Page 91 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Nicholas and Esther were both leaning forward, Nicholas watching so intently his eyes were getting dry, and a few times Collins looked back up at him, jaw set, to give him a little nod that Nicholas couldn’t interpret. Nicholas didn’t feel the magic as it began to work but he knew Joanna would be hearing it, and he could see its effects in the lines of Collins’s body, his shoulders stiffening, the tendons standing out on his neck, his shaking hands balling into fists as he breathed through the discomfort of the lifting spell.

Joanna let the final word ring out and Collins gasped, a sound like water sluicing through a grate. He slumped forward, one hand on the couch to support himself, the other flying to his throat, wheezing.

Joanna closed the book and set it on the low coffee table, and Nicholas demanded, “Well?”

“Give me a fucking second, Jesus,” Collins rasped.

“But it worked,” Esther said. She had gotten to her feet and her mouth was twitching like it wanted to break into a smile, but she wouldn’t let it. “I wrote a spell,” she said, “and the spell worked!”

“We don’t know that yet,” Nicholas said. “Something happened, but—”

“My name,” Collins said experimentally, “is Nicholas.”

“What?”

Collins had an expression Nicholas had never seen before, a grin that transformed his whole face, lit up his eyes, erased the scowl lines around his mouth. “That’s my first name,” he said. “Nicholas.”

“What?” said Nicholas. “No.”

“Nicholas Collins,” said Collins, and held out a hand toward him. Before he quite knew what he was doing, Nicholas was leaning over the coffee table to take it, Collins’s palm very warm against his own perpetually freezing fingers. They shook.

“All this time I’ve been guessing,” Nicholas said, “and you’re telling me we have the same name?”

“Well, I’ve always gone by Nick,” said Nick Collins. “Holy shit, it feels good to say that out loud!” He glanced at Joanna and, somewhat more tentatively, offered her his hand, too. “Nick Collins?” he said.

Nicholas watched the uncertainty play out on Joanna’s face—one beat, two, and she didn’t move, Collins’s own hopeful face beginning to fall as the seconds ticked by. Then, right as Collins began to pull his hand away, she reached out with an abrupt, decisive gesture, and Nicholas couldn’t help but feel secondhand relief as Collins beamed at her, cradling her hand in both of his. He turned toward Esther next, but then seemed to think better of it—she was literally sitting on her hands.

“Wait,” said Nicholas. “What am I supposed to call you now?”

“Collins,” said Collins decisively. “And I can hear them, by the way. Books. Magic. Whatever. Every bodyguard you’ve ever had can hear them, that’s why we get recruited.”

“But you hate books,” Nicholas said, dazed.

“I didn’t used to,” said Collins. “I used to love them. I worked security for a collective in Boston who pooled their books—their homebase is Lisa’s house, she and Tansy are members, like I used to be. My little sister Angie, too. That’s how the Library found me, when they wanted to buy our collection and ended up buying me instead. My friends, including Lisa and Tansy, and probably Angie... they all think I sold out for the paycheck, but it wasn’t like that.” His face shuttered. “Turns out I’m a hot commodity, a trained bodyguard who can hear magic. When I turned down their job offer the first time, Richard sweetened the deal with a little blackmail. The Library offered money for our collection, sure, but Richard’s got enough of his own magic that he doesn’t need to pay to take ours. Buying the books was just the easier way. He said so long as I came to work for the Library, if I submitted to the NDA and stayed in line, the collective would be safe. And he didn’t just mean the books. He was threatening my friends, too.” He glanced at Esther, seeming to seek some sort of sympathy. “And my sister.”

“But you’re not in line now,” Joanna said.

“No,” Collins said grimly, “I’m not. But Maram told me if I got Nicholas safely out of the Library, she’d make sure no one in the collective would be hurt.”

Esther snorted. “And you believed her, just like that?”

“Give me some credit,” Collins said. “She let me read her a truth spell. She wouldn’t have been able to promise if she didn’t really mean it.”

So that was why Richard had found Nicholas’s last truth spell so faded. He started to get to his feet, felt a flood of nausea and leaned hard on the piano keys without meaning to. A discordant clang made Joanna jump like a startled rabbit. “Sorry,” he said.

“Sit down,” Collins said, and Nicholas sat. He wasn’t sure if the waves of vertigo were from Collins’s words or from an underproduction of red blood cells, but either way, he was feeling distinctly unwell. He snapped his fingers for Sir Kiwi, who trotted over, black eyes bright, having a grand old time. She sat obligingly on his foot.

Esther had settled back in her chair, but she kept changing position, restless. “So, Maram gave you a bunch of marching orders and told you if you did what she said, she wouldn’t sic Richard on your friends. Fine. That still doesn’t exactly sound like a reason to trust someone. In fact, it sounds a whole lot like more blackmail.”

“That’s not why I trust her,” said Collins. “I trust her because she’s protecting someone on the outside, too, only Richard doesn’t know about it.”

Nicholas felt a jolt of agitation he couldn’t explain, a sensation of falling, and Collins cleared his throat.

“The night of the gala,” he said to Nicholas, and hesitated. “I think you already figured out they staged that attacker, right?”

Nicholas nodded. “The bees,” he said.

“What attacker?” Esther said. “Whatbees?”

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