The Scribe Read Online Free PDF Page B

breathing was just now catching up, leaving me feeling like I needed to gasp for air.
    Julian slipped his phone into his pocket and studied me. “Sasha… would you ever consider using your ability again?”
    “You’ve already asked that question,” I said tightly. “The answer hasn’t changed.”
    “What if it wasn’t used as a weapon?” Julian asked. “What if it was a tool to ensure justice? Think about it this way: you can take someone who is responsible for all kinds of wrongs and you can rewrite them into someone who can make up for those wrongs. You’re a scribe who can wipe the slate clean. Give them a second chance at salvation, a chance to turn their lives around before it’s too late.”
    I narrowed my eyes, knowing exactly what Julian was doing. Using the words that he thought would turn me. Not what I wanted to hear right after a phone call from Arlis. Not when the stakes were keeping Arlis away from me. Away from Ava.
    “Arlis doesn’t deserve salvation,” I said. “He deserves to burn in hell.” Like me.
    Julian held his hands up. “Okay, okay. It’s just that the threat of it alone could be quite a deterrent. Especially to someone like Arlis, who understands your ability. It was only a thought.”
    I didn’t respond. Julian turned and left, busily concentrating on his phone and hopefully dialing Henry to get Ava’s family into protective custody. I leaned against the shower wall and tried to quiet the pounding in my chest.
    I wanted to be calm before I found Ava and warned her that Arlis was determined to get her back.

Once I had myself under control again, I wandered toward the front of the factory, taking the long way and weaving through the dusty racks that filled the center of the cavernous building. I hoped to find Ava to talk privately and warn her of the dangers of Arlis. She must know the chance she took in leaving him, since she had lived with him as her Clan leader. But I doubted she knew the extremes he would go to, like I did.
    Machine parts and cobwebs clogged the racks, along with the ever-present smell of machine grease. We’d cleared several racks, readying them for Julian’s new recruits, but only a few had been converted to sleeping bunks for me, Anna, and Julian. Now, I supposed, we’d need to make one for Ava, too. There wasn’t much in the way of privacy in the barracks, and a brief thought flitted across my mind of building a few rooms off to the side of the factory. For private meetings or possibly bedrooms. That thought resurrected the skating-on-thin-ice feeling, so I shoved the idea away and strode more earnestly toward the front.
    I reached the makeshift kitchen without finding Ava. Julian’s sister Anna sat at the hundred-year-old wooden table, cleaning her guns. There were a half dozen spread in front of her, in various states of disassembly.
    “Don’t you ever get tired of doing that?” I asked.
    “Nope.” She seemed sore, probably because Julian had let another recruit in that we knew little about. I hadn’t talked to her since Ava arrived.
    “She’s not so bad,” I said. “Things could be a lot worse than having a recruit who’s basically a linker.”
    “Right.” She sighted down the barrel of a half assembled gun in her hand, then rubbed an oilcloth over it and set it on the table. “Just not sure what Julian’s thinking, collecting a bunch of jackers who barely know how to jack.”
    “I know how to jack.”
    “You know what I mean. At least Ava’s not afraid to use her ability, such as it is.”
    “Gee. Thanks a lot,” I said. “By the way, have you seen her?”
    Anna stopped her polishing and looked up. “She’s in back, talking to Julian.” I ignored the twinge that Julian had gotten to her first. “What’s with you two, anyway?”
    “Nothing.”
    Anna seemed unimpressed.
    “We both had the same Clan leader,” I said. “That’s all. And I know what a piece of work he is. Let’s just leave it at that.”
    She was going