Page 48 of Anchor

“Still flushed,” she muttered, looking down at my body as if she expected to find a limb missing. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Just a lot of magic in the air. Let’s go,” I said, and she believed me.

“True, true. I can barely breathe myself,” she said. “Lookie here—I got them.” She waved a transparent plastic bag in front of my face. “Neat, right?”

Two black dice with white dots on all sides, perfectly ordinary if they hadn’t been decorated with dried blood here and there.

Shivers rushed down my back. “Yes.Neat.”

She laughed at the look on my face, and the sound of it drew out my own laughter so that by the time she signed the papers at the reception desk and we were let out of the Vault, I was smiling, too.

I didn’t think about that bracelet again until I returned to the mansion four hours later.

Reporters outside the front of the building, but Cassie said that Cameron had given the order to keep them off the backdoors because staff and supply runs were being delayed. I was damn thankful because I didn’t want to have to go through another one of thosestatements,and I’d come to hate cameras and their bright flashes with all my being. So, when I got on my bike I went straight for the back, leaving my grandmother’s car in the IDD garage for another night. It was perfectly safe. I’d get a cab on my way here tomorrow, so then I could return it to the mansion at the end of my shift.

Well, at the end ofthe day. No way was I leaving this place earlier than I had to, especially since I’d started searching for those case files on me and Taland when we were in high school. Especially when Icouldn’t findsaid case files anywhere—but I had barely searched a couple hours. Tomorrow was another day.

“Hey—did you get the kid home last night?”

I hadn’t seen the guard on the other side of the cabin when I stopped to show my badge on my way out the first back gate. It was the same one who’d laughed his heart out yesterday, impressed that Taylor Maddison had managed to sneak all the way into the backyard.

“I did,” I said, and instinctively looked around for theotherguard, the one who’d been dragging her before I put her on my bike.

She’s Mud—the way he’d said it. The disgust in his face was still right in front of me, but luckily, that guy didn’t seem to be here tonight.

“Appreciate it,” the other said with a nod. “Saved us the trouble.”

“Hey, don’t mention it,” I said and started my bike again. “Any other kid attempted to break in today?” I wondered, and I was talking about Taylor again, because I expected her to try to talk to me again. I don’t know why but she just gave me the feeling that she was stubborn like that.

“Nope. Not a one. They’ve reinforced security and expanded the perimeter. So far so good,” the guard said.

I believed him, but when I was on the road and passed the reporters by the front, whoranafter me while taking pictures and shouting questions like they really thought I’d stop my bike to answer, I still wondered if maybe Taylor was hiding there somewhere. If she was maybe planning to sneak in when she thought nobody would be looking.

I wondered—and maybe that’s why I was driving toward her trailer home before I even realized it.

I just wanted to see that she was okay. I just wanted to make sure that she was home and not at Headquarters because she didn’t understand the kind of trouble she could get in if she got caught again. Who knew which guard would be on duty, and how much they’d hate her for being Mud?

One could never be too sure about these things—and that’s the excuse I gave myself until I made it all the way to that quiet neighborhood.

I stopped my bike near a tree in front of a one-story house that seemed to be empty. The few people who were on theirporches and passing by saw me, but none of them looked at me twice, which made me think maybe they were human. Not that humans didn’t watch the Iris Roe—they did, but one needed money to pay for the videos or to enter the City of Games, and judging by their houses, these people were better off doing their spending elsewhere and they knew it.

I continued down the streeton foot, and I found Taylor right there by her trailer. I didn’t need to get close or even cross the street to make her out—she and another girl and a boy were sitting on the ground in front of the trailer’s open door. Orange light came from inside, illuminating the sides of the kids’ faces enough that I recognized Taylor sitting to the left immediately.

She and her friends seemed to be playing some sort of a game and had their heads down, their eyes on whatever was in front of them on the ground.

Something in me twisted in a very unpleasant way. She looked so different now than she had the night before.Just a kid,no matter how stubborn she’d sounded. She was just a kid for real.

And hopefully she had already gotten over her absurd idea of getting me toteachher how to win the next Iris Roe when she turned eighteen.

Good,I thought when I turned around to get the hell out of there, and nowIwas being absurd, too, because I wasalmost sadthat I hadn’t gotten to say hi.It was for the better, obviously, but I was stillalmost sadall the way back to the mansion.

Until I saw Poppy and Madeline wearing fancy dresses and sparkly jewelry right in the middle of the hallway.

Fuck.

“Rora, you made it!”

I should have gone for the stairs down the hallway…

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