Page 96 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“No,” Collins said, “she was very clear. The wards come down.”

Joanna had fallen into a chair beside Esther, and Esther reached out to touch her arm. “Jo, you know these wards better than any of us,” she said. “Aside from Richard tracking that book, what else will happen when they drop?”

“Everyone who’s ever known about the house will suddenly remember where it is,” said Joanna. “They’ll be able to find it again. As far as I know, Mom is the only person in that category, but we’ve established that I don’t actually know very much.”

“Okay,” Esther said, lining this information up in her mind. “What else?”

Nicholas and Collins were both giving Joanna their full attention nowand she shrank back a little beneath the pressure. But she said, “Anyone would be able to see the driveway and the house itself.” She made a wry face. “The electrical company will probably notice a houseful of power being siphoned off the line. Phones and the internet will start working, and any kind of communication spell like water-scrying or mirror magic would work from the outside as well as the inside.”

“So the mirror upstairs,” Esther said slowly. “If the wards drop, then whoever’s on the other end would be able to send things through, as well as receive them. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes,” said Joanna, and jerked her head up to meet Esther’s eyes. “Oh.”

“Oh what?” said Collins.

Nicholas said, “You think Maram’s on the other side of the mirror.”

“I think it’s very possible,” said Esther.

“But if that’s so, she can only receive. She can’t pass anything back,” Nicholas said. “Until the wards are dropped.”

“Oh,” said Collins.

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Esther helped Joanna drag some of the junk into the hallway so they could all crowd into her old bedroom, then she perched on the bed with Nicholas and Sir Kiwi while Collins sat in a spindly backed wooden chair. Joanna sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the closet door, which was ajar just enough that she could keep an eye on the mirror inside. The wards would fall in two minutes. They hadn’t yet discussed how long they would wait beyond that.

“We can’t expect immediate action,” Collins said. “For one thing, it’s midnight in England, there’s a decent chance Maram’s asleep. So let’s not start freaking out if seven o’clock hits and nothing happens immediately, all right?”

“One minute,” said Nicholas.

Joanna dropped her head into her hands, and Esther saw that she was trembling. “These wards haven’t dropped in thirty years,” she murmured. “For thirty years we’ve been completely protected and now? What am I doing?”

“Being brave,” said Collins.

“Ten seconds,” said Nicholas. Joanna groaned and curled into herself as if her stomach hurt.

“Now,” said Nicholas.

An instant later both Collins and Joanna were wincing, ducking their heads as if against a blast of noise, and Collins rotated his jaw like he was un-stopping his ears.

“Ow,” he said.

Joanna was ashen and when she spoke, her voice shook. “They’re down.”

Joanna wasn’t the only one who had been raised beneath these wards. Esther, too, had stood at Abe’s knee and watched him set them, night after night. She’d listened at eight years old when he’d explained that of his two daughters only Joanna would ever read the spell, only Joanna could learn to keep their home safe; and at eighteen she’d listened to him tell her that the only way the wards would continue to protect her family was if she, Esther, was not under them. The wards had broken up her parents’ marriage. The wards had tied her sister to this house. The wards had forced Esther to run for ten long years.

She knew what this cost Joanna. The agony was clear on her face, her mouth crumpled, her eyes squeezed shut, and she felt Joanna’s pain like a pain in one of her own limbs.

But Esther was glad the wards were down.

Even in their short reacquaintance she had seen that Joanna could not go on in this lonely, unchanging life any more than Esther could have stayed in her own lonely tectonic one.

“Nothing’s happening,” Joanna said, kneeling before the mirror like she was about to pray.

“It’s been no time at all,” Nicholas said. “Collins is right, we’ll have to wait.”

“But for how long?”

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