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

When Esther turned back toward her abandoned lunch tray, suppressing her own very real smile, she found herself face to face—give or take a few inches—with Pearl. Shucked from her plane layers, Pearl was tall and tough, with a pile of sun-streaked hair wadded into a precarious knot that seemed in danger of sliding off her head. Her brown eyes were as sparkling as Esther remembered. More so, because now they were sparkling right at Esther.

"That was the most magical thing I have ever seen," Pearl said, and rested a slender, long-fingered hand on Esther's arm. "You wouldn't consider giving lessons, would you?"

Pearl was terrible at self-defense. She had no killer instinct and always second-guessed herself, pulling her punches and dropping her kicks and making herself laugh so hard she went weak in Esther's grip. Within three lessons, the "training sessions" had turned into make-out sessions, and they'd moved from the gym to the bedroom. The first time they'd slept together, Pearl had asked, hitching her hips as Esther began to slide her jeans down, "Have you ever been with a woman before?"

Esther looked up from between Pearl's legs, affronted. "Yes, plenty! Why?"

"Calm down, Don Juan," Pearl said, laughing. "I'm not questioning your technique. You just seem a little nervous."

This was when Esther had realized she might be in trouble. Because not only was it true, she was nervous, butterfly-stomached in a way she hadn't felt for years ... but Pearl had noticed. Had read it somehow on Esther's well-trained face or in her well-trained body. Esther wasn't used to people seeing what she didn't want them to see, and the way Pearl looked at her, saw her, was unsettling. In response, she'd given Pearl her most confident, reassuring smile, then set her teeth very gently to the inside of Pearl's bare thigh, which had been enough of a distraction that the conversation ended there. But even then, at the very start, she had suspected how difficult Pearl might be to leave.

Now, a whole season later, thinking about this—about leaving, about staying, about the lasting echo of her father's warning—had the unfortunate effect of breaking her current mood. She rolled Pearl over onto her side and carefully ended the kiss, lying back against the pillows, and Pearl settled against Esther's shoulder.

"I'm going to get so drunk tonight," said Pearl.

"Before or after we play?"

"Before, after, during."

"Me too," Esther decided.

Esther and Pearl were in a Pat Benatar cover band that was scheduled to play at the party that evening. The whole long winter they'd been practicing and putting on shows exclusively for the same wearily supportive thirty-five people, and by this point it was like playing the recorder in front of a parent whose pride couldn't outweigh how tired they were of hearing "Hot Cross Buns." Performing for new ears and eyes felt as nerve-racking as climbing the stage of Madison Square Garden.

"We should drink water in preparation," Pearl said, "so we don't end up puking like beakers."

She fetched them two glasses and Esther sat up on her elbows so she didn't spill it all over herself as she gulped it. This was the driest place she'd ever been, every last bit of moisture in the air frozen into ice. It was easy to get dehydrated.

"Do you think the scientists drink so much because they're making up for all the years they spent studying?" Esther said.

"No," said Pearl without hesitation. She herself worked with the carpenters. "Nerds are always absolute party freaks. I used to go to these kink nights in Sydney and it was all surgeons, engineers, orthodontists. Did you know that people who're into BDSM have notably higher IQs than their vanilla counterparts?"

"I don't think that's a testable hypothesis."

Pearl grinned. She had unusually sharp canine teeth in an otherwise soft mouth, an incongruity that did funny things to Esther's blood flow. "Can you imagine the variables?"

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.