Page 49 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

The magic did not touch her.

“That’s impossible,” Nicholas breathed.

A second later she’d shoved the book into the back waistband of herjeans and dragged Tretheway into view by his armpits, his head lolling on his neck, and the blond woman gripped the leg of his coveralls with her good hand. They dragged him closer until they were right on the other side of the glass, the black-haired woman so near that Nicholas could see splatters of Tretheway’s blood on her face. She grabbed Tretheway’s limp hand. On Nicholas and Collins’s side, the glass rippled. Like a worm through wet soil, Tretheway’s fingertip came through to the last knuckle, the nail black, the bones twisted from its journey through the mirror. The finger disappeared and the two women began to struggle with the body.

No sooner had Nicholas wondered what they were doing than he understood.

“They’re pushing him through,” he said.

The finger had been a test. Now Tretheway’s hair prickled through like spikes of growing grass, and then came his bruised forehead, and his face, which was now horribly misshapen—his nose smashed to one side, his jaw misaligned, his eyes sucked back in their sockets as if by an invisible vacuum.

His shoulders stuck and then suddenly began to come through—and wrapped around one shoulder was a small, brown hand with bitten nails. Nicholas gaped at it. The second it had come through the black-haired woman yanked it back, holding it up to her chest in a panic, examining it, clearly expecting it to be warped like Trev’s body was warped, but it seemed to be all right. A second later she resumed her struggle and the rest of Tretheway’s shoulders came through. At that point the magic did its work and gulped the rest of his body into the room with Nicholas and Collins, spitting it out to lie crumpled at their feet. The gun came tumbling with it.

Neither of them could do anything other than stare. If Tretheway hadn’t been dead before, he certainly was now, and the contortions of his mangled flesh were sickening. His skin had held together but everythingwithin had not. He was twisted and bulging beneath that thin unbroken surface. When Nicholas looked back at the glass, the mirror—and every other mirror in that room—had gone blank. They were only mirrors again, disconnected from the life that had charged them on the other side. The life that had just ended.

15

The only positive thing about this whole godawful situation was that Esther now knew that Pearl hadn’t betrayed her.

Trev’s body had gone through the mirror like it was passing through mercury, not even a trace of blood left behind on the cold, hard glass. As soon as he’d vanished, Pearl let out a low moan and sank onto the infirmary floor.

Esther, her whole body aching from the fight and buzzing from the adrenaline of what had felt like near-death, spat frantically onto a clean patch of her sweater sleeve and began to rub the blood marks on the mirror that had opened it in the first place. She was terrified that if she left them up, someone would step out from the frame and kill her and Pearl where they stood. Living things could not pass through mirrors, she knew this—or thought she’d known it, but despite the test she’d made of Trev’s finger, despite how it had come back bruised and twisted and wrong, there had been that terrifying instant where her own had slipped through the surface, and she had felt nothing at all. Perhaps it was the passage from one place to another that ruined a body, and not the entry.

Trev had not been fully dead when they’d pushed him through, but if there had been any doubt as to whether the journey through the mirror had finished what Pearl’s shot had started, it was laid to rest now, as the rusty stains of his magic came away easily beneath Esther’s scrubbing. His living blood had activated the spell from this side; his still-living blood had allowed his own body to pass through; and now that he was dead, the spell from this end was broken.

She wiped away the last of the blood from the glass and crouched in front of Pearl.

“Thank you,” she said. There was a lot more she wanted to say, starting withI’m sorry.

“Please tell me I’m hallucinating,” Pearl said. “Please tell me I’m on drugs, tell me this is a bad dream.”

“It’s a bad dream,” Esther said. She was scanning Pearl, looking for traces of Trev’s blood. There was a little on her fingers and wrists. “You need to wash your hands.”

“I need to wash mybrain,” Pearl said. At any other time, this would have made Esther laugh. But it was clearly not a joke and the fact that Esther planned to do more or less exactly that made it even less funny.

She went over to the sink in the corner and soaked a wad of paper towels, then came back to Pearl and carefully wiped down her hands, cradling them in her own palms. There was a streak of blood on her face, too, though whose Esther didn’t know, and she cleaned that as well. Then she looked down at herself. Her sweater was only lightly stained but there were a few smears on the floor, and the thigh of her jeans was soaked red. Pearl’s infirmary gown was wet and red at the hem.

She would take care of that in a moment. If they had a moment. If no one tried the door of the clinic, found it locked, and raised the alarm. She had no idea what Trev had told the medic to make her leave or how long she’d be gone.

“Do you know where they keep those gowns?” Esther asked Pearl, and to her great relief, Pearl nodded. “Okay, change yours and put the dirty one here, then get into your bed. I’m going to clean the floor.”

Pearl did as she was told, her movements jerky and dissociated, and when she’d gotten into a new gown—struggling a bit with her sling—and climbed onto her bed, Esther went to the supply closet and filled a bucket with soapy water.

“He attacked me,” Pearl said. “Trev. When we were skiing. One second we were talking, and the next he just—his face changed, and he came at me and—” She stopped, her breath coming short. After she’d caught it, she said, “Whowashe? What just happened? How did you know youcould put him through the—the—put him through the—” She seemed unable to complete the sentence. Another shaky breath. “What the hell is going on, Esther?”

“He was after me, not you,” said Esther.

“Yes, thank you, I got that bit.Why?”

Esther was mopping as quickly as she could, emptying and refilling the bucket until all traces of blood were gone, which did not take nearly as long as she might have feared. None of this would stand up to a forensics team, but by the time anyone noticed he was missing and began to worry, Esther would be long gone.

She hoped.

Besides, there would be no trace of his body, no murder weapon, and there were no cameras in the clinic—why should anyone suspect foul play? And there were no witnesses, either. Or there would be no witnesses by the time Esther was done.

“Where did the nurse put the clothes you wore skiing?” Esther asked Pearl.

“I don’t know. Esther, please, just look at me for a second andexplain.”

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