Page 112 of Anchor

“Hello, hi,” the woman repeated, then laughed. She was older than me, but there was a youthfulness to her blue eyes that her wrinkles hadn’t faded. Her smile was fake, but it wasn’t malicious. “What can I do you for? We have a lot of stuff, but if you tell me what you need, I can help you find it.” She walked around the desk and the two big piles next to it. “And please excuse my hair—I just opened!”

Her hair was actually perfect, but I didn’t comment. “Thank you,” I forced myself to say. “I’m actually looking for something else. Something…” I pointed my finger down toward the floor. “Something that’s down there.”

The way the smile on her face dropped could have been funny, and she lookedsurprised,which beat me. She was Iridian, and she could probably feel the magic that clung to the air about me, just like I felt hers.

“Oh. You’re a mage,” she said, and again, she sounded surprised. I’d have asked herwhyif I’d cared. “You own a safe?”

Her voice had changed, too, and I hated when people did this. When they were nice and fake and polite one second, thenchanged completely the next. Erfes in Night City had done the same. Vuvu, too, now that I thought about it.

And I was probably sick in the head or something because I actuallymissedNight City. NotI wish I could go back to itmiss, butI’m sad that it exists and that I’ll never get to see it againmiss, which made no sense whatsoever.

“I, uh…yes, I do.” Because if I said that somebody else owned it, there was a small chance she’d refuse to show me, so I just pretended. I lied—and so what? “It’s in my name, actually. Rosabel Tivoux.”

The name I’m going to have when I marry Talandwas what I thought—what Ihadthought two days ago when he told me this in bed.

And I’d felt so special. I’d been so damn happy it was ridiculous.

Look at me now.

The woman raised her brows. “Well, Rosabel Tivoux, you’re gonna have to wait till I have half my coffee. That’s the rules.”

She turned around and went back to that messy desk, then sat down somewhere behind it and disappeared from my view completely. I said nothing, a part of me sure that she was joking, but she wasn’t.

No—she made me wait almost ten whole minutes while she drank her coffee and scrolled through the apps of her phone—I heard the sound of the videos—before she stood up again.

By then I was about ready to grow claws and cut her to pieces, but I reminded myself that I needed her still. I needed to see in the basement, to find out whether Taland had taken the car keys he said would be here somewhere, and the money he’d stashed. I needed her, and so I bit my tongue until I tasted blood and forced a smile on my face.

Strangely, the woman didn’t look sogreyanymore. That coffee had worked—she looked more alive, her eyes brighter, her smile more genuine.

She went and locked the door of the shop, turned the sign toClosed,and sighed. “Follow me—and better make it quick. I have customers, believe it or not.”

Then she went for the right side of the shop to a door half hidden by a shelf. She pushed it back without much effort and unlocked it without ever looking back to see if I was still there.

The corridor she took us to was narrow and dark, and it smelled of dust and old things and magic. A lot of magic.

I followed her to the other end and down a spiral stairway made of metal that drove me nearly mad every time our feet fell on the steps. Downstairs was another door, and near it a small lamp mounted on the old, cracked wall. The woman pulled her wand from below her pink sweater and began to whisper furiously as blue flames spread from the tip of her wand and onto the surface of the door.

The spell was over a minute long, and when she was done, she took in a deep breath and turned to look at me.

“If you touch anything that isn’t yours behind this door, you will die.”

Without waiting for a reply, she stepped back and pulled the door open.

It was heavy, almost as thick as the width of my shoulders, and the room inside was divided into two. The first part was an empty space with a wooden tabletop extending a few inches from the yellow walls. Across from us was a glass partition with an opening in the middle, and on the other side of it were the safes built into the walls, about forty of them with metal doors and these small glass spheres hovering in front of them.

When she stepped through the threshold to the other side, the woman turned to me and raised her wand.

I stopped and my heart stopped, and my lungs held the air in them tightly as well.

“If you are here to steal or to take something that wasn’t specifically meant for you or if you weren’t given permission to see into this safe you claim as yours and if you’re trying to trick me in any way, you will die as soon as you step through this door.”

Holy shit.“Oh.”

“Yes—oh.” She blinked her eyes at me rapidly with a big fake smile on. “So, think well—the spell cannot be cheated. It strips you of any magics you might have on your person. This is not the place to steal stuff, Iridian. If that’s what you’re after, I suggest you try someplace else.”

Now I was sweating.

“What if the person who bought this safe only told me about it, and I’m not sure if they specifically gave me permission to see inside it?” I just wanted to see if Taland had been here, if he had taken the damn car!

---