Page 94 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“And what happens afterward?”

“You give me back my wards and we reset them,” Joanna said.

“She said to let ’em drop,” Collins said, though he hunched his shoulders apologetically. “I’m going to let ’em drop.”

“Then we go,” Esther said. “We destroy the book, leave this house, and we don’t come back.”

Joanna took a shuddering breath but didn’t protest. Nicholas sawdetermination flash through her face and he had a sinking feeling that Joanna’s own plans did not involve running. Even after everything she’d learned, she wouldn’t leave the books or the house around them. He could see the truth of this in every line of her body and he knew Esther saw it, too.

“Thank you,” Collins said. His posture changed, shoulders coming down, muscles relaxing, seeming instantly smaller. Nicholas wondered how he’d learned to do that, then wondered if he’d ever get a chance to find out, to actually get to know this person with whom he kept trusting his life.

“Will you go and get the book again?” Nicholas said to Joanna, and her nostrils flared as if she might protest, but then she nodded and turned to fetch it from the pantry. No one spoke until she came back and handed Nicholas the book, which he took with a cringing sense of revulsion, as if he might find it oozing with decay beneath his fingers. But it looked the same as ever, almost ordinary, softbound and neat. He turned to the first page and sat at the piano bench and thought about the draft he’d seen in Richard’s study.

Flesh of my flesh.

Human remains—the remains of a Scribe—had bound the book. Whoever’s life was being extended had been bound to a piece of that same body.

He thought of Richard’s study itself, curios glimmering from every corner: stuffed birds, mummified bats, clay animals, all of them probably attached to spells. He thought about how Richard never got sick, how he’d only ever hired bodyguards for Nicholas and Maram, never for himself. And he thought of that portrait of the surgeon behind Richard’s desk, his ancestor, founder of the Library. Alike to Richard in nearly all aspects except for those cold eyes glittering from behind spectacles. He thought about how he’d never seen a photograph of Richard as a young man, how he’d always looked exactly as he did now: fiftyish, handsome, the gray at his temples never encroaching further.

He thought again about the portrait. About the Library’s first Scribe, the surgeon’s own sister, and that single femur in the ivory frame.Bone of my bone.

He had assumed Richard wanted to find Esther so he could force Nicholas to use the draft in the binder, force Nicholas to drain Esther’s blood and slice up her body and write a spell that would let Richard live forever.

What else had he misunderstood?

The other three had begun talking in low voices as he read, but he didn’t wait for a pause. He spoke over them.

“It’s Richard’s life.”

Three faces swiveled toward him.

“Richard’s life,” he repeated, holding the book gingerly. “I’m certain of it. He doesn’t seem to age, he never gets ill...” He was shaking as he spoke, freezing cold even so close to the hot belly of the woodstove. “I think he’s been around for a long time. I think maybe he was the person who started the Library.”

Joanna put her hands to her mouth, glancing at her sister, whose eyelid twitched infinitesimally though she was otherwise still. Nicholas held his breath. He didn’t know if he could bear being challenged on this, didn’t know if he had the energy to argue something he knew instinctually, as sure as he’d been when he realized Esther was a Scribe. He prepared to launch a logical defense.

Collins said, “Yeah. That sounds pretty much on par with the level of fucked-up we’ve been dealing with.”

Nicholas looked at him gratefully, but Esther said, “Even if that’s true, it’s just another complication, another question.”

“No,” said Nicholas. “No, it’s not a question. It’s an answer.”

No matter how he turned it over in his mind, there was only one reason he could think that Maram might have sent both him and Esther—her daughter, a Scribe—to this house in the middle of nowhere. Only one reason she had sent him to Richard’s study and forced him to confrontthe truth of Richard’s cruelty, then twisted her way in convoluted circles around the impositions of her NDA to direct their attention to this book, Richard’s book, Richard’s life.

The book had been written by two Scribes. Two Scribes were needed to destroy it. But there was a safeguard written into the spell, a protection that was also a loophole.

Only mine own blood can end me.

One of the Scribes had to be Nicholas.

Esther was leaning toward him now, lifting the book from his hands, and he let her. He had no strength to hold on.

29

The memory came back to Esther as soon as her fingers touched the darkly oiled cover of Richard’s book. She remembered where she had seen it before.

Her father crouched in front of her saying, “Can you rip this up? We’re just trying something out.”

The strangeness of feeling paper that wouldn’t tear, how its flimsiness felt impossible, the frustration of failure and Abe’s disappointed gaze. She’d held a match to it, thrown it into the woodstove, submerged it under soapy water in the sink. No matter what she’d done to it, the book remained intact.

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