Page 31 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Joanna thought of her father’s dried-out tongue. She thought of the book he’d been clutching.

“When you tell me about the book he left behind,” said Joanna. “Maybe that’s when I’ll let you in.”

Cecily hurled her napkin to the ground like a child throwing a tantrum,but just like all the times Joanna had asked her before about the book, she said nothing. She was completely silent, her eyes blazing with frustration and rage.

Joanna closed her own eyes briefly and swallowed hard against the hot lump in her throat.

“I can’t let you into the house if I can’t trust you,” she said. “You want the wards down, you’ve admitted it, and Dad died holding a book you refuse to talk about. I know you’re keeping something from me. You have been for years. Maybe you have been all my life.”

“So you keep things from me, in return?” said Cecily. “Is that it? You’re punishing me?”

“I’m sorry if it feels like punishment.”

“How did you get so cold?” Cecily said, and Joanna flinched. For a long, excruciating moment neither of them moved, Cecily staring fixedly at the table, Joanna’s hands knotted together in her lap. Then, suddenly, Cecily let out a long, hard sigh. It was almost the beginning of a sob but when she looked up her eyes were dry, her face composed. “All right,” she said. “You want to know about that book?”

Joanna sat up straight, her heart leaping. “Yes!”

“Go into the living room,” Cecily said. Her tone was dull, lifeless. “Sit on the couch. Wait for me there. I’ll join you soon.”

Lunch, half-finished, was forgotten. Joanna stood, startling Gretchen, who’d been dozing on the warm tile. Then, despite her eagerness, despite the promise of finally getting the answers she’d sought for so long, Joanna hesitated. Her mother’s shoulders were hunched, head bowed. Her expression was so bleak it was hardly an expression at all, merely a collection of features that made a face. For the first time, Joanna thought perhaps some things were better left unknown.

But it was too late for misgivings and her curiosity was too powerful, so she turned away to do as her mother had said. She went through the front hall to the cozy living room and sat on the scuffed leather couch, crossing her legs beneath her. From the kitchen she heard the faint soundsof her mother moving around, the scrape of a chair against the floor, the thump of a door. And on the edge of it all, the hum of Cecily’s books, coating the edges of her awareness in sweet syrup.

Then she noticed the sound was growing louder.

The open places in her mind that were attuned to this specific sensation were slowly being filled, like honey dripping into the cells of a beehive, the buzz rising. She turned toward it, toward the wide doorway of the living room, and found her mother crouched there, one hand on the floor.

At first Joanna didn’t understand what she was seeing.

Cecily was dragging her fingers along the lintel and when she stood, tears on her face, Joanna saw a streak of bright red on her hand, and red glinting wetly on the wood floor. A book was tucked under one arm and the hum had spiked, it wasactive, a hive of bees set loose in a field of flowers.

A spell in progress.

When Joanna and Esther had shared a room as children, Joanna had sometimes woken from nightmares terrified and wanting her parents but unable to make a sound. She’d had no air, no strength, nothing but a cracked sibilant hiss; yet somehow Esther had always known—had always woken up and screamed on her behalf, rousing their parents from their bed down the hall. She felt like that now, frozen. Her voice, always too quiet, arrested in her throat, but Esther wasn’t here to help.

“My baby, please forgive me,” Cecily whispered.

Joanna was already up from the couch and stumbling across the living room toward her, but at the drawn line of her mother’s blood she hit hard against what felt like a wall, as unyielding as wood. She moved back the way she’d come, but slower, her hands out, already knowing what she would encounter: dried blood drawn across the windowsills, the doorways, invisible resistance on all sides, a circle of magic and blood that penned her in as surely as a fence kept a sheep from running.

She’d seen Cecily use this spell once before, many years ago, to trapa rabid coyote that had snarled its way onto the property, so Abe could shoot it.

“It’s only for a few hours,” Cecily said, tears dripping onto her collar. “I had no choice. You wouldn’t—I have to—I can’t make you understand.”

The words thudded dully in Joanna’s ears like a heartbeat, noise without sense. No choice. Understand. A few hours. Then she realized.

“The wards,” she said. “You’ve trapped me here so I can’t set the wards.”

“I’m sorry,” Cecily said again, and Joanna sank down onto the floor and screamed.

9

Nicholas’s suite of rooms had originally been built for a private secretary, and as such were comprised of an anteroom that led to both his bedroom and to an attached study. This design was butterflied in Maram’s quarters in the East Wing, though hers had been intended for a visiting lady, so what was now her own study had once been a dressing room. A few remnants of her study’s past life remained in the forms of a walnut armoire and a full-length gilt Louis Philippe mirror, though the armoire was stuffed with papers, not clothes.

Nicholas waved Collins into his small anteroom and gestured to the low sage velvet sofa and matching armchairs.

“No need to stand in the hall,” he said. “You can hang out in here. Play solitaire or whatever you do to keep yourself occupied.”

Collins had a tray he’d been given by the kitchen, and waited while Nicholas unlocked his study door, eyes darting curiously past Nicholas’s shoulder into the dark room until Nicholas took the tray and shut the door pointedly.

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