Page 47 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Youwon’t stick.”

“But I’ll hold on so tight! I promise!”

“Well, let’s see,” Richard said, and took a knife from his pocket, along with a small bag of what Nicholas guessed was a powdered mixture of black henbane, esphand, and the dried petals of cyclamen persicum. “Sit,” he ordered, and Nicholas sat on the edge of the stone bench, practically vibrating with impatience, watching his uncle prick his finger and press the bloodied mixture of herbs to the page.

Because of the spell’s difficulty it was rather a long book, the product of two separate sessions of bloodletting more than a month apart, and Richard did not hurry his way through it. Just as when he read to Nicholas at night, his voice was resonant and engaging, and as Nicholas listened to his own meticulous words read aloud so expertly, pride began to radiate through him. He had done beautiful work. His uncle was really impressed. And now they were going to fly.

By the time Richard had finished reading, the sun was high in the sky and the carpet had risen about a yard off the grass and was floating there, its corner tassels moving in the light breeze. Richard leaned to test his weight with his hands before sitting gingerly and lifting his feet from the ground. The carpet did not give beneath his weight. He sat cross-legged and gripped the two front tassels and pulled them up—instantly the carpet rose another yard. He pulled the left tassel—the carpet floated left.

“Marvelous,” Richard said. “And it’ll last how long?”

“A half hour, I think,” Nicholas said excitedly, “and it won’t just drop, it’ll start sinking slowly and then land on the ground so you can climb off.”

With no warning, Richard yanked on the tassels so hard the rug banked straight upward, shooting into the air like a kite as Richard, absolutely fearless, stayed improbably seated, fastened by magic to the rug’s wooly back. Nicholas nearly got a crick in his neck following Richard as he shot up, up, up, then veered to the left and did a quick, tightcircle above the lake, maybe twenty yards in the air, his face and body obscured by the bottom of the carpet. It looked very small from Nicholas’s vantage point, and then grew bigger as Richard shot back down to the ground, so fast that Nicholas feared he’d crash, but he pulled level just in time.

His thick hair, peppered with gray that had never crept any further than his temples, was tousled by the wind, and he was grinning like a schoolboy.

“Bloody fantastic,” he said. “All right, Nicholas, climb on. Safest thing is if you sit behind me, I think. Promise you’ll hold tight?”

Nicholas was already scrambling to get aboard, kneeling behind his uncle and, after a beat of hesitation, looping his arms around his waist as if riding behind him on a motorbike. Richard was not much given to hugs and Nicholas hadn’t initiated one since he was a very small child, and this was the closest they’d been in quite some time. Nicholas leaned against his uncle’s back and looked out over his shoulder as Richard pulled the carpet upward, much more slowly than he’d done for himself a moment before.

As the carpet rose, so did Nicholas’s heart, until he felt it would burst from happiness. When Richard paused some five yards above the pond he said, “Higher!”

So they went higher. They went high enough that Nicholas was giddy with it, clutching his uncle so tightly he could feel his ribs creak, but Richard didn’t object. From above, the lake looked like a brilliant blue puddle and the goats small as mice, while the great stone walls of the house—so chilly and impenetrable when Nicholas was on the ground looking up—appeared flimsy and quaint, a doll’s house in perfect detail. They hovered there for a while without moving, pointing things out to one another: the toylike car puttering down the road, the roses like splashes of color from a shaken paintbrush, the flock of trilling birds that rose from one tree and alighted in another. Then Richard guided the carpet down to somewhat less-dizzying heights and urged it forward.

They swooped over the field and wove through the tops of trees, and when he begged Richard to pick up speed his uncle obliged, dipping so low the carpet left a swathe of rustling grasses in its wake as it hurtled across the grounds. They looped around the house, climbing ever higher until they were level with the topmost spires of the copper-shingled turrets, and Nicholas laughed aloud from sheer joy, from the danger and thrill of the flight.

“You did this, Nicholas,” Richard called to him. “Your blood, your words. How does it feel? Do you feel powerful?”

“Yes!” Nicholas shouted, because he did. But even more than powerful, what he felt was purely, sublimely happy.

Eventually the carpet began to sink, as he’d written it to; down, down, down, until it lay itself on the grass like a tired child and came to rest. Nicholas rolled off, still feeling the swoop and climb in his belly, the wind in his hair.

Richard smiled at him. “Still in a bad mood, then?”

Nicholas couldn’t deny he felt better than he had in weeks. “No,” he said honestly. “That was amazing.”

“If you’d asked me about your book right from the start, instead of keeping it from me, we could’ve read it together days ago,” Richard said. His tone was mild, not reproachful. “I hope next time you’ll trust me. Secrets are bad news, Nicholas. In the end, they’ll only make you feel worse.”

At the time, it had not occurred to Nicholas to wonder how his uncle had found the book in the first place; how he must have gone through Nicholas’s study and maybe even his bedroom to find where Nicholas had hidden it. At the time, he was too dazed with satisfaction and gratitude. But that night, long after he’d thanked Richard and promised not to keep anything from him again, he lay in bed going over the events of the day and felt a twinge of resentment.Even at ten he’d known that Richard’s view of secrets went only one way: secrets kept from Richard were bad, but secrets Richard kept, himself? Well.

Now, many years later in Richard’s study, he thought of his uncle’s long-ago words with fury.

Secrets are bad news, Nicholas. In the end, they’ll only make you feel worse.

He was still standing at his uncle’s desk staring down at the draft of that abhorrent spell. Collins had stomped into the next room and suddenly popped his head round the door.

“Get over here,” he said. “Now.”

“Excuse me?”

Collins’s head disappeared.

Nicholas took a second to rearrange the desk, so it looked as it had when they’d come in, then took one last look around the study, forcing himself not to skim over the enormous jar and its grotesque inhabitant. He needed to remember.

In the other room, Collins was staring intently at one of the mirrors, arms crossed. Nicholas came to stand at his side. They were in front of the one labeledClinic,which framed a room that looked like a nurse’s office in an American high school movie, with a large desk and several beds separated by curtains—though none of the curtains were closed and there was no one at the desk.

There was someone in one of the beds, however; someone with a lot of blond hair and a pale, sleeping face. And standing at the foot of the bed, her own face in profile, another woman, this one dark-haired and light-brown-skinned and wearing a sweater Nicholas couldn’t help noticing was very ugly. Just as he started to turn away, however, Collins said, “Wait,” and someone else came into the frame from the side, then turned to stare right at the mirror.

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