Ink Blood Sister Scribe

In Antarctica, Esther thinks about the fact that she should have left three days previously, based on her father’s last instruction to her: Move every year on November 2 to avoid being found by the people who killed her mother. However, her relationship with Pearl gives her a reason to stay, so Esther continues with her life in the station as new scientists and workers arrive for the summer season. She becomes worried when she smells yarrow, an herb she recognizes from her childhood, and sees dried blood that can’t be removed on all the public mirrors in the station. These are signs that one of the new arrivals has brought a book and has been doing magic.

Having lived in their Victorian house alone since her father’s death, Joanna prepares to attempt to write a book, copying the text of an old spell. While she’s been experimenting with different types of blood and moon states, she knows it won’t work and gives up. She notices the postcards from Esther on the fridge and thinks about having begged her sister to come home after their father’s death two years earlier and the fact that they haven’t spoken since Esther refused. With a violent family history caused by Abe’s mission to keep magical books safe—including the “murder” of Esther’s mother, Isabel, and a 1939 raid on Abe’s grandparents in Budapest—Joanna understands her father’s paranoia. She undertakes her nightly ritual of setting protective wards on the collection of 228 magical volumes stored in the basement. She reflects on the book that killed Abe. While she originally thought it was had been given to him recently, she later found that he’d had it her whole life, based on a record of his attempts to destroy it, which ended with “Curious what will happen if I add my own blood to the mix [...] Worth a try tomorrow” (31).

Joanna goes into town, collecting postcards for herself and Cecily from Esther that inform them of Esther’s plans to stay in Antarctica another season. Joanna visits her mother in the general store she manages, and Cecily is upset by the news about Esther. When Cecily asks to come over that evening, Joanna remembers the note with her father’s last request—not to let her mother in—and the circumstances under which Cecily left Abe after she attempted to burn the books. They instead arrange for Joanna to visit Cecily’s house the next day.

Esther feels anxious after seeing the traces of magic on the mirrors. After reading a paragraph of a Spanish novel by Alejandra Gil—a prized possession that belonged to her mother and that she’s in the process of translating—Esther realizes the blood and herbs are mirror magic. She attempts to communicate through the mirror, asking who is on the other side. In response, items emerge through the mirror: a note instructing her to return to Joanna, as the family is in danger, and a bloodied manila envelope. The envelope contains a passport and plane tickets for Esther, under an assumed name, to Burlington, the airport nearest her childhood home; a vial of blood; and a note saying, “this is the path. It will provide the natural next step” (63), which is the translation of the Gil novel’s title.

Nicholas, the Scribe of a London Library, attends an event to launch a magical commission: the production of an 1869 vintage of wine created by Nicholas’s ability to write magic. Nicholas is frustrated by his limited freedom; he is under the care of his uncle, Richard Maxwell, and Richard’s partner, Dr. Maram Ebla. Nicholas’s bodyguard, Collins, has to shoot someone to prevent an assassination attempt on their drive home. Nicholas thinks he notices a bee in the car but tells himself he must be mistaken. Later in the novel, he realizes that the bullet had been fired by Collins, after a spell to turn bullets into bees had been enacted. Rather than an assassination attempt, it was his uncle’s attempt to scare him into staying in line.

Esther struggles with the decision of whether to trust whoever communicated with her through the mirror and use the plane tickets. The last time she hadn’t left a place on time, a man with a gun arrived immediately, and she and her then-boyfriend were saved only because of a fire alarm going off. Worried that Pearl will get hurt this time, she makes plans to leave on the next cargo plane. Returning to her room, she meets Pearl, who tells her she’s come to drop off some soup, but Esther soon realizes that the Gil book has been taken and that the culprit could only have been Pearl.

The morning after the attack in the car, Nicholas wakes from a nightmare, practicing his habit of reading a few pages of The Three Musketeers to calm himself. He is surprised that Collins is guarding him inside the house and is concerned by Richard and Maram’s instruction that he’ll remain trapped in the house until they investigate. Richard tells Nicholas he’ll need to write a truth spell so that they can question the staff, in spite of Maram’s protests that Nicholas should wait due to his anemia. To make him feel better, Richard presents his nephew with a book to destroy. It’s a vampire, and “anyone who added their own blood to one of these activated books was drained absolutely dry—bled, effectively to death” (105). Richard watches as Nicholas destroys it with his bare hands.

Joanna tries to tempt a stray cat inside, realizing she’s begun to associate it with making a change to her life. She remembers Esther leaving and Abe and Cecily fighting over whether to lower the wards. Joanna goes to lunch at Cecily’s house and thinks her mother seems nervous. Cecily asks again to come over, saying she doesn’t really know how her daughter lives. Joanna replies that she can’t trust her since she set fire to the books and points out that Cecily won’t tell her anything about the book that killed Abe. Cecily relents, saying she’ll finally divulge what she knows, and goes into the other room. Joanna hears buzzing and realizes that her mother is in the process of using a spell to keep her there so she can’t return home and set the wards.