Read Shadow Knight's Mate for Free Online Page B

talk about Arden.
    Arden did not turn her attention immediately to the introduction. Her blue eyes stayed on Jack. He stood perfectly still, neither smiling nor frowning, but looking back at her as if curious about
her.
“It’s all right,” Arden said to him, then turned to his companion. “Hello, Ms. Rayona. What school did you go to in Phoenix? Private, right? Let me think, was it—?”
    â€œBriarcliff,” the two women said together. Arden laughed. Elizabeth did not. “Do you know anyone who went there?” she asked. It didn’t take mystical powers to hear the anxiety in her voice.
    â€œLet me think, do I?” Arden said, and kept the young woman on the hook as she turned back to Jack. “I waited for you at Heathrow. By the time I got here people knew about your work with the ambassador. Of course, some people around here are a little peeved about your independence—”
    â€œMeaning your grandmother?”
    Arden nodded. “—but I’ve told her I thought it was a great idea.”
    Arden had a gentle smile, a professional sort of smile, that seemed to have nothing to do with what she’d been saying. Surely enough, she then changed the subject completely. “Did it help?”
    Jack stiffened. “Help what?”
    â€œJack, Jack, there’s no need to be hostile. The day you were in France was an anniversary for you. Did what you did there help?”
    Jack turned and walked quickly away. He passed friends, some of whom spoke to him, and several raised their eyebrows, but he didn’t stop walking until a hand grabbed his arm. “Jack!” a hearty voice said, while the meaty hand insistently turned him toward the speaker.
    â€œHello, Mr. Mortenson.”
    â€œSince you look near death I think you’re old enough now to call me Craig.”
    â€œTake it easy on him, dear,” Alicia Mortenson said. “He’s just had a session with our resident psychic.”
    â€œSomeone’s giving her information!” Jack said. “She cannot just read these things from my posture and my face. Someone’s feeding her.”
    â€œGod, I hope so,” Alicia said. “Otherwise she’s a mind-reader, and I don’t like that idea.”
    She and her husband glanced at each other and chuckled, without an exchange of words. Craig Mortenson was in his late fifties and looked older, with a fringe of white hair around a large bald head. Often he looked sleepy and bored, often irritable, but when he was at his genial best, as he seemed to be now, there was no more convivial host.
    Alicia, to whom he’d been married for many years, was probably his age but looked much younger. Thin, elegant, with a firm chin and lively eyes, she looked perfectly at ease in her dark blue evening gown, while Craig looked as if he’d been forced into his tuxedo with a shoehorn.
    â€œThe trouble is,” Jack said in a more thoughtful voice, “I don’t know who would know the things she knows to give them to her in the first place. It’s as if—”
    As if someone were keeping a file on him, and had been for a long time. Jack didn’t say the words aloud, but Craig Mortenson shook his head gravely. “We don’t do that, Jack.” He was speaking of the Circle.
    â€œBy the way,” he added, changing back to his hearty tone, “great work in France. Just what the summit needs. A little precipitous, perhaps—”
    â€œYou know very well you’d been saying something exactly like that needed to be done,” Alicia said. Craig shrugged agreement.
    â€œSo then I can say I had your approval?”
    â€œOf course, dear,” Alicia said, laying her hand on Jack’s, while Craig only grunted thoughtfully, staring into Jack’s eyes.
    But Jack had had enough of having his eyes stared into meaningfully. Abruptly he excused himself. As he walked he saw Elizabeth Rayona crying,