Page 71 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Jewel?” said Collins.

“Pearl,” Esther said, and hunched further over the laptop to hide the screen as she typed her reply, but Nicholas and Lisa leaned over with her. “Guys,” Esther begged.

“You said I could watch,” Lisa pointed out.

Nicholas didn’t bother making an excuse, just read aloud for Collins’s sake as Esther wrote:

Dear Pearl, I am so glad to read your voice, even if you’re e-shouting at me. I am not on the ice in a hole, I’m all right, except for how shitty I feel about leaving you. I can’t be there yesterday, but I promise I will be in touch soon and I WILL explain. Until then, please try to trust me when I say I absolutely had to leave. I’m thinking about you all the time and I miss you in lots of ways I can’t write down because I’m on a public computer.

“Go ahead, write them down,” Collins said.

“Yes, we don’t mind,” said Nicholas.

“Okay,” Lisa said, leaning back, “let’s give the girl a little privacy.”

Nicholas gave her a betrayed look but turned away so Esther couldfinish her email in peace. He’d never felt so passionately all-caps about another person as Pearl seemed to feel about Esther, and certainly no one had ever felt that way about him. He expected to be sad about this realization, and instead found that he was mostly curious. Maybe if he really did manage to get free of the Library once and for all, if he began to lead a life on his own terms, all-caps was a feeling he himself might someday find.

Esther closed the laptop as a muffled bang sounded from the direction of the entryway.

“That’ll be Tans with the car,” Lisa said, standing. “Did you all get enough cake?”

They trooped back out through the dark entryway, and Nicholas cast one last curious glance at that bright living room, warmed by magic. He’d never seen a book employed like this, to do something so utterly practical rather than luxurious, and it sparked something in his chest, a long-dormant ember. For the first time in a long while, he had the urge to write uncommissioned, purely out of interest in magic itself. To think about what it could do; how it might be useful. How he might be useful.

Outside, leaning on the hood of a scratched-up red car, was a tall, bulky white woman, her hair in two long silver braids as thick as snakes. She was probably over sixty and wearing a pair of plaid wool overalls that looked so warm Nicholas couldn’t even begrudge her their ugliness. This was Tansy, he supposed. Tansy regarded Collins coolly, jingling the keys in her hand. She had faded tattoos on her bare fingers, Nicholas saw, and he recognized the four suits of the tarot: a cup, a wand, a sword, and a pentacle.

“The prodigal son returns,” Tansy said, her voice scratchy but resonant. She moved her attention squarely to Esther. “Hi there. Can you drive stick?”

Esther stepped forward immediately, all shining eyes and dimples. “I sure can,” she said.

“Hell no!” said Collins.

Tansy swung her head to stare at him, braids swinging. “Last time I saw you work a clutch, you stalled out on a highway.”

“That was like ten years ago!”

“It was two.”

“I’m the only one who knows where we’re going, anyway,” Esther said, letting Tansy drop the keys into her outstretched palm. “Thankyou.”

“Remind me why we’re lending him a car?” Tansy said to Lisa, then before Lisa could answer, “I’d think you could afford a hundred cars by now.”

“Yeah, you’d think,” said Collins.

“Are you planning to call your sister?”

Nicholas leaned forward, interested.

“I can’t right now,” Collins said. “Don’t tell her I came through, all right? It’s not safe.”

Lisa, who’d come to stand by Tansy’s side, frowned. “Should we be worried?”

“That’s your choice,” said Collins.

“Oh,” said Tansy. “You want to talk about choices?”

“I just want the car, you guys. C’mon.”

“All right, all right,” said Tansy. “Take it, it’s yours. We don’t need it back anytime soon, for obvious reasons.” She narrowed her eyes at Collins. “Like you, it’s on its way to being trash.”

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