Page 71 of Anchor

The first thing I did was chant a spell to keep prying ears and eyes away from my room right now. The pain sliced me wide open, but it didn’t last.

Then I pulled the drapes in front of the windows, too, just in case, and with a shaking hand, I threw the bracelet on the bed fast like I was suddenly afraid it would bite me.

“What. The. Fuck,” I asked it, and the events of the night had been soabsurdthat a part of me thought it might even answer.

It didn’t.

I toed my boots off and hung my jacket behind the closet door, then kneeled in front of the edge of the bed, hands together as I looked at it. Just looked at that thing like I had the firstnight I stole it. Still expected it to start leaking magic or reveal whatever curse it was infused with, but it didn’t. It didn’t do anything at all, and I remembered that night I stole it from the Vault, how the guards had run their devices that searched for magical signatures over that box. I’d hidden the bracelet under the bones Cassie had been checking out, but those wands and that little round gadget would have picked up the magical energy of this thing if it had any—and it didn’t. The devices remained green, and the guards cleared us because that bracelet had no magic in it—nonethat the fanciest gadgets money can buy and magic can make could pick up.

And evenifthose bones somehow disrupted the signal, or the devices were faulty…

“She’sMud,” I told the bracelet. Even if the guards failed to detect the magic in this thing, it shouldn’t have fucking worked! “Taylor is Mud—how did you connect to her? How did youpullat her hand?”

Because that’s what anchors felt like—like they were pulling at something inside you, which they were. They were anchors of magic—they pulled at an Iridian’s magic.

“Why?” I whispered, and if anybody could hear me or see me talking to a bracelet right now, they’d think I’d lost my mind.

Maybe I had.

My hand was still shaking when I reached for the bracelet, and I really did expect it to grow teeth and bite me. My mind buzzed and I was already planning everything I was going to do tomorrow morning, from researching Taylor’s family to make sure they really were Mud to trying to find any kind of spell or evenconditionsthat would make one’s magic colorful. Not blue or green or red—butcolorful.

The bracelet didn’t grow teeth. It was as cold and as lifeless as ever, just an ugly brown thing. Goddess, I had slept with it near me. I’d just put it in my drawer and thought it was safe becausethose devices at the Vault hadn’t picked up any magical energy from it.

“How did you do that?” I asked the bracelet again, no longer afraid of it, but this strange mix of excitement and curiosity and nervousness was making a mess of my stomach as I analyzed it from closer up. No words, no engravings, no nothing. It still looked like a piece of metal dipped in mud.

Then I began to whisper.

I couldn’t even tell you what the hell I was thinking, just that I wanted to see. Ineededto see if I had lost my mind for real, if it had all been in my imagination, or maybe even if Taylor had tricked me somehow, which was highly unlikely. So, I chanted like I really expected my magic to connect with that bracelet, and a rainbow to come out of my hand with the spell I chose.

Funny thing, though—it did.

I felt the way my magic rushed to the bracelet,notmy father’s ring. My anchor, as it should have. Colors burst out of my palm, and I was kneeling by the bed, my elbows firmly against it, so I didn’t fall on my face. Colors, just like the ones that had come out of Taylor’s hand, were coming out of mine now, too. Flames in red and green and pink and purple and yellow extended from me and all the way to the small pillows that decorated my bed, picked one up and raised in it in the air, then faded away into nothing.

A levitating spell this time, not one to call up light. Not the same spell as the one Taylor had repeated after me. Anewspell. And my magic had eagerly chosen the bracelet over my ring as its anchor the moment I thought about it. The moment Iallowedit.

The even funnier thing, though?

I’d felt no pain whatsoever, just like back when I was a normal Redfire. No pain when my magic came out of me just now.

I closed my eyes and let the pillow down on the bed again. The bracelet was still in my hand, and I held onto it so tightly it hurt. I both wanted to throw it away, out the window and into the night to never find again, and also put it around my wrist to make sure I never lost it.

So confusing.

My heart galloped. My thoughts were a mess. The image of that magic, all those vivid colors, the way they picked up that pillow and raised it in the air…

It hadn’t been Taylor’s doing at all—it was the bracelet. This bracelet was somehow pulling colorful magic out of people, and maybethatwas the reason why it had been in the Vault. Maybe that was the reason why the IDD wanted it off the streets.

Why, though, why?!my mind insisted, and I was trying to think ofwhocould give me an answer for this even though I knew better than to expect anybody to be honest at this point.

The Council lied. The IDD cheated—I’d seen it with my own eyes, had been the subject of their betrayal myself. There was no way I would ever get a straight answer—but more than that, I’dstolenthis. I had taken it out of the Vault without permission.

There had been no documents, no file, no name in the bracelet’s drawer, but this thing behaved like an anchor—so maybe it was gold? Maybe underneath whatever this brown thing was on the surface, this bracelet was made out of gold, and gold was a Redfire’s anchor, so of course it would work with me.

Except…Taylor was not Redfire.

And Redfire magic was calledRedfirefor a reason—-it was red. Not purple or yellow or green—red.

My first instinct was to run all the way to Headquarters right now and put it back before I got into even more trouble.

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