinking?

Yes, yes,highly unlikely,but it was just something I needed to rule out before I moved to the rest of the plan.

So, I did.

I went to town, and I found the place where they sold those sandwiches that I couldn’t evensmellnow without wanting to gag because of the memories, and I found the only bar in town as well, but Taland wasn’t there.

I asked the guy who made the sandwiches if he’d seen him today; he said no. He knew exactly whom I was talking about—we don’t get that many newcomers around here, ha-ha-ha,he said, and he was sure that he hadn’t seen Taland in town today at all.

I asked the bartender at that bar, too, and he had no clue who I was talking about, but the clerk at the grocery store did. She had a weird kind of smile on her face when she told me that she did remember Taland, that he’d been there yesterday, but not today.

She was sure, she said—I would remember,and I got this urge to put a spell on her so that all that shiny brown hair on her head fell out.

Then,“Is he your brother?”

Goddess, what was taking over me? I had never wanted to use my magic to harm someone before.

“He’s my boyfriend,” I said instead, and her smile dropped, and I walked out of the grocery store feeling a hundred times worse.

Taland was not my boyfriend. Boyfriends didn’t leave their girlfriends all alone in safe houses. Boyfriends didn’t disappear in the middle of the night without a trace.

But then again, he never said he was my boyfriendnow. We never really talked about what we were because I didn’t think we even needed to. I honestly didn’t even imagine that I could wake up and he’d be gone, not after everything.

Funny how life had a way of picking the things that seemed the most impossible to me and making them come true.

Only when I sat in the car again did it occur to me that I was walking around with my head up, asking questions and talking to people while the IDD was after me. They had to be—they’d surely seen the footage, and those guards we’d knocked out had already told them everything. Of course, they’d be onto me, and I was parading around here with my face revealed, without an ounce of protection on me like a damn fool.

That’s why, when I got back to the car after nightfall, I immediately started to call a spell to shield myself from prying eyes and ears andspells,the strongest one I knew. Third degree, which was why it hurt so much even before I let the magic out that I almost screamed.

But…

I stopped chanting before the spell was complete. The magic that had accumulated in my chest, seconds away from tearingout of me, faded away. I reached for the pocket of my jacket that I’d left on the front seat, and I took out the bracelet.

One spell. One powerful spell to keep me out of the IDD’s radars. One spell to keep the clairvoyants and the finding spells and objects off me.

“One spell.” Might as well try it if I had this thing now, and I wasn’t going to return it.

I was off the road just outside of town, and there was nobody around me that I could see, but I still pulled the jacket over the bracelet in my hand to keep the colors invisible to anybody watching. Then I chanted that same spell, third-degree, and the ease with which I performed it left me speechless. There was no pain, and the magicglidedthrough my veins, silky smooth, and it burst out of my hands with so much intensity, the colors of the flames were visible even through the thick leather covering them.

Then they faded, and the spell fell over me, like an invisible layer all around my skin. It locked around me and made meveryhard to find for anybody looking, at least for the next twelve hours. By then, I hoped to have found Taland, but if I didn’t, I could still do another spell. As many times as I needed because it was for my protection. This bracelet might have been dangerous, and using it might have been wrong, but right now my options were severely limited.

Taland was gone and the IDD was after me. My grandmother was probably after me, too. Fuck me, I was possibly inthe worstposition I’d ever been in—even worse than when I was Mud, now that I thought about it.

This time, I had nowhere to turn to for real.

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