Alien in the House

Chapter 12



I DIDN’T WANT HALF of these people in my home, but Cliff had overruled any and all objections with a very simple point—these people were important enough that slighting them would cause us far more problems than if we just played along and pretended to like them. He’d been saying this to us for months, and we’d listened and played along and, honestly, liked a few of them now. But not all of them.

Of course, many former members of the Cabal of Evil were dead or in prison, all thanks to us. Our importance in the grand scheme of things was proven by the fact that the rest of the Cabal went on as if their former members’ deaths or imprisonment had merely been unfortunate circumstances we’d had no choice but to help facilitate. Washington, it really had the best people.

It also had pretty much all the same people it had had before Operation Destruction. What Pierre called our New World Order was simple, but somewhat scary as well. This year was supposed to be an election year, for the House and a third of the Senate. However, due to the massive alien invasion, and terrifying proof that there was a lot of life on other planets—much of it paying attention to Earth—the President had requested that elections be suspended.

It was unprecedented and, per many protesting groups, unconstitutional, but the President wasn’t asking for total control. No one was sure Earth wasn’t going to be invaded again tomorrow, and the President wanted to ensure that the U.S. government remained stable. And that meant keeping anyone who was holding elected office in place an extra two years, which was when his second term would be ending anyway.

Shocking everyone, Congress and the governors of all fifty states agreed. Most of the countries worldwide were doing the same thing. This probably had a lot to do with what the “visiting dignitary,” also known as King Alexander from Alpha Four, had said when he was cleaning up the intergalactic mess. Alpha Four was all about stability, and Alexander had definitely shared that he didn’t want to have to come right back with his huge space battle cruisers and explain the Alpha Centaurion position to new folks any time soon.

So protests happened, we were blamed or praised, depending—but mostly blamed—and everyone who’d been elected stayed elected. All of them seemed happy about the extension of power and being able to stave off a re-election campaign for another year or so. But my hopes of one or more of the Cabal losing their seats were definitively dashed. Always the way.

As usual for the Cabal, they all arrived together. Operation Destruction had shifted power in the group, however. Senator Vincent Armstrong had moved from Senator Being Somewhat Manipulated to Big Man on Cabal Campus. He’d made this move because he’d aligned himself with us. That Armstrong owed us favors, as we did him, was something I’d managed to accept over the past few months, albeit unwillingly.

Accepting that Armstrong was planning his run for the Presidency wasn’t as hard, because I’d realized that was coming during Operation Destruction. Armstrong had become an extremely pro-alien politician over the past many months, meaning he was considered a Friend of American Centaurion, title totally implied and important. We needed friends, and powerful ones were, these days, good to have.

His wife, Elaine, was with him. I’d gotten to know her over these past months and actually liked her. Sure, she was a career politician’s wife, but she wasn’t odious, obnoxious, or even overly fake. Mom liked her, too, which was the final seal of approval I required.

Barely had a chance to say hello to the Armstrongs when the unofficial spokesperson for the Cabal came toward us, smile beaming. On some people this would be pleasant. On Lillian Culver, it was horrific. The woman was attractive, but only at first glance. Longer looks shared that she was all bones and angles, a well-dressed skeleton with skin on. She also possessed the widest mouth this side of a top super villain. I called her Joker Jaws to myself for a reason.

Culver was all in red, including dramatic red lipstick, which just made her look more like the Joker in drag to me. Managed to control my impulse to jerk away from her outstretched paw—I was pretty sure she didn’t have an electroshock buzzer hidden in her palm, though I’d never have bet money on this.

However, Culver was a powerful lobbyist for a variety of defense contractors, and therefore a bad person to be overly rude to.

“Kitty, you look amazing,” Culver said.

“You, too.” Hey, I was amazed with her resemblance to the Joker.

Culver’s husband, Abner Schnekedy, self-proclaimed artist, Most Influential Spouse of Someone With Actual Power on Cabal Campus, and odious twit, grinned at me. “Happy Holidays, Kitty.”

“To you, too.” I was doing great with the short, polite replies, and they were doing great with the not saying anything obnoxious. So far, this part of the event was a success.

My ability to remain monosyllabic was instantly tested. Always the way. Eugene and Lydia Montgomery were the next from the group to come within speaking distance. Lydia was the junior senator from New York, and Eugene was her husband. She was racing as fast as she could into the power centers of D.C. He was dull and normal and an actuary by profession.

When we’d first moved here, Eugene had been my only friend in the Washington Wife class. That friendship had been strained to the breaking point when I’d discovered that he’d been using me as a front for his affair with Nathalie Gagnon-Brewer, who I could see standing with her husband, Representative Edmund Brewer, right behind the Montgomerys.

Nathalie was a French expatriate and a former international model. But unlike Reader, who was a faithful spouse to Gower, Nathalie didn’t enjoy her husband’s preoccupation with being a fast-tracking politician. She’d been happy being married to a successful California vintner; not as happy married to a political animal. Couldn’t blame her, of course.

Meanwhile Eugene had felt ignored and shoved aside by Lydia. Opposites had attracted and she and Eugene had started a passionate affair, which I’d discovered during Operation Assassination.

