Page 113 of Anchor

The woman shrugged. “Do you have the password?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“Then maybe they did give you permission—who knows? You coming in or not?” She actually lookedbored.

“Fuck.” The word slipped from me involuntarily.

I took a step forward and went right through the threshold because I knew that if I stopped to think about it, I’d just be wasting time. In the end it didn’t matter how much I feared death-by-safe-room—I was going to see if Taland had been here one way or the other. Might as well get it over with quickly, and if I died, well…

“Oh, my goddess.”

The woman gasped.

I looked at her and expected tonotbe able to see her at all because I supposed I wasdeadalready if she gasped like that.

Except I wasn’t.

I was still standing, still breathing, and my heart was beating—all in my ears, which was why I was so sure. While the woman took a step back and looked at me with her mouth open and eyes wide like I really was a fucking ghost.

“What?!”I said, panicked myself—why the hell is she looking at me like that?I didn’t die, damn it. I was ninety-nine percent sure that I was still alive!

Then…

“It’syou,” the woman said. “You’re the winner of the Iris Roe.”

Oh, hell.

Every inch of my skin raised in goose bumps and my stomach threatened to relieve me of everything I’d eaten in the car before coming to this fucking town.

You’re the winner of the Iris Roe, Rora!

How the hell had I forgotten that? How could I even go around with this face that had been all over the tabloids and on TV and social media—how the fuck did you forget?!

Seriously, my own stupidity astounded me sometimes.

“I-I-I?—”

The woman burst out laughing. “Are you serious? It’s reallyyou?!”

Fuck, I was sweating worse than when I thought I was going to die. I would have rather died than to be in my skin right now—seriously, I just wanted to go back. To the other side of the door, upstairs where I hadn’t been the winner of the Iris Roe, when I’d?—

Wait a minute.

My ears rang and I looked at the woman who had both hands to her chest and actual tears in her eyes as she looked at me, no longer laughing but smiling ear to ear.

And she said, “How in the world did you do that?!”

But what I was thinking was, “Why didn’t you recognize me upstairs?” When I first entered the store, there was far more light up there than down here.

The woman shook her head and narrowed her brows. “The spell!” she told me. “Whatever spell you’re using—you didn’t look like you at all!”

Holy shit.

“I told you this room strips awayallspells. I’ll admit, though, whatever you are using was good.Sogood—I could have never guessed in a billion years!”

Again, she laughed. Again, I felt like I might throw up all that I’d eaten.

Instead, I reached for my pocket and the little charm I’d put in there—Taland’s charm. The one his mother had made him. The onehe’dused to alter his appearance and to remain hidden from the IDD.

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