Page 120 of Anchor

“Yes, she was,” I muttered. I’d cared about her a lot. More than about the twins, if we were being honest.

“I always knew she wasn’t trustworthy, though,” said Jim, shaking head. “It’s bad to throw shade on the dead, I guess, but she was weak.”

“Of course, she was—why do you think she talked the way she did?” said Jam, nudging his brother on the shoulder.

And Jim smiled sadly. “Yeah, she loved to trash-talk everyone, remember that? I hated it.”

“I bet she hated it, too,” said his brother, while I remained there across from them and just listened. “She could be bent so easily…”

A second of silence.

“In a lot of ways, too!” Jim countered, and suddenly they were both chuckling, and they hi-fived each other.

Fucking idiots.

“I’m gonna ask you one more time, boys,” I said, forcing myself to keep my face neutral. These guys were drunk and just plain assholes even if they’d saved me, and I realized that I wasn’t going to hurt them even if they didn’t tell me anything. Fuck it—it just wasn’t me. I didn’t want to have to fight with myself forthatas well.

“Just tell me the truth. Tell me what happened.” I sounded defeated now—probably because I was, and I was already spending energy to keep my face neutral. “I didn’t kill that catfairie. I couldn’t even keep my eyes open. Icouldn’t havekilled that catfairie even if I hadn’t been wounded at all.” A seven-foot-tall beast with claws and illusion magic to spare?

Yeah, I knew my limitations. I wouldn’t have won that fight—not then.

Jim and Jam were no longer chuckling or smiling or even looking at me. At that point I was ready to accept that they weren’t going to tell me, and I was going to just ask them to call Cassie for me. If they didn’t have her number, they could call work and get it. I’d do it myself if they gave me their phone.

Except…

“We did.”

Both Jim and I looked up at Jam in surprise, as he sat there on the counter surrounded by empty bottles and cardboard boxes, staring at his knees.

Then Jim sighed, as if he was giving up, too. “Yeah. We killed the catfairie.”

White noise in my ears for a second. “Then…why would you lie?” It made no sense—if they killed that thing, why wouldn’t they want to take the credit?

“We were watching when that thing killed Michael and Erid,” said Jim with a shrug. “And when he came to you, we thought it had already killed you, too. So, we came closer, and we trapped it in time.”

“Couldn’t keep him frozen for long—he was powerful,” said Jam. “But I kept him locked down and kept his attention on me while Jim did an extraction spell on his heart.”

Again, the guy shrugged like what he was talking about wasn’t a big deal at all.

“It worked. He died,” said Jam.

“And we told the guy in the green suit—wetoldhim what happened. All of it—about Michael and Erid,” Jim said. “He told us that we weren’t allowed to say that we were even near the spot where the whole thing happened. We were made to sign reports that we’d been knocked out cold before Michael and Erid were killed, that we didn’t see anything at all, and when we woke up and came looking for you guys, they were already dead and you were just killing the catfairie before passing out.”

Goose bumps broke all over my skin. “Bywhom?” I whispered. “Who’s the guy in the green suit?” Because I’d seen a guy in a green suit once, too, and I hated him with my everything to this day. He’d been the one to take Taland away that night at the school. I never even found out his name.

“No clue,” said Jam with a shrug. “But he said that we were forbidden from speaking about witnessing Michael and Erid trying to kill you.”

“Yes, yes—no matter what, we had to tell everyone that we weren’t there. That we were knocked out, that we barely survived.” Jim.

“We saw nothing, heard nothing. Nothing at all.” Jam.

“Only you finishing off that catfairie,afterErid and Michael had already died.”

“We didn’t see them chasing you or shooting you or trying to kill you—nothing. We saw nothing, just you killing it.”

All of a sudden, it was perfectly clear why they were made to lie—because whoever had sent Michael and Erid to kill me hadn’t wanted anybody to know.

For a moment, I just stayed there against the table, closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, tried to silence the screams of rage in my head, but they wouldn’t hear. A voice, the loudest of all, insisted that I already knew who had ordered Michael to kill me, and who had the authority to order the twins to not say a single word about it. To lie about it. Conceal it from the IDD itself.

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