Page 100 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

The outline of the bookshelf and the spines of the books upon it werealready hazy and insubstantial, and behind the vague mist of them he could see the stone wall and the wood of the secret door.

Nicholas flung out an arm and Esther thumped against it. “What?” she said, then noticed the shelf. “Oh! Problem solved?”

“Shh,” Nicholas hissed. It was the only noise he could manage. His voice felt frozen in his throat and his lungs felt suddenly weak, wheezing for air that wouldn’t come, the spell’s placard looming in his mind’s eye.

Duration: Max six minutes per reading.

Which meant someone had read this spell in the past six minutes. Someone had been here. Someone washere.

Slowly, very slowly, he began to turn around, eyes skimming the shelves for a hint of Richard’s gray hair or a flicker of Maram’s silk blouse, ears straining for the sound of breath, footsteps on the carpet, the creak of a door—anything. Esther, picking up on his tension, was perfectly still at his side. The tall shelves gleamed beneath their brass lights, the humidifying system hummed distantly, the books sat in motionless rows, and the red wingback chairs on either side of Seshat’s display case hadn’t moved. But the display case itself...

Nicholas sucked in a breath.

The hinged front of the case was hanging open ever so slightly, and when Nicholas crept forward, he saw that the limestone slab was off-center on its metal stand, and there was a dark smear in one corner that he didn’t remember ever seeing before. But the most jarring—and anachronistic—change was the yellow Post-it stuck over Seshat’s carved face.

It read,Until 3:54 a.m.

All at once, Nicholas understood. He let out a sigh of pure relief and turned to where Esther was still standing stock-still, one foot on the dais step.

“It’s all right,” he told her, unsticking the Post-it. “Maram read the spell for us before she left.”

She’d read two spells, in fact. One was the spell to fade the bookcase.The other was the four-thousand-year-old companion spell, priceless and rare and prized, which she had read to keep the way open for them.

When Nicholas spoke again, he did so around a lump in his throat. “Come on,” he said, reaching for the doorknob.

“It’s all right?” Esther said.

“It’s all right.” He slipped into the darkness of the passageway. Esther close behind. He took one squinting step up and a bright little light came on over his shoulder. When he glanced back, he found Esther holding a tiny flashlight.

“Where on earth did you get that?”

“Collins said we’d need it.”

For some reason this smoothed the last of Nicholas’s ruffled nerves and he moved up the stairs feeling distinctly calmer. Esther said, “Secret passageways, English country houses, malevolent old men. When I was a kid, this is what I thought magic should be like. Not hidden away in a basement, being used only to keep hiding itself.”

“And? Is this everything you dreamed of?”

Esther let out a sound that, under different circumstances, might have been laughter. “Um, it’s scarier in practice.”

“You didn’t dream about someone wanting to skin you alive and turn you into a book?”

“Weirdly, no.”

They reached the narrow wooden hall at the top of the stairs and Esther beamed her meager light over Nicholas’s shoulder. It lit a few feet in front of them and then was swallowed by the dark. “How long is it?”

“A few minutes’ walk, I think.” He trailed one hand along the wall as they moved forward. “I’ve only done it once.”

“How many other secret passages are in this place?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. There are a few I’m familiar with from the staff kitchen—one goes to the banqueting hall. But they’re not secret so much as discreet.” His middle finger caught on a snag in the wood and hesnatched his hand from the wall, wincing. “Passages like this, though, truly hidden? Could be hundreds. Could be none. No one told me either way.”

“But you got along with him, with Richard?” Esther said, and when Nicholas didn’t respond right away, “I’m still trying to get a handle on the nature of your relationship.”

“So am I,” Nicholas said.

He couldn’t let himself focus on anything other than action, because if he began to consider the implication, he might not be able to do what he’d ostensibly come here to do. Implication would lead to questions like: Would it be murder, the act that Nicholas had committed himself to committing? He wished, briefly but entirely, that he could see Richard again, give him a chance to explain himself before Nicholas made a choice he couldn’t go back from.

“Could you pick up the pace a smidge?” Esther said, poking him in the back. “Walking this slow makes me nervous.”

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