Gatecrash: The Secretist, Part Two Read Online Free Page A

toward each other, their movements as symmetrical as partners in a dance. When they met, they took each other’s hands and locked eyes for a significant moment. Then, in a formal gesture but with great tenderness, they touched foreheads together, and it was more intimate than a kiss.
    It struck Jace that Emmara had never looked happier. And he had never felt more naïve for thinking that she actually might have had feelings for him.
    Of course she had never said anything that specified that her relationship with Jace was in any way romantic. She had come to him as a friend, looking for someone who could help her and her guild. And, as a matter of personal policy, he had never plumbed her mind beyond a wisp of a surface thought. He knew she had said she was not interested in humans. He knew they were only friends. He certainly didn’t know that Emmara was with someone, but that was certainly nothing she was required to volunteer.
    Finally the elf man extended his hand. “Jace, is it?”
    Jace shook it dazedly, then more firmly, trying toremember the etiquette of the situation. He swallowed his mortification like a stone.
    Emmara saw his face. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “Captain Calomir, this is my friend Jace Beleren.” Her eyes were trying to apologize to him, but her cheeks were flush with joy. “We’ve been on a bit of an adventure together.”
    Jace tried hard not to begin the process of finding flaw with the man. Involuntarily he imagined the man’s skin being cold, cold as a lizard’s scales, as cold as the vampire’s had been—but that was nonsense. Jace felt a dark twinge of intuition about Calomir, a morbid desire to find what lay behind this rival, but that was, after all, what jealousy felt like.
    “I’m sorry, Calomir, she didn’t mention you,” he heard himself say. That was childish , he thought. But he took a momentary, mean pleasure in saying it.
    Calomir didn’t bite. “Thank you for bringing her back to me,” he said. “But aren’t you the mind mage? Seems like something that’d be hard to miss for someone who can read minds.”
    “My magic doesn’t work like that,” Jace mumbled. But that was probably how others thought of him: as an invader of minds, someone who probed into the secrets of everyone he met. It was a wonder Emmara even considered him a friend, if she believed that of him. She had wanted him to join the Selesnya guild—she likely saw him more as a weapon than a friend, a dangerous asset to secure within her own organization rather than letting it fall into the hands of the enemy.
    Jace was trying not to descend into petulance, but he was failing, and he didn’t much care. He felt detached, as if he had unbuckled himself from this conversation and was now floating free.
    “Are you hurt?” Calomir asked.
    “I’m fine,” said Emmara brightly. “I wish everyone would stop asking me that.”
    “The Rakdos didn’t count on her, did they, my friend?” Calomir elbowed Jace’s arm. The gesture felt unusually familiar for an elvish captain.
    “It wasn’t the Rakdos,” Jace said. “They were set up by the Dimir. Isn’t that right, Emmara?”
    Emmara nodded carefully. “We were intercepted by a Dimir agent. A vampire, sent to abduct us. He seemed particularly interested in Jace.”
    “What possible value could he serve to the Dimir?” asked Calomir. “No offense meant, of course.”
    “Jace was researching something of deep importance, something connected to the history of the guilds,” said Emmara.
    “Oh? What is so important?”
    “I don’t remember,” Jace said miserably.
    Calomir didn’t even have the decency to laugh and get the humiliation over with.
    “Jace has purged the research from his mind,” said Emmara.
    “Ah, an empty vault,” Calomir said, and clucked with polite disappointment.
    Jace felt another twinge of mistrust. He had heard “empty vault” somewhere before.
    “A pity you don’t recall,” Calomir went on.