Page 20 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Oh my god,” Maram whimpered, and she sounded so unlike herself that Nicholas’s frozen mind finally roused itself to terror. “Oh my god—”

“I said drive.”

Nicholas’s vision had blackened and tunneled, and something roared in his ears: his own pounding pulse.

“Please,” he croaked. It was the only thing he could think to say. He’d had to beg for his life once before and he’d said please then, too.Please,and later,no.“No,” he tried.

Maram was driving now, darting terrified glances from the road to the stranger in the passenger seat to Nicholas in the back.

“What do you want?” she said.

“What do you think I want?” the man said. He was Welsh, with a low, growling voice that seemed tailor-made to intimidate. “I want you to drive me to the Library.”

Maram, who was always so in-control, so calm, was shaking. “And then what?”

“Rest easy, it’s not you I’m after. It’s him.” He hadn’t taken his eyes off Nicholas. “We’ve been looking for you for a long time, boyo. What’ll the Library do without their pet Scribe?”

Nicholas’s blood went boiling hot, then freezing cold. This couldn’t be happening. No one knew what he was, what he could do. He wanted to deny it, but it was San Francisco all over again, the terror, the disbelief, and his voice was locked somewhere deep in his throat.

“You need him alive,” Collins said. “You won’t hurt him.”

“Try me,” the man said.

Then everything exploded.

That was what it felt like, anyway: a deafening crack ripped through the car and pain burst in Nicholas’s head. In the front seat someone screamed, and Nicholas was certain he’d been shot, certain he was already dead, but a second later he saw that Collins’s gun was raised and the man in the front had pitched backward, slumped against the dashboard, his face obscured by the head rest.

Collins leaped out of the car, leaving his door wide open, the interior lights flashing on, and a second later he was up front, tugging the man’s body out of the front seat and jumping in to take his place.

“Nicholas, close the door,” Maram said. The fear was gone from her voice and in its place cold determination. She was already stepping on the gas and Nicholas, habituated to doing as she said, numbly leaned over to pull Collins’s door closed. Before the lights went out again, he saw there was a gaping hole in the seat beside his head—a shot that had gone wide by less than an inch. His ears were ringing, and he was having trouble focusing his eyes. There seemed to be tiny shapes floating around the inside of the car and he blinked at them in dazed incomprehension.

“Bees?” he said.

“What?” Maram said sharply. “Were you hit? Collins, check if he’s—”

“He’s fine,” said Collins.

“Fresh air,” said Maram and rolled down her window. A few of the little shapes drifted out.

“Did you—did you shoot him?” Nicholas said. He could not piece together what had just occurred. There didn’t seem to be any blood.

“Yeah,” Collins said.

“Did youkillhim?”

Usually, Collins spoke with barely concealed disdain, as if he were the only adult in a world of children. But for once Collins sounded like what he was: young. His voice cracked as he said, “I think so.”

“Thank you,” Nicholas said, because it seemed the appropriate response. Then he opened his own window, leaned over, and vomited into the wind, the illusory burning acid in his throat as it came back up. He could have sworn a honeybee, round and fuzzy, zipped past him and into the night.

When he was finished, Collins was on the phone, his voice now under control. “Roger that,” he kept saying. “Roger that.”

Nicholas could hear Richard’s voice coming tinnily through the speakers.

“He wants to know if you recognized him,” Collins said to Maram.

“I didn’t,” said Maram. “Give me the phone.”

She and Richard continued on, a strained back and forth, but Nicholas couldn’t focus on their words. He was still shaking, his hands trembling in his lap like trapped mice. Outside the tinted windows, London flashed by in a watercolored blur.

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