The Scribe Read Online Free Page A

to let Anna use it to clean guns,” Ava whispered, so that she wouldn’t be heard on the phone.
    Julian frowned, holding Ava’s gaze. “Myrtle, I have a new recruit who thinks she can read your mind.” He paused. “Yes, the one who contacted you. Would you mind thinking of a number for me, but don’t say it.”
    “Sixty-two,” Ava said. “Wait, no. She changed it to the square root of negative three.”
    Julian’s eyebrows hiked up, and even I was taken aback by how fast she had said the response. Like there was no hesitation. Like she had read the mind of a woman three streets over as quickly as the thoughts popped into her head.
    “Okay, Myrtle. Tell me.” Julian nodded, as if he never doubted it. “Thank you, Myrtle. No, that’s all for now.” He clicked the phone shut, his gaze still trained on Ava’s. He stepped closer to her and put a hand on her shoulder. I pushed up from the doorway, not sure why that alarmed me so much.
    “That’s an impressive ability, Ava,” Julian said. “One I’m sure we could use in the battles ahead of us. But you must be very popular with that skill. Why have you decided to come to us?”
    Finally, he was asking the right question.
    She peered up into his eyes. “Sasha thinks you’re fighting for something important. That you’re the hope for the future of all of us.”
    “Is that so?” Julian flicked glance at me and my face ran hot. If he gave me one of those smirks of his, I swear I would walk out the door. But he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t seem to register my embarrassment at all. Was he just checking on my instincts? I was beginning to feel like there were way too many people inside my head: even I didn’t want to be there, much less have anyone else snooping around.
    “The future belongs to us,” he said to Ava. “Humankind is evolving and mindreaders were just the first step. Eventually, jackers will be the dominant species, but only if we fight for it. Only if they don’t destroy us before our numbers make our dominance inevitable. It will take a revolution to change the world, but every revolution has a seed that is its beginning. A start that could be easily snuffed out, if not grown with the right people at the right time.”
    She soaked up every word. I had heard it before, but it still pulled at me. That was Julian’s true talent: he found the right words for the right person, the thing that appealed to them on a basic level. Maybe he cheated and used his instinct handling skill. I couldn’t be sure, any more than I could tell if Ava was still inside my head, reading all my doubts.
    “There are a lot of the wrong people out there,” she said. “How do you know? That they’re the right person?”
    “I ask them what they’re willing to fight for.”
    She nodded, as if that made sense, her eyes lit with the same spark of hope I felt when Julian offered me the one thing I needed: a reason to keep going. But I knew why I desperately needed that hope. I had a lot to atone for. Dark secrets that Julian still couldn’t guess at.
    What was she hiding?
    “Ava,” I said, my voice thick, her name feeling strange on my tongue. She whirled to face me. It took a moment for me to speak when she was looking at me with those bright, happy eyes. “Sorry, but I can’t believe you’re walking in to sign up for a revolution out of the goodness of your heart.”
    The corners of her mouth turned down. My hand crept up to rest on the grip of my gun. She was having way too much effect on my emotional state. Something was wrong with that. Maybe she was having the same effect on Julian too.
    “Plus it’s hard to believe that your Clan just let you go,” I said. “After all, you claim you can’t fight off a jack, so how could you leave, if they didn’t want you to?” A problem I knew entirely too well. “What are you hiding?”
    She left Julian’s side, her movements so smooth that she seemed to glide over to me instead of walking. My heart pounded