The Scribe Read Online Free Page B

unevenly as she arrived next to me.
    “I have nothing to hide from you, Sasha,” she said. “And it’s only fair. I’ve been in your mind. You can reach into mine and see.”
    My heart missed a beat, and I glanced at Julian, who looked surprised but intense. He wasn’t going to stop me this time.
    I swallowed and pushed through her soft mind barrier. It gave no resistance at all, almost like a changeling’s or a mindreader’s. Her mindscent reminded me of strawberries baking in a sun-drenched field. She showed me an image of herself, swallowed in a Clan of men. Rough men. Jackers that were brutish, both physically and mentally. Then the image shifted, to those same men breaking into her home and jacking her mother, blond and waifish just like her, into glassy-eyed compliance.
    They threatened to hurt my family, Ava thought. I’m not sure how they found me. I never told a soul that I was… different. But when jackers were revealed to the world, I think someone must have suspected. Someone I knew told someone else and eventually they found me.
    They forced you to join their Clan? I asked.
    She played an image of their rough hands grasping her, forcing her to leave her mother behind. And to serve them. Spy for them. Find other jackers for them. She had edged closer, and I had a hard time drawing in a normal breath. I couldn’t have torn away if Anna had come out of the back with a knife.
    How did you escape?
    I found you, she thought, and I realized that maybe it was possible to leave. Possible to find someone who would protect me. Once I knew I had somewhere to go, it was easy to leave. She flashed a scene of herself, creeping past sleeping bodies in the dead of night. She paused by the dark shadow of a jacker splayed on a cot, snoring. Even in the weak streetlight falling through the windows, I could see his face: eyes closed, black hair tossed by sleep, a light scar drawing an X across his right eyebrow. A scar I recognized, having been there when he first got it.
    Arlis.
    I stopped breathing.
    He was my Clan leader, she thought. And, once upon a time, he was yours too.
    A pulse of fear jolted me. She’s here to bring me back. The thought came fast and without control, tripping on my sudden flash of terror. She must have heard it, because she reached out a small hand and laid it on my chest, over my heart. I flinched away from her touch, like it might burn me.
    No, Sasha, she thought. I’m here so you can save me.
    I yanked out of her head. My mouth had run dry and I couldn’t form words. I looked to Julian for help, but he was silent, his eyes wide, watching the two of us.
    She was telling the truth; she couldn’t lie to me, not while I was in her head like that. She wasn’t here to take me back to Arlis—she was seeking sanctuary from him. She wanted me to keep her safe from the man who had taken me as a boy and turned me into a monster. There was no way I could say no to that. No way I could send anyone, least of all someone as vulnerable as Ava, back into his hands. No way I could let him do to her what he had done to me.
    It would be almost as bad as going back myself.
    Julian’s expression shifted in a heartbeat, transforming into a wide smile. “I think we would very much like you to join our Clan, Ava.”
    I sucked in a ragged breath, my lungs working again, glad Julian had spared me from forming words to say the same thing.

I pounded the hammer, slamming the nail into place with far more power than necessary, driving it in with the first beat, but hitting it a few more times to make sure. The sound deafened me, multiplying a thousand times in the close confines of the bathroom. These new silica fiber dryboards could take the abuse, as long as I didn’t miss the nail, but I might need to get some earplugs. The more I thought about that idea, the more I liked it.
    “You enjoy working on things,” Ava said from the doorway, making me jump and miss the nail. “You like building things, instead of