Elite: A Hunter novel Read Online Free PDF

eyes, a lantern jaw, and shaggy blond hair—and for some reason, the direct look in his eyes made me flustered.
    “Hey yourself,” I replied.
    “So, when are you and I gonna go out on a date?” he asked as if it was the most logical thing in the world to say.
    “I—uh—” I spluttered a little. “I’m kind of seeing someone—”
    “Creepy Psimon, right? It exclusive?” He waggled his eyebrows at me, still juggling.
    “Uh—” I said cleverly. Of course, I should have known that people would know about my so-called social life, since until I went Elite it was all over my Hunter channel.
    “Not exclusive, then. Think it over! I’m a fun guy!” He grinned even harder.
    “You’re a mushroom?” Archer deadpanned.
    “Yeah, they keep me in the dark and feed me on bullcrap,” he quipped right back. Archer rolled his eyes. Retro finished his juggling with a flourish, catching the last apple in his mouth, and strolled out.
    I really didn’t know what to say after that. Fortunately, Archer didn’t miss a beat. “It’s three guys to one gal here in the Hunters,” he pointed out. “He was going to ask eventually. Knowing Retro…I’m surprised it took him this long.”
    “Uh—okay,” I said. “What did you want to talk to me about?” Not a date, I prayed. I admired Archer a lot , and it was obvious I could learn a lot from him, but he was kind of old for someone like me….
    “You,” Archer said, pointing a potato stick at me, “are not like the other recruits, Joyeaux Charmand. Why is that?”
    I bit into the sandwich, buying myself some time to respond.
    “Probably where I come from. It started as a commune before the Diseray.” Totally true. The Monastery was a sort of commune. I shrugged. “So I guess by your standards I have…a different attitude.”
    He nodded. “Fair enough. So.” He finished his potato sticks and started in on some sort of stew. “Tell me, Hunter Joyeaux, what do you want to learn?”
    What did I want to learn? Aside from everything? I reined myself in and thought about the question. “I don’t know enough to say what I don’t know,” I replied after a moment. “But whatever anyone is willing to teach me.”
    He nodded again. “I’ll pass that on. And I’ll suggest some books. The most important thing I ever learned was what I told White Knight out there. That magic responds better to how you feel about it than how you reason.”
    That was, more or less, what the Masters had taught me, but I tried to make my expression look as if this had been new to me. But Archer wasn’t quite through.
    “The other thing is this, because I’m guessing you are not used to thinking like we do,” Archer continued, setting the last of his emptied plates aside. “ Everything in this world is layers and masks. Nothing is ever exactly what it seems to be.”
    He gave me an unreadable look, and I had the feeling that he meant more than just the Othersiders. I had the feeling he also meant here , in Apex City, and I’d already gotten a taste of that.
    “Everybody wears a mask,” I said finally.
    He pointed a finger at me this time. “That,” he said with a smile, “is the truest thing you have ever said.”
    “Well,” I told him, feeling more like myself with a meal in me, “the second-truest thing will be that I should probably put myself back in rotation—”
    “No need,” he countered, interrupting me. Then he pointed behind me, where I knew there was a screen on the wall that usually showed the general-news channel. I turned and looked, and it was a weather-radar image with Apex at the center of it. There was a storm front moving in, fast, and it wasn’t red and orange like ours usually are. This one was mostly purple, with trailing red. “Storm front,” he said casually, confirming what I already knew. “It’s one of the big ones. You haven’t been here long enough to see one. Nothing moves in one of those, not even a Gog or a Drakken. It wasn’t supposed