Page 63 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Esther was not worried about the man on the floor. She was worried about herself.

The guard leaned down to the unclothed man and took a fistful of his hair in one hand, jerking back his head with its identical face. Almost tenderly, like a mother wiping away dirt, the guard licked his thumb and rubbed off the blood that was smeared across the man’s forehead.

“Let’s give it a moment,” the guard said, “and see if you remember me.”

Esther had no idea who the guard was and was about to say so, when suddenly she saw that he did, in fact, look vaguely familiar. Something to do with the set of his mouth, maybe, or the tilt of his eyebrows, which were so light they seemed to disappear against his browbone.

She blinked. The mustache hiding his upper lip faded away as she stared at him, and his brown hair was lightening rapidly to a cornsilk blond that matched his eyebrows. His soft chin was now hard, with a decisive cleft in the center. In the space of seconds, he had a completely different face—and suddenly she did remember him. Reggie’s apartment in Spokane and this man’s pale face hovering above their bed, the glint of his gun in the dark. The way Reggie’s head had snapped back when the man hit him.

Esther said nothing, because if she spoke he would know without a doubt that she was absolutely terrified, and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“Where’d you get this passport?” the blond man said, taking it from his pocket and flipping through it. “It’s good work.”

“Isn’t that how you found me?” she said. “Weren’t you tracking it?” If she tackled him right now, she could catch him off-guard, she could angle it so his head would slam against the wall and—

With a gesture so casual Esther could tell he was enjoying himself, he pulled his jacket aside and rested his hand on the hilt of his gun. The tense line of his arm said he knew exactly what she was thinking, and he wouldn’t give her the chance.

“Tracking your fake passport?” he said, and threw it at her feet, laughing. “Come on. There was only one flight off your research basescheduled for weeks—it wasn’t tough to figure out you’d be on it. I’ve been following you since you got to Auckland.”

“Are you going to try to kill me again?” she said.

In answer, he backed toward the cloth-covered object in the corner opposite the drugged man and tugged the cloth away with a flick of his hand to reveal a large mirror. It was leaning against the wall, its silver surface dotted in blood.

Esther’s heart, already in her throat, surged further upward. Magic had been all over this airport since she’d walked in, it had been stalking her, and she’d gone to a bar and had a drink like a senseless lamb lapping at a trough before a slaughter. Her sister would have known. Joanna would have sensed the magic the second the blond man approached with his face-stealing glamour, but Esther was ignorant and insensible to it. Useless.

She was so angry she almost forgot to be frightened.

“I’m not going to kill you,” the man said. “Not outright, anyway. I’m going to push you through this mirror. Do you know what going through a mirror does to a person?”

Esther didn’t answer.

“You do know,” the man said. “Because you did it to Tretheway. He was a good friend of mine, by the way.”

Trev. He must be talking about Trev. “You saw me do that?” she said, skin crawling at the thought that it had been him behind the mirror the whole time, watching her.

“We saw the aftermath,” the man said. “That was enough. He looked like he’d gone through a meat grinder.”

Weagain. Esther swallowed. “Are you going to shoot me first, like I shot Tretheway?”

She was stalling and he knew it, but he let her, as she had suspected he might—because if this was revenge, he’d want it to go slow.

“Maybe,” he said. “You shot him right here,” he tapped his shoulder, “but I think I’d aim a bit lower. A gut shot sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

Amid her panic, a tiny ray of relief shone. So he thought she had shot Trev, which meant he—orthey,whoevertheywere—hadn’t seen Pearl. They wouldn’t know she was involved; they wouldn’t go after her. Pearl, at least, was probably safe.

Was he bluffing about shooting Esther right here in the airport? Surely someone would come running at the sound of a gunshot. Unless everyone in the vicinity was somehow working with him... but then, why go through the trouble of taking the guard’s face? She thought of the pink-lipsticked woman at the desk, the way she’d nodded at the blond man; she, at least, was likely in on it.

“I can tell what you’re thinking,” the man said, smirking. “You’re thinking you’ll fight me, you’ll get my gun, you’ll turn the tables, blah blah blah.”

It wasn’t at all what Esther had been thinking—but it was true that the scenario he’d described was pretty much her only option, and her best weapon, surprise, was no longer possible. Her mind flashed desperately on all the chances she’d missed to escape: she should’ve turned and run when the gate agent had confiscated her passport, she should’ve run while he was marching her down the hall, she should’ve run before he’d locked her in this room, but she didn’t, she hadn’t, she’d frozen, and now she was utterly and entirely shit out of luck.

Unless...

Unless Pearl had been right, back on base, that Trev had never wanted to kill Esther in the first place. If Trev had been seeking information about her family instead, if what he really wanted was access to her sister and her sister’s books, then this blond man probably did not want her to die, either. The gun was just a threat, and the mirror wasn’t there to kill her: it was there so whoever this man answered to could watch him interrogate her.

“I won’t fight you,” she said, spreading her arms out, testing her theory. Taking a chance. “Go right ahead and give me that gut shot.”

He shook his head at her, as if he was disappointed. “You wanna make it easy for me?” he said. “Fine.” And he flicked off the gun’s safety.

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