Page 104 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Collins,” she protested, gripping the open flaps of his jacket, but his head had turned toward the driveway, and she realized that the engine she’d heard wasn’t her body, after all.

“Someone’s coming,” Collins said.

Joanna hadn’t thought her heart rate could rocket any higher, but it could. She felt dazed, all the blood from her brain redirected elsewhere, and she touched her tingling mouth in disbelief. “Is it Richard?”

“Can’t be Richard himself, not enough time,” Collins said. He put a hand on her knee and squeezed, then pushed himself to his feet, his back to her. He radiated tension. “But he could’ve sent someone ahead, he’s got people in New York for sure, probably in Boston, too. Where’s that rifle you had when we first showed up?”

Joanna leaped up to get it and paused. The car was coming nearer and as it did the sound of its engine resolved into familiarity. When shepeered around Collins’s shoulders to look again, she saw the bright blue of a chassis sparking in the light from the porch, and an answering spark of hope flared in her chest. She knew this car.

“Wait,” she said. “I think it’s my mother.”

It was.

At the end of the driveway the engine barely died before Cecily was tumbling out of the front seat, her eyes wild, lips for once bare of their signature red. Collins was still blocking Joanna and Cecily ran toward him, throwing up her fists and slamming them against his chest as he stumbled backward, both hands flying up to try to block her blows without hurting her.

“Where is my daughter?” she screamed. “What did you do with my daughter?”

“I’m here!” Joanna said, hurling her body between them, catching a fist to her collarbone. “Mom, I’m right here!”

Cecily gripped her arms, looking from her to Collins with tear-stained confusion. “Joanna?”

“Yes, I’m okay!”

“Who is thisman?”

The complicated answer was currently beyond her, so she said, “His name is Collins. Collins, this is my mother, Cecily.”

“A pleasure,” he said doubtfully.

“The wards are down,” Cecily said, still holding tightly to Joanna, searching her face. “I was in bed, almost asleep, thinking of you, and suddenly I knew where your house was. I knew how to get here! I thought—oh, I don’t know what I thought! The worst, the very worst. But you know they’re down? You did it yourself?”

“Yes,” Joanna said, because although she had not chosen it, she had let it happen.

“Then Richard will be coming,” Cecily said. “He’ll be coming to get his book.”

Joanna stared at her. “How did you know about Richard?”

Cecily stared back. “How doyou?”

“Joanna said you were under a Library silencing spell,” Collins said. “You shouldn’t even be able to say his name.”

Cecily’s mouth dropped open and she took a step backward, but a second later she’d composed herself. “My silencing spell is broken,” she said, looking at Joanna. “That’s what I asked for in that note, the one I put through the mirror. I consented to the spell twenty-three years ago to protect your sister, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I knew if I wasn’t able to tell you the truth, I’d lose you.”

Every time Joanna had looked at her mother in recent memory, it had been through a veil of suspicion so thick that Cecily’s true outline was blurred. Joanna didn’t know the necessary motions to lift that veil completely: she’d been wearing it for too long to just pick up her hands and push it away.

“There’s another silencing spell in your basement,” Cecily said. “One that I once read to someone else; one that only I can break. I want to break it now. There’s been enough silence to last a lifetime.” She reached out and grabbed Joanna’s hands, her grip steady. “Will you let me in, Joanna? Please?”

There were no more wards. Cecily could push Joanna aside and walk in as easily as she could walk into any house. But she was asking. She was giving Joanna the choice.

“Come in, then,” Joanna said. “Come in and tell me the truth.”

33

“Give me the book,” Richard said to Nicholas. “I know you’ve brought it with you. I can hear it.”

“Maram,” Nicholas said, “what is this?”

Esther’s entire sensory awareness was split in two. Half of her was focused on the extremely capable-looking pistol pointed directly at her head, and the other half was glued to the dark-haired woman at Richard’s side. This was Maram, perched on the edge of an enormous wooden desk and holding her own gun loosely, even casually, in her lap. Her gaze on Nicholas, not even a flick of the eye in Esther’s direction, and those thick eyebrows—not unlike Esther’s own, Nicholas was right—furrowed in apology.

---