Page 144 of Anchor

It was it, I recognized it. It was his jacket. I’d know his stuff anywhere in the world—it washis.

The rage that came alive inside me could have scared me. Suddenly I was at that Ghost Festival in the Iris Roe all over again, and I wanted to kill each and every person around me, and I wanted to take my time with the one wearing Taland’s jacket, too. I’d rip it off his body together with his fucking skin—how dare you, you filthy prick?!

“Eyes ahead.”

Seth was beside me, his hand around my arm, and he jerked me just a little to get my attention.

I blinked and looked up at him as if I just remembered where I was. By the door of the two-story house following the guy with the goatee and the sunglasses, which he didn’t take off even when he led us inside.

A foyer, doors, hardwood floors. The guy wearing Taland’s jacket remained outside.

“Did you see his jacket?” I asked Seth in a whisper, and he narrowed his brows.

“What jacket?”

Never-mind,I thought, and I prayed with my whole being that I was wrong. That that man was wearing another jacket that looked like Taland’s. It wasn’t the same jacket, just similar.

I prayed in vain.

“Hey, where exactly are we going?” Seth asked when more men and women moved to the sides to let us through a door that led to a set of narrow stairs, which I’d have missed if the sunglasses guy hadn’t been there.

He said nothing, not a single word. He didn’t even turn around to look at us, and his friends didn’t follow us. Now, it was just the three of us going down the stairs—not one level, but two.

Concrete walls around us. I was started to get really claustrophobic, and if someone didn’t tell me why that man was wearing Taland’s jacket soon, I was going to fucking lose it.

Then the stairs ended, and we found ourselves in a square room with two doors on either side, much better lit than the stairway. Two people were in the middle of it, looking down at a phone and smiling.

Sunglasses Guy stepped to the side to let us through. The woman and man looking at the phone raised their heads.

“Oh. What do we have here?”

The woman smiled and her canines were pointy—actually pointy like she was wearing those plastic vampire teeth they sold for Halloween.

They looked terribly real, though. If vampires existed, I’d have labeled her one and wouldn’t doubt it.

As it was, the man who’d been with her pulled the phone they’d been looking at behind his back and stepped aside, while the woman straightened her shoulders and turned to us, hands folded in front of her, nails sharp and at least two inches long. They looked more like claws than actual nails, and she wore a shimmery green dress that flared from the hips like a balloon and had a corset that pushed her boobs almost to her chin. Her reddish-brown hair was pin straight and down to her waist. My mind was having trouble accepting she was real for a moment—she looked more like a doll than an actual person, and I was pretty sure those red eyes were contact lenses.

“They’re here for a prisoner,” said Sunglasses Guy, and his voice was thick and dark and scratchy—exactly like the image of him.

“Are they now,” the woman said, coming closer as she analyzed every inch of me slowly.

I almost covered myself—her gaze was so potent. Paired with that smile and those sharp canines…what the hell are you?I wanted to ask but didn’t make a single sound.

“Let me guess—you’re here for the old man—Laurent, was it?”

She turned her head to the side just slightly, and the man who’d been with her said, “Yes, Mistress.”

I swallowed hard, prepared to speak, but I knew that my voice was going to come out breathless anyway because of that word—prisoner.Taland was their prisoner. He’d spent all this time withthesepeople—and he wasn’t the only one, apparently. A guy named Laurent was right there with him.

“Taland Tivoux, actually,” said Seth, saving me from showing this people just how afraid and furious and overwhelmed I was.

Breathe, Rora, breathe,I told myself, because everybody was going to know soon that I was ready to either burst out in magic or tears—and wasn’t I the same girl who took pride in being the best at impersonating a rock?

“The handsome one,” the woman said, and it’s like she lit a fire right under the last of my patience. “Should have figured—you look alike. So charming.” And she bit her bottom lip with those sharp teeth as her strange red eyes scrolled down Seth’s body slowly.

Seth wasn’t bothered in the least. He nodded his head deeply, and said, “Coming from the beautiful Yuri herself. I am beyond flattered.”

“Oh, you know my name!” She clapped her hands, and how she managed that with her nails was beyond me. Then she turned to the tall guy who must have been her guard. “He knows my name!” she told him, like she wasthatexcited.

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