Page 68 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“I can get us a car,” Collins said. He’d been quiet for most of the conversation so far because it had been preceded by the snack cart, from which he’d procured a single-serving bag of Cheez-its that had taken most of his attention. He tipped the last scatterings of orange dust into his mouth and wiped his hands.

“How?” said Nicholas.

“I’m from Boston,” said Collins. “I have people.”

“Family?” Nicholas said, interested by the prospect of seeing which giants must have copulated to produce Collins, but Collins shook his head jerkily.

“People,” he’d repeated. “Who can get us a car.”

“He’s got people who can get us a car,” Esther said to Nicholas.

“Yes, thank you, I’m right here.”

“So it’s settled,” she’d said. “We won’t get on the plane to Burlington.”

And they had not. Instead, as soon as they’d landed in the Logan terminal they found a payphone, something Nicholas had only ever seen in movies. Collins had tucked himself into it and had a short but intense-looking phone conversation that had resulted in a squalid, thunderous subway ride to this hideous house on a nondescript corner of a gray city street.

From his vantage point Nicholas could see a laundromat, an Irish pub, a Salvation Army store, another Irish pub, a pizzeria, and a store whose sign was a hamburger circled by planetary rings, like Saturn. Anolder woman with a cigarette clenched between her teeth paused nearby to let her squat, beetle-like mutt lift a leg against someone’s car tire and release a waterfall of steaming piss.

“That’s a lotta pee pee for a little boy!” she exclaimed.

If this was how the other half lived, Nicholas thought, perhaps he should’ve stayed and taken his chances in the Library.

Esther stopped pacing so abruptly Nicholas looked up and followed her gaze to the door, which had swung open. Collins’s broad back obscured whoever stood inside but he ducked his head, listened, then turned and trotted down the stoop to where Nicholas and Esther were waiting.

“She wants us to come in before she gives us the car,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Don’t say anything, all right? Except please and thank you or whatever.”

“Who isshe?” Esther said.

“Lisa,” said Collins, already heading back up the steps. Esther was after him like a shot—where didshe get that energy?—but Nicholas hesitated, feeling a flicker of nerves. Despite his curiosity to get a glimpse of Collins’s life before the Library, part of him worried that when he and Esther left today, Collins would not be with them. He would opt to stay here, in his own city, with his own people, free from Maram and the Library’s machinations. Not a choice Nicholas could hold against him; after all, they were both, in their own ways, hoping for freedom... though what Nicholas’s own freedom might look like was unclear.

He hoped it would not look like Boston.

He followed Esther inside.

The woman who’d opened the door—Lisa, presumably—was waiting for them in the dark-wooded foyer, which was cluttered with coats, boots, and hats. Nicholas had been expecting someone shady and brutish, someone more like Collins, but Lisa was neither of those things. She was a dark-skinned Black woman of perhaps forty, with a broad, animated face, purple lipstick, and a faded pink Cape Cod baseball cap.

She was peering at Nicholas and Esther with interest. “Coworkers of yours?” she asked.

“No,” said Collins. “I quit.”

Her expression, which had been light and somewhat mocking, changed. “What do you mean, quit? No one quits.”

“It’s complicated.”

Lisa had a small gold cross around her neck. She toyed with it as she studied him. “We can give you a car,” she said. “We can’t give you protection. You know that, right?”

“Did I ask for protection?”

Esther turned to Nicholas with a raised eyebrow.What the fuck,she mouthed. Nicholas shook his head at her.

Lisa stared at Collins until he looked away, then she sighed. “I probably shouldn’t even bother asking questions. Could you tell me anything even if you wanted to?”

Nicholas felt his eyes widen.

Collins said, “No.”

“Figures.” She glanced down and seemed to notice Sir Kiwi for the first time. “Okay!” she said. “Okay, now that iscute,my gosh. How is it with cats?”

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