Page 73 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Esther didn’t understand right away. Then she said “The books,” and her eyebrows flattened along with her mouth. “The more you tell me about this Library,” she said, “the more confused I am about how you ever thought the people who own it were, I don’t know, the good guys?”

“I never said I thought they were good,” Nicholas said. “I just didn’t think about it either way. When you’re growing up, you don’t ask whetheryour family’sgood,do you? Especially if you don’t know anything else.They’re just your family.”

“And I suppose being, like, insanely rich helped grease things along.”

Nicholas felt a bolt of irritation, and Esther, whose eyes were on the road, must’ve felt his reaction somehow, because she added quickly, “I’m not making fun of you for being rich. That’s clearly Collins’s territory, I wouldn’t dare infringe.”

“Thank you,” said Collins.

“I only mean,” said Esther, “that when things are very beautiful and comfortable on the surface, it can be harder to see the ugliness underneath.”

“It wasn’t all ugliness,” Nicholas said, though he didn’t know why he felt the need to protest. He was too tired for this conversation by half. “My uncle inherited the entirety of the Library, inherited our family’s legacy. It’s a lot of responsibility. I should know, being next in line.”

“It’s manufactured responsibility,” said Esther. “Your family took that responsibility on purpose, just like my family did. You say ‘responsibility,’ I hear ‘power.’”

“Well, aren’t they the same thing?”

“No! And anyway, I don’t know how you can defend the man you tell me staged a kidnapping and committed real violence against you to keep you loyal to him.”

Nicholas’s fingers tightened in Sir Kiwi’s fur. “I’m not defending him,” he said.

“Leave him alone,” said Collins. “He learned about the eye thing what, seventy-two hours ago? It’ll take a second.”

“What will take a second?” Nicholas demanded. “I left, didn’t I? Don’t I get some fucking credit for leaving?”

“Yes,” said Collins.

The car was silent for a while after that, only the loud wheeze of the engine and the swish of the wheels on pavement. Nicholas slouched downand stared out at the green blur of passing trees and the steady lines of traffic they passed queuing at the exits.

Then he said to Esther, “What about your family?”

“What about them?”

“Do they know we’re coming?”

“No,” said Esther. “Joanna doesn’t have a phone. And I want to leave Cecily, my mom—well, stepmom—out of it for now.”

“So you’re just gonna show up after however many years, boom, no warning?” said Collins.

“The fewer people know our plans, the better,” said Esther. “I’m still not convinced your friend, Maram, isn’t trying to get us all in one place to murder us. Especially if you’re right and I’m—whatever you think I am.”

“You are,” Nicholas said, for the five hundredth time. Her doubt frustrated him. They had two axes of undeniable proof: her utter invulnerability to magic and the fact that her father’s orders to move every year coincided exactly with the activation of Richard’s annual Scribe-seeking spell.

And then there was the fact that Richard had told Nicholas over and over, all his life, that he was the last and only one of his kind.

Just a few days ago, Richard’s insistence might have seemed proof in the opposite direction, but whatever Esther said about his loyalties, Nicholas was coming to accept that nearly everything he’d known about himself had been a lie, so it stood to reason that this lie, upon which his entire identity was formed, should also be false.

“We’ll test it as soon as we get to your house,” he said. “Do you think you’ll be able to get hold of any blackthorn?”

“I have no idea,” Esther said, “because I have no idea what that is.”

“It’s a tree,” Nicholas said. “Berries, branches, or seeds will do, but it can be tricky to find, we might have to call a specialty store to get some seeds, or—” he stopped, because Esther was grinning at him in the mirror.

“Nicholas,” she said. “If you’re asking about herbs, I did a bad job explaining my sister to you. She’s a specialty store unto herself.”

“What’s blackthorn do?” Collins said, swiveling in his seat to look at Nicholas, an expression of guarded hope on his face.

“Many things,” said Nicholas, “but in this particular circumstance, it’s going to help break your NDA spell. A spell Esther here is going to write.”

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