The Scribe by Susan Kaye Quinn Page B

worked the handyman trade, but was quickly pulled back into the underground mindjacker Clans. I had sinned so much, what was the point in stopping? There was no redemption for me, no more than it was possible to return the memories and lives I had stolen.
    I wanted to believe this Clan with Julian would be different. He was practically bursting with hope for the future. Maybe I could help him deliver on that promise of hope for others, even if there wasn’t any left for me. Perhaps then there would still be a reason for me to exist.
    I looked away from the dark, soulless eyes in the mirror, not sure who was I kidding.
    I heard Anna scuff the concrete outside the threshold. I swung blindly, missed, and then caught her by the throat with my other hand, shoving her up against the half-constructed wall. I held off on the punch that was about to follow, partly because I didn’t want to put her through the dryboard I had just finished putting up, and partly because she had a crazy sort of grin above my hand clenched around her throat.
    Heat rose up my neck and I dropped my hand. “Sorry, I thought you were…”
    “I wasn’t,” she said, her eyes lit up. “But maybe I should have been.”
    I rubbed the back of my neck, having a hard time meeting her eyes.
    “Julian wants you up front,” she said.
    “I need to finish work on the bathroom.”
    “He has a new recruit coming,” she said. “He wants you to be there.”
    I eyed her. “Why?”
    She tapped her fingers against the wooden frame I’d put up for the door, avoiding my gaze. “You know he can’t jack, right?”
    I narrowed my eyes. I’d seen Julian subdue a jacker from my old Clan that no one else could stop. And he had asked me to jack into his head, just to show me that it couldn’t be done. Jacking Julian wasn’t the normal mental wrestling that one mindjacker did with another, each fighting for control of the other’s mind. When I mentally reached out to push into Julian’s head, all of my nightmares raged out from the depths of my mind, tipping me toward the madness that made me leave Arlis in the first place.
    I would never try that again.
    “What do you mean, he can’t jack?” I asked. “Julian’s some kind of extreme jacker, like the rest of us. You with your hard head, me with my ability. I don’t understand exactly what he does, but it trumps jacking by a long shot.”
    She dropped her hand from the door and looked me in the eyes. “Julian can manipulate your instincts, but he can’t jack you directly. That means anyone he can handle will be easy for him to control, but if he can’t reach their instincts, for whatever reason, he’s virtually powerless.”
    “He’s not exactly defenseless,” I countered, a chill running through me.
    “Agreed,” she said. “And I thought he could handle anyone, anytime. I never worried about him, until…”
    “Until Serena came along,” I finished.
    Anna’s jaw worked, the angles of her face flexing under her brown skin. “Look, I don’t know who these recruits are that he’s bringing in, and neither does he. Julian’s far too trusting. Until we know better, we have to assume that every one of them could be another Serena, or even worse.” She had the same brilliant blue eyes as Julian. They both could burn you with a look—his eyes blazing with hope, hers with something more raw. Anger? Hatred? She was legitimately dangerous, yet here she was, frowning with worry about her brother. It almost made her seem human.
    “I get it,” I said. “You want to make sure someone’s there who can protect him, in case things go south again.”
    “Exactly,” she said. “And I’ve been banished from the new recruit interviews.” She clenched a fist and pressed it against my fresh dryboard. I hoped she wouldn’t put a hole through it.
    “I can’t imagine why that is.” I struggled not to laugh in her face. She might have another knife tucked in her pants.
    She didn’t take my bait. “Sasha, I