Page 27 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Maram, however, was shaking her head, galled at the mere suggestion that anyone could have squirreled a book out from under her loving care. “Nothing is missing,” she said.

“Wouldn’t that be easy?” said Richard. “No, at this juncture we haven’t a single lead, so you’ll be staying here in the house for the foreseeablefuture. At least until we can get a few answers—like how that man knew who you were. How he knew what you can do.”

“And how long will that take?” Nicholas said, heart sinking.

“As long as it takes.”

“What about you? Will you be locking yourselves up, as well?”

“Well, no, we can’t,” said Richard. “Too much to take care of.”

“That reminds me,” Maram said, “I’d scheduled that meeting with Conservation and Scientific Research for Friday at the British Museum, they have an eleventh-century emakimono they want me to look at, but—”

“Do you expect you’ll keep me here for days? Weeks?” Nicholas said, voice as civil as he could manage. Even the threat of death couldn’t stop the panic that rose in him at the thought of being trapped here indefinitely, stuck in this huge, echoing house in the English countryside in winter. “Months?”

Just then the parlor door swung open, and Collins appeared with another tray, this one laden with two steaming cups. “Tea,” he said, setting the tray down in front of Richard and Maram with a rattle. He did not seem to like being pressed into maid duty.

Nicholas’s coffee cup was nearly empty; he’d drained it without fully appreciating the rare taste, though he could feel the caffeine zinging through his blood.

“You won’t even notice the time passing,” Richard said, nodding a thanks at Collins as he reached for the tea. “We’ll be interviewing every Library employee over the next few days and there’s only one or two readings left on your last truth spell, so you’ll need to write another as soon as possible. Tomorrow would be best.”

“So you’re saying I’ll be too out of it from blood loss to be bored.”

“Better out of it and safe than alert and in danger.”

“Richard, he can’t,” Maram said, before Nicholas could reply. “The doctor said we ought to wait at least four months and he’s only just finished Sir Edward’s commission.”

“A little anemia won’t kill him,” said Richard. “A traitor in our midst might.”

“I’ll be all right,” Nicholas said to Maram, trying not to give in to irritation at the way she’d spoken for and over him. “I feel fine. Anyway, Richard’s right. What do I need energy for if I’m stuck here?”

She stared at him, her big brown eyes unreadable. Then she looked back to Richard. “The interrogations can wait,” she tried again. “Nicholas’s health—”

“You can’t possibly be suggesting I don’t have his best interests in mind,” Richard said.

It was an order and both Nicholas and Maram knew it. Nicholas had once admired the subtlety of his uncle’s commands, though he’d never liked seeing them directed at Maram; in part because he didn’t enjoy being reminded that her care for Nicholas was salaried, but also because his care for her was unpaid and unregulated and he was never certain how much of it he was allowed to feel. Especially when he was caught between the two of them; each, in their own way, his only family, paycheck or no.

“Of course I’m not,” said Maram finally, and Richard turned back to Nicholas.

“Anyway,” he said, “before you attend to the truth spells, I have a task you’ll actually enjoy.” He patted the canvas-wrapped bundle Nicholas had noticed earlier.

Nicholas perked up. “A vampire?”

“Got it in one!” Richard said. From inside his jacket pocket, he produced a leather-sheathed silver knife, and Nicholas couldn’t help laughing. The knife was entirely unnecessary, but he appreciated the theatrics. “Vampire” was the Library term for a very specific subset of protection spell that dated back to fifteenth-century Romania, right around the rule of Vlad III—or, as he was more colloquially known, Vlad the Impaler, the original Dracula. The vampire spell was attached to books whose own spells had already been activated, as a sort of sadistic punishment forattempted tampering. Anyone who added their own blood to one of these activated books was drained absolutely dry—bled, effectively, to death. Quite nasty business. So nasty, in fact, that vampires were the only books the Library ever destroyed.

At least, Nicholas destroyed them. Only a Scribe could destroy a book whose spell was in progress, and Nicholas had always found such destruction intensely satisfying. He had spent so much of his life creating books that there was something wickedly luxurious about doing the exact opposite.

He unfolded the vampire from the tightly wrapped canvas and flipped through the pages, curious as always about the still-active spell that lay inside. Richard and Maram watched him read, equally curious.

“Somewhere,” he announced after a few minutes, “there’s a woolen blanket no moth can touch.”

“A moth-repelling spell?” Richard said. “My god, what a lot of protection for a blanket.”

“It must be a very nice blanket,” said Maram, her hand drifting out to the book before she thought better, though she still looked at it longingly. It went against her nature to have a book right in front of her and not examine it.

Nicholas unsheathed the silver knife and poised it over the worn leather cover, feeling an odd twinge of regret. As soon as the spell was destroyed, the moths would descend. Wherever it was, the blanket someone had taken such pains to protect would succumb to the ruins of time like everything else. When Nicholas brought the knife down, it cut through the pages as easily as cutting dough, though after that first ceremonial stab he wrecked the rest of the book with his bare hands, tearing out the pages and rending the spine with a feral kind of pleasure. Richard watched, taking delight in Nicholas’s delight. Maram seemed queasy and looked away after a time. She didn’t like seeing violence done to a book, not even to vampires.

When the book had been thoroughly eviscerated, Nicholas stood and fed its remains to the fire, where they began their second life as ash and ember.

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