Excerpt from Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

For the past decade, since she was eighteen, Esther had moved every November—moved cities, states, countries. She made friends and lovers breezily, picking them up like other people picked up takeout and going through them as quickly. Everybody liked her, and like many well-liked people, she worried that if people really got to know her, if they managed to penetrate that glancing shield of likability, they wouldn't actually like her one bit. This was a benefit of never staying in one place.

The other, vastly more important benefit: not being found.

Esther slipped a hand beneath the hem of Pearl's sweater, fingers finding the smooth dip of her waist as Pearl nudged one of her long legs between Esther's thighs. But even as she moved her hips in friction-seeking instinct, her father's long-ago words began to echo unbidden in her head—a cold glass of water thrown in the face of her subconscious.

"November 2 by eleven o'clock p.m., Eastern Standard Time," Abe had said on the last day she'd seen him, ten years ago at their home in Vermont. "Wherever you are, you must leave on November 2 and keep moving for twenty-four hours, or the people who killed your mother will come for you, too."

The summer season had officially begun a couple days ago: November 5. Three days after Esther, according to her father's urgent edict, should have been long gone.

But she wasn't. She was still here.

Abe had been dead two years now, and for the first time since she'd started running a decade before, Esther had a reason to stay. A reason that was warm and solid and currently kissing her neck.

Technically, Esther had first met Pearl at the Christchurch airport, as part of a big group of workers waiting for their flight into the Antarctic. They'd both been hidden in the many layers required to board the plane—wool hat, huge orange parka, gloves, clompy insulated boots, dark-lensed goggles pushed up on their heads—and Esther had gotten only the briefest impression of sparkly eyes and a full-throated laugh before the group was ushered onto the plane and she and Pearl were seated on opposite ends of the cargo hold.

Because of their different duties and different schedules, their paths hadn't really crossed again until the end of the first month, when Esther had hung a sign in the gym looking for sparring buddies. Boxing, Muy Thai, BJJ, MMA, Krav Maga, let's fight! :) :) :) She'd added the smiley faces to counteract the aggression of "fight," but had immediately regretted it when another electrician—an obnoxiously tall white guy from Washington who insisted everyone call him "J-Dog"—saw it and began giving her endless shit.

"The Smiley Face Killer!" he'd crow when she walked into their shift meeting. If they crossed paths in the galley at lunch, he'd pretend to cower. "You gonna hit me over the head with that big ol' smile?" But the final straw came when he started loudly telling everyone about his black belt in karate, and how he'd love to find a sparring partner who was "really serious about the sport."

Honestly, he gave Esther no choice. After a week of this, he approached her one day in the galley and planted himself in her path so she couldn't get to the pizza, grinning at her so widely she could see his molars.

"What are you doing," she said.

"Fighting you!" he said.

"No," she said, and put down her tray. "This is fighting me."

A few minutes later she had J-Dog on the floor in a headlock, one of his arms trapped in her hold, the other swatting at her face, his long legs kicking ineffectually at the tiled floor as onlookers hooted and cheered. "Not gonna let you go until you smile," she said, and he whimpered, pulling his lips up in a forced approximation of his earlier grin. As soon as she released him, he bounced to his feet, brushing himself off and saying, "Not cool, dude, not cool!"

Excerpted from Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs. Copyright © 2023 by Emma Torzs. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.