Lizzie lived with us because Siler was not only likely the first hybrid on Earth, but he was also a highly trained assassin. Due to losses we’d sustained during Operation Epidemic, the other assassins he, and I, had been tight with were gone, and it had made more sense for him and Lizzie to stay with us. Siler was the current American Centaurion Defense Attaché, but he was still very willing to do the dirty work that clandestine and covert ops seemed to demand all the time and, because of that, Lizzie was with us to have a more stable home life, so to speak.
Siler didn’t age normally—he looked like he was in his late thirties or early forties, but he was much older. He also had the rare ability to blend, what I called going chameleon. This was a trait from Alpha Four, where our Earth A-Cs were all descended from—we had native Alpha Four animals with us who could do the same thing. But since Siler wasn’t a Peregrine, aka an Alpha Four Attack Peacock on Steroids, him being able to blend was amazing. Then again, I had Dr. Doolittle skills. Amazing seemed to be what we all did before breakfast. Or, in this case, during breakfast, since he was holding a plate laden with food—I hadn’t seen it floating in the air because he could extend his blend via touch.
Siler was, like most of the people working with us, attractive. He’d had a human mother, though, and she hadn’t been gorgeous, so he was normally good-looking. It was a nice perk of my life that I got to consider people I’d normally think of as totally hot merely as plenty good enough. The visuals did tend to make up for things like being primped within an inch of my life and my friends appearing out of nowhere just to see how high they could get me to jump.
Siler sat back down at the place he’d clearly been before, now that I was paying attention to obvious things like silverware and a glass of orange juice at an empty seat at the table. That was me, The Queen of Observation. Hey, I was really good at spotting bad guys, so I had that going for me.
Sat down in the empty chair that didn’t appear to have someone invisible sitting in it. “Does anyone know if we’re gating or driving over?”
“The First Family is driving,” Siler said. “With your usual security entourage. The rest of us will be there before you, whether by gate or hyperspeed.”
Colette’s phone beeped. “Raj is ready for you, Jeff, if you’re ready for him.”
“Meaning he wanted me there five minutes ago. Got it.” He sighed, kissed all the kids, put Charlie in my lap, kissed me, then headed out for his briefing with his Chief of Staff, Rajnish Singh, who was an A-C troubadour. Raj didn’t prep me for appearances under normal circumstances—that was a job for others who’d drawn the short straws.
“I’ll go with you,” Siler said as he chucked Charlie under his chin, did the same with Jamie, kissed Lizzie on the top of her head, then went after Jeff, who held the door for him.
No sooner were they gone than Colette’s phone beeped again. “You left your phone in your rooms?” she asked me, sounding shocked.
“It happens.”
“Rarely,” Francine and Nadine said in unison.
Shrugged. “Didn’t figure I’d need it to walk all the way across the hall. I see I was wrong.”
Colette laughed. “Well, Pierre, Akiko, and Vance are ready for you. And they’d like you to get to the prep area as fast as possible.”
Managed not to heave a sigh. I’d told them to get over here, after all. “It’s down the hall. I’m sure I can make it there without having to sprint. Nadine, can you be sure the kids are dressed and ready before they come in to watch me?”
“Absolutely.” She winked at me. “We’ll use hyperspeed.”
“Go team.”
“I’m with you,” Colette said as I got up. Speaking of one of the people assigned to my intelligence preparations team. Vance Beaumont, as my Chief of Staff, was the other person who scored this fun job, with an assist from Pierre and, usually, whoever else had come by to hang out and share their thoughts. Basically, Vance and Pierre did double duty but anyone else nearby was always ready to help them with the heavy lifting of getting me ready to try to be the best little FLOTUS in the business.
“Where are you going?” I asked Francine, who also stood.
“I’m shadowing you, just in case.” She grinned. “Don’t worry—no one will see me and Craig unless we need to be seen.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” Humans couldn’t see beings moving at hyperspeed, and a lot of the aliens that had sort of moved in couldn’t, either. “And I’m not worried if you guys have to pretend to be us, either. You’re good at it.”
Craig Rossi was the A-C whose job was to be Jeff’s double. Unlike Francine, he wasn’t hotter than the person he was pretending to be, but Craig didn’t get nearly as much work as my Secret Service detail told me other President’s doubles had and, so far, no one had noted when it was Craig and/or Francine versus me and Jeff.
That they were doubling us so well wasn’t just due to the fact that Francine and Craig resembled me and Jeff. A-Cs were, in general, terrible liars. There were a few who were naturally gifted at it, and those few were assigned into espionage at a young age. But the majority of regular A-Cs, even ones with empathic, imageering, dream reading, or other talents, couldn’t lie believably at all, meaning that our doubles couldn’t have faked it well enough under normal circumstances. However, there were others who could lie in their own way, and we called them troubadours.
Troubadours affected people by modulating their voices, expressions, body language, and so forth. Meaning they were great actors and politicians, and both professions had been looked down upon by the residents of Alpha Four. Actors and politicians basically lied for a living, meaning that we had a lot of naturally gifted liars around, and most of the world didn’t realize it. Heck, most of the A-Cs didn’t realize it, either. And troubadours had been the A-C version of second-class talented citizens for a long time.
Sort of like we were in Charlie’s Angels, I’d found Raj and then he’d found others, and I’d started giving them jobs to do, like impersonating people, handling our press and PR, and similar. Craig and the three Alexis sisters, for example, were all troubadours—Nadine doubled the current Head of Imageering, Serene Dwyer, when necessary—and we had other troubadours placed throughout the world now, to ensure that we could keep things smooth when they needed to be.
But I wasn’t the only one who’d felt that the troubadours were being unfairly pushed aside and that they could do so much more for their people and their country and, now, their planet, if they were merely organized and focused. Serene was a closet troubadour, and she’d coordinated the troubadours into the A-C version of the CIA. Francine and Craig didn’t just double or shadow me and Jeff, therefore—they were also around to help protect us.