Page 45 of Anchor

“Hey, stranger.”

I recognized Cassie’s voice and I wasn’t startled, even though my mind was elsewhere. It was late in the afternoon, an hour after my shift had ended, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about everything all at once.

“Hey, yourself,” I said when she came to rest her hip on my desk on the other side of my chair.

“Why are you still here and not out there celebrating your life?” she asked, an arched brow at the screen of my computer that showed four different locations of the city that I was—possibly illegally—looking at through the human police’s surveillance systems.

“Because I have work to do,” I said, then turned the monitor off with a press of a button. “Why are you atmycubicle and not in your office?”

“Pfft, what work?” She waved me off, then went on to pretend like she hadn’t heard my question at all. “In case you didn’t get the memo yet, nobody wants you on their team, Redfire. They’re scared shitless of you because you were Mud.”

She said that last one in a whisper that had the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention.

“Haven’t you heard? That was just a rumor. I was never Mud,” I deadpanned, and she grinned so wide it transformed her face. Her blue eyes sparkled like jewels—like those sapphires on Madame Weaver’s face.

The reminder brought bile to my throat.

“Tell that to the people whodidn’tput you in the trunk of their car to get out of here when you were half dead.”

“You know what they’re making me say,” I said, angry now—so fucking angry at the Council for making me lie, atmyselffor knowing I had no other choice but to do it, at Madeline for having smuggled me into the Iris Roe in the first place—all of it. I was so fucking mad at all of it any time I wasn’t thinking aboutwhere Taland could be.Especiallywhen I was thinking about Taylor Maddison.

“Well, everybody here knows that’s total bull crap and that’s why Cameron is having trouble assigning you to a team—the team leaders don’t want to have anything to do with you. They still think you’re a freak, even though the Council cleared you.”

I thought about it for a second. “That actually suits me.” If I wasn’t in a team, I had time to search for Taland, and I didn’t even have to talk to other people at all during the day. I could make good on my plan to keep a low profile until everyone forgot about my existence.

“You were always a loner in disguise,” said Cassie with a wink. “But you look miserable enough that I had to come get you to stretch your legs.” She stood up and slapped the back of her hand to my shoulder. “Come on. I’m off to the Vault to look for a pair of earrings. Come join me.”

“Wait a minute—are you spying on me through the cameras, Bluefire?” I asked, eyes up on the high ceiling of the large space, where there were no doubt a lot of cameras that I couldn’t even see.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cassie said in a high-pitched voice because shewantedme to know she was lying. “Come on, Mud—I meanRedfire.” She giggled like a little girl caught doing something she was told multiple times not to do. “Keep me company because I most definitely amnota loner, and I’ve been stuck at my desk by myself for long enough.”

I raised a brow. “Your shift started an hour ago.”

“Exactly,” she said, like she really didn’t get what I was saying. “Come on!”

I stood up right away. Not just because I basically owed Cassie my life and she was my friend, but my neck really was stiff and my eyes were really tired after staring at the screen all day—and also,the Vault.

It made me curious. Taland had wanted me to promise to helphim break into it to steal something—probably the veler, the same artifact that he’d wanted to steal in our school back then. He’d tried to get me to agree to that insane request when we were in the Iris Roe. I said I wouldn’t, and of course not—this place was more secure than any other in the world. Cameras and guards and wards—all of it impossible to fool, and knowing he was a wanted felon who’d escaped from the Tomb meant he’d be shot on sight when they asked him to put his hands up and he refused (because he would.)

I didn’t betray him when we were still in high school for nothing. I did not sacrifice my love, my whole life with him just so he could come and die here instead. Fuck no—I’d never let that happen.

Then he’d wanted me to agree to just stand by and do nothing when he came, and I’d refused to do that, too. It was the same thing as letting him die. I hadn’t done it the first time, and I wouldn’t do it any other time, either. If I knew he was coming to steal from the Vault, I’d knock him out and take him away myself before the guards spotted him and shot him. Everything I could handle—even the Iris fucking Roe—so long as he was breathing. The guilt could eat at me and I could be disgusted by myself my whole life for doing what I did, but I’d handle all of it as long as Taland was alive.

I’d been to the Vault two times in the past but I hadn’t really paid it any attention. Me and the team had come through to lock in two of the dangerous artifacts we’d found while on missions—one a cursed sword which encouraged its wielder to attack anyone or anything in his path, the other sunglasses that claimed to enable the wearer to see spirits, but just fucked with your brainwaves and made you hallucinate instead. The guards who cared for the Vault had classified them under first level protection—the Vault had three within the same large room.Artifacts that were under second and third level were much more dangerous. As far as I knew, the veler was under second.

I’d seen it with my own eyes, that thing. Had been in the same classroom with it back at the Iridian School of Chromatic Magics. A classmate of mine, a Bluefire named Chris, had almost died when he touched it, when he tried to find—students speculated—his mother who had died a few years back. The veler had put him in a coma for two whole weeks.

That’s what Taland had been after. I’d found out after I came back from the school. Hill told me about it when he came to congratulate me, and it had made perfect sense. The veler could basically show you the location of anything as long as you had a clear enough picture of it in your head and enough magic to search with. People would kill to get it in their hands to find all kinds of precious, expensive things, treasures and art pieces and jewelry—you name it. Nothing was beyond the veler—not even other dimensions, which we Iridians knew next to nothing about.

I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t think about howeasyit would be to find Taland with it as we went through the wards and the guards with Cassie now. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t wish I could just grab it and ask it where Taland was, then put it back in its place really quickly.Reallyquickly. Nobody would see me. Nobody would find out. I’d be in and out in a second, and I’d find Taland just as easily as he wished to find…whatever he and his brothers had been looking for when he tried to steal this artifact in school.

You have no idea what you’ve cost the world…

Even now those words haunted me. The face of Radock Tivoux remained in front of me, how he’d looked completely enraged. And I regretted that I hadn’t asked Taland in the Roe what his brother had meant, but there simply had been no time. I hadn’t been preoccupied with Radock’s accusations while hewas in the middle of torturing me because I was focused on trying to survive the deadly game.

I would ask him, though. As soon as I saw Taland again—if I found him now, or if I met him on September twenty-first, midnight sharp—I was going to ask Taland what Radock had meant. Just as soon as I saw him.

And the thought sent my stomach into a riot as imaginary butterflies beat their wings relentlessly inside me.As soon as I saw Taland.

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