Page 57 of Anchor

There you are.

It was the bracelet made out of what looked like frozen mudand felt like metal. The exact same shape and width as those bracelets of the soldiers in the book. Exactly the same.

I sat down on the floor to inspect it, and I couldn’t tell you why I found it so fascinating, just that I did. I searched the drawer, pulled the whole thing out to look for a file, for a piece of paper, for anything at all that would give this thing a name, explain what it did, why it was here, but I found nothing. Every object in this place had a folder underneath it, but not this bracelet.

Almost like it was put here by mistake.

Could it be?

Probably not. This was the IDD—they didn’t do things by mistake, and they most certainly didn’t lock stuff in the Vault accidentally. So, what in the hell was this thing and had I really seen it in that book in Madeline’s office?

Fuck, I needed to sneak in there again, but she refused to leave the mansion since that party. And?—

“Hey, Mud—I mean, Redfire. Coming?”

Cassie’s voice pulled me out of my head, and I jumped to my feet, the bracelet still in my hand.

“Look what I got here—skeletons of dead familiars. Can you imagine? The bitch killed close to twenty and saved their bones.” She showed me the cardboard box in her hands, full of small pieces of bone that brought back a whole new set of memories I didn’t want to have anything to do with, not right now.

“Yep. What a bitch,” I muttered because she’d told me the story of her current case on the way here, of this Greenfire woman who’d basically drained her familiars—not of their magic, but of their lives, so she could live to celebrate her hundred and twentieth birthday—while looking like a fifty-year-old.

“Come on, let’s go. Some of us be doing real work in here,” Cassie said with a sneaky grin.

I forced myself to roll my eyes, and she didn’t see what was in my hands because of the cabinet of drawers in front of me, so she turned around to leave.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” I whispered, and I couldn’t tell you what came over me. I couldn’t say what I was thinking or when I’d decided, orthatI’d decided to steal that bracelet, but that was exactly what I did.

I closed the drawer with my foot, hid my hand behind my hip, and I followed Cassie outside.

My heart didn’t pick up the beating. My hands didn’t shake. On the contrary—I felt like I wasn’t there at all, like I was floating on thin air.

Like I’d done this a million times before, when I’d never stolen a single thing in my life.

Yet, when Cassie and her box of bones came into view right outside the door, I even smiled.

“Took you long enough,” she muttered, grabbing the folder from underneath the box to give to the guards at the reception desk.

“Let me help with that,” I said and reached for the box.

“No, I got—” I grabbed it from her hands before she could finish. “Great. Thanks, asshole.”

With the folder, Cassie turned to the two guards to get their signature. I put the bracelet in the box while they went through the files and tried to hide it underneath the bones as well as I could.

And I didn’t think about what I’d say if I got caught because I didn’t think about getting caught at all. I just put the box down on the desk when the guards said so, and I smiled when the first one began to sign the documents for Cassie, who spoke and laughed and joked with them as calmly as ever because she had no idea what was in the box she was checking out.

The guards ran their wands and another round device over the bones twice—and I didn’t break a fucking sweat. Someone must have taken over my mind in those moments because I watched and I didn’t even flinch.

I didn’t think about how the bracelet could release its own magical energy, its own signature, different from those bones, and the guards could find it easily. I didn’t think about what they’d say or do when they did—no, I just kept my eyes on their devices, and when they read whatever signals they received from the box, I stood perfectly still.

Then the guards both nodded. “All clear, Agents.”

Just like that.All clear.

Like they hadn’t seen nor had their devices picked up on the bracelet at all. Like its magical signature was invisible.

I grabbed the box again without a word, and Cassie thanked me for being so helpful, and together, we walked out of the Vault side by side.

Even when we went back to the ground floor, and I slowed down my step just a little to fall behind her, and quickly grabbed the bracelet and put it in my pocket, I didn’t break character.My face was expressionless, my breathing even, my heartbeat steady.

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