Page 48 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Tell me,” Collins said, pointing. “Is that Tretheway?”

Nicholas realized with astonishment that Collins was right. It was Tretheway, his former bodyguard.

“I thought that asshole was fired,” Collins said.

“I thought so, too,” said Nicholas.

“Can he see us through the mirror?”

“Not if it’s the spell I wrote last May, which it must be,” said Nicholas. “You can pass things back and forth but it’s one-way vision only. Come on, I don’t give a damn what Tretheway’s up to.”

“Hang on,” Collins said. “The girl.”

The dark-haired woman had turned, and she, too, was staring directly into the mirror. Nicholas nearly took a step back, so purposeful and intense was her gaze, her eyes bright beneath thick, expressive eyebrows. She stared searchingly, then turned away again. Tretheway had disappeared from the frame. She was facing his direction and saying something.

“Do you know her?” said Nicholas. There was something familiar about her, maybe. “Is she one of ours?”

Collins didn’t answer. He was staring at the glass as if transfixed and Nicholas reached out to pull him away, but the woman looked back at the mirror and Nicholas paused. Tretheway came into the frame again, his back to the glass, mostly hiding the black-haired woman, one of his hands rigid at his side. He was holding a gun.

“Oh shit,” said Collins.

The woman was speaking again, her hands were up like she was calming a dog. Tretheway cocked his elbow almost casually, pointing the gun at her, and for a second both were so still it looked like the image had frozen on the screen. Then, so suddenly that Nicholas found himself gripping Collins’s sleeve in alarm, she leaped into action, throwing herself forward in a tackle that sent both her and Tretheway flying to the ground and Collins let out a shout like he was watching a football match. The two were half out of sight of the mirror now, only their lower bodies visible, boots and knees tangling in a desperate scuffle.

“Whose side are we on?” Nicholas said urgently. “Do they both work for the Library?”

“I don’t give a shit about the Library,” Collins spat. “I hope she throttles him.”

Nicholas didn’t think she would. Tretheway was strong and well-trained. But just as he thought this, the woman reared into view: she’dgotten the upper position with Tretheway beneath her, though her lip was dripping blood and one of Tretheway’s hands appeared to yank her forward, and then they both vanished again.

“Oh fuck,” said Collins.

Through the mirror someone swung back into view. It was Tretheway this time, bruised and bloodied but grinning. It was clear from the set of his shoulders and the position of his arms that he was strangling the woman beneath him.

“Get up,” Collins begged her. “Get up, get him.”

Only then did Nicholas notice that the blond person in the bed had risen. She was in a cloth gown with one arm strapped to her chest in a sling, looking unsteady on her feet. In the other hand she held a flower vase with what appeared to be a single plastic flower glued inside it. She was creeping up to Tretheway’s side, her face terrified but determined. She raised the vase in a trembling hand. It was clearly the only weapon she’d been able to find and it looked useless and pathetic.

Her swing, however, was neither of those things. With surprising power, she brought the vase down on Tretheway’s head, and he lurched to one side, half vanishing again. The blond woman leaned quickly down and when she stood, she was holding the gun.

She looked at it.

She looked at Tretheway, who was rising, his broad back obscuring their view again, blotting her out until all they could see was his pale sweater.

The scene that came next was all the more horrifying for being completely silent. Tretheway jerked once, the wool of his sweater going red below one shoulder blade, and then he keeled over. Gone from the frame. All they could see was the blond woman, gun out, mouth open, visibly shaking.

Nicholas’s hand was still clamped on Collins’s arm, all thoughts of leaving vanished from his head. The woman in the sling appeared to bescreaming the same word over and over, maybe her friend’s name, sinking to her knees. It was too late, Nicholas thought numbly. Tretheway had been shot, yes—but not before he’d strangled the dark-haired woman to death while Nicholas and Collins watched.

But then she surged into view, her face red, cheeks hollowing as she gasped for air, and Nicholas released his own breath. At his side, he heard Collins do the same. The woman with the gun dropped it and grabbed onto the dark-haired woman with her good hand, both of their mouths moving frantically at one another. Nicholas could not even begin to guess what they were saying, but the blond woman had stopped screaming and was now weeping, her shoulders shaking. She looked back toward where Tretheway was lying, invisible.

“Is he dead do you think?” Nicholas said.

Collins looked ill. “I don’t know,” he said.

Suddenly the two woman both turned toward the mirror in tandem. The blonde in the sling was still crying but she was nodding now, too, and they moved closer to the frame, crouching down to where Tretheway must be lying. The black-haired woman was apparently rifling through his pockets and came up with a slim book that Nicholas recognized. It was one of many simple memory-wipes he’d written over the years, and he felt a jolt of total otherworldliness, watching this stranger handle an object he’d bled and sweated over.

An object designed to suck in whatever reader was unlucky enough to lay eyes on its first page.

“Don’t,” he said aloud to her, “don’t look, don’t say the words,” but it was too late—she was already skimming the first page of the memory wipe spell. She flipped through to the next page, then the next, yet had no visible reaction to the spell written in Nicholas’s own blood.

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