Over the past months Eugene had moved into the Cabal with what appeared to be ease. Oh, sure, he was clearly Low Man on the Cabal Totem Pole, but he was accepted as one of them now, which meant he was dead to me.

He also kept trying to repair our friendship, but I wasn’t having any of it. In part because I couldn’t trust that he wasn’t trying to renew the relationship in the hopes of yet again using me as his excuse for when he went off to do the deed with Nathalie. Or even worse, for some new, nefarious Cabal plan.

“Hi, Kitty,” Eugene said. “It’s great to see you.”

“Yes.” Focused on keeping to the single syllables. I couldn’t get into trouble with those, could I?

Lydia nodded. “We need to get together and do a couples’ date sometime.”

My gaze traveled to Nathalie without benefit of my brain’s approval. “Ahh, sure . . .” My only other single syllable options were “No,” or “No way in hell,” neither of which seemed diplomatic in any way.

Jeff disengaged from Abner and Joker Jaws and rescued me. “We’d love to. We’ll need to coordinate schedules.” Jeff flashed his Happy Diplomat Smile. “Of course, it’s not appropriate to do so tonight.”

“Of course not,” Lydia said with a bob of her head. “Whenever it’s convenient for you, Ambassador.”

The Brewers stepped up and we were suddenly outnumbered two to one. Brewer and Armstrong had been having a lot of meetings with Jeff over the past months, and Jeff actually seemed to like Brewer. He certainly wanted me to like Brewer, though I’d resisted all the “couples date” ideas Jeff had forwarded. They did the manly handshake-hug-backslap thing and Jeff’s smile looked genuine.

Jeff had also tried to get me to hang out with Nathalie, but while she was, after Armstrong and Elaine, the least objectionable member of the Cabal to me, I couldn’t get past the adultery thing. I didn’t want to talk about her sleeping with Eugene, I didn’t want pretend I didn’t remember that she was sleeping with Eugene, I didn’t want to hear about why she was sleeping with Eugene, and I saw no way to avoid any of this if she and I went to lunch or tea or whatever. So whenever Nathalie tried to set something up, I had Pierre explain how busy, busy, busy I was.

“You’re a vision, Ambassador Martini,” Brewer said to me after he and my husband had finished being all Washington Gangsta.

“So are you,” Nathalie purred at Jeff.

My mind chose this moment to note that Lydia, like Nathalie, was giving my husband goo-goo eyes. Brewer was giving me an appraising up and down glance. Eugene looked bitterly at Jeff and Brewer, then shot me a Sad Panda look.

My mind chose this moment to query as to whether I thought Lydia was hitting on my husband, suggesting a foursome, or, just for grins and giggles, if perhaps she knew about Eugene’s affair and wanted to go for a Tri-Couple Tournament. My mind also wanted to know if the Brewers might be thinking the same thing. Sometimes I hated my mind.

Before I’d met the Cabal of Evil I’d never entertained thoughts like this. Sadly, so many of them had suggested so many different “fun” ideas during Operation Assassination that I now associated them equally with World Domination Dreams and Triple-X Porn.

While I wondered if brain bleach really existed, Eugene moped at me and Lydia and Nathalie continued to check Jeff out. Brewer continued to do the same with me while talking to Jeff about wine and how Christmas differed in D.C. from California—not as much snow in Brewer’s part of California was the shocking reveal. Jeff shared the equally shocking news that it was the same in our parts of Arizona and New Mexico. Wondered if they had some Bro-Coded Message thing going, or if they were both somehow enjoying this conversation.

Right before I was ready to call the Poofs and ask them to eat everyone, the evening got just that much better. Guy Gadoire and his husband, Vance Beaumont, moved into the salon and shoved Eugene aside.

Gadoire was a lobbyist for the tobacco industry. Vance spent his time lounging around in fashion-forward outfits ripped right out of the pages of GQ. Unlike Reader, he didn’t carry them off perfectly, but he made do. To say they weren’t my favorite couple was, potentially, the understatement of the year.

“My darling Missus Martini,” Gadoire said as he grabbed the hand I wasn’t offering and did his customary slobber-fest that passed for kissing in his world. Gadoire spoke in a French accent all of us were sure was faked—he sounded far more like Pepé Le Pew than Maurice Chevalier. He didn’t possess an iota of the charm either one of those famous French actors had, either. That Nathalie hadn’t called him on his faking being from her native country was either a testament to her kindness or lack of interest.

“All Over the World” by ELO ended and “Sexy and I Know It” from good old LMFAO came on. I knew I hadn’t put it onto the mix, so I assumed Kyle had told Walter to play it in honor of “Monsieur Love” as I called Gadoire in private. Made a mental note to hurt Kyle later while I did my best to control the Inner Hyena.

Somehow during Operation Destruction Gadoire and Vance had convinced Senator Armstrong and themselves that they were my besties. They still seemed to believe it, all evidence of my dislike to the contrary.

Vance broke protocol, pulled me away from Guy, and gave me a big hug. “Kitty, you look gorgeous.”

Before I could escape or reply, Vance bent down and whispered in my ear. “Something’s going on, something bad, and I think we’re all in danger.”