A Little Rhine Must Fall (20 page)

He nodded, not really interested, and pulled the computer keyboard towards him. “Names?”

“Sarah and Karen Schultz.”

“Ah, yes. You’ll have to come back in the morning.” He turned to walk out.

“But I got a call saying to come down now!” I protested.

“The cashier will be in at seven in the morning. Come back then,” he said.

Cecily elbowed me, none too gently, in the side. I sighed. Immortality, here I come.

“Stop,” I commanded. “You will let me through to see my sisters now.”

“Come right through this way,” he said agreeably. “I’ll walk you back.”

I gave Bastet a look and then a significant nod at the computer. I was assuming that any cat who could type could also erase information off the computer.

:It will be like they were never here:
she assured me.

Cecily and I followed the officer back into the holding cells. Karen was standing at the barred door of the first one.

“Piper!” she greeted me in relief. “Are you here to rescue us?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I said. “Where’s Sarah?”

“She is sick! I have been very worried, but the humans here have not listened to my concerns or sent for medical assistance.”

I felt a stab of fear. As much as Sarah drove me crazy, she was my sister, and I loved her.

“Where is she?” I asked again.

Alien/Karen pointed at the next cell. I looked in the door and all my feelings of love and worry evaporated into pure irritation. Now I knew why she hadn’t used her ability to keep them out of jail in the first place. She was as drunk as a skunk.

“Is she okay?” Cecily asked behind me.

“She’s not going to be,” I answered grimly. I turned to the police officer. “Let them both out now,” I commanded with the Voice.

Cecily had to support Sarah as we made our way back to the front lobby.

“Ish’at you, Pip?” Sarah mumbled.

“Shut up,” I snapped back.

“Yup. Shats’you.” She nodded sagely.

Bastet was calmly grooming her fur when we returned.
:Ah:
she said.
:So this is what “Drunk and disorderly” looks like:

“‘m goin’ t’throw up,” Sarah said and Cecily had her outside and in the grass with vampiric speed.

I watched through the glass doors. Yup. She was throwing up alright. Served her right. Besides the fact that she was many years underage, getting drunk was not my idea of “show the alien how great Earth is.”

Alien/Karen came and stood next to me. “This was quite an enlightening day,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yes. I have learned much about humans and your world.”

I yawned. “So, what’s next?” I felt so exhausted that I really wouldn’t have minded the Earth being wiped out by alien attack at that moment. At least then I would get some rest.

“You have caused me to rethink my original mission.”

I perked up. That sounded good. Really good! “That’s fabulous!” I gushed.

“I know that your desire is for me to
not
send a message to Endrung.”

“That would be great!” I was thrilled.

“I have thought on this, and my day with Sarah has confirmed my decision.”

Really? A day out with a teenager that ended in getting arrested for being drunk made her rethink attacking Earth? Maybe I had been giving Sarah too little credit. Obviously her idea had worked better than mine.

“What made you change your mind?” I asked.

She ticked the points off on her fingers. “First, I learned that humans have a strong and irrational love for each other and will sacrifice for those loved ones. I learned this from watching you with your daughters.”

I smiled. That was nice.

She continued, “I also learned that humans have an even greater love for themselves and know how to entertain themselves and enjoy life. I learned that your world is full of fascinating people and places and that there are endless possibilities of entertainment to be experienced.”

“
That
you learned from Sarah,” I guessed.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But at the end of the day, I learned that, like the Endring, human society is based upon laws that either must be obeyed or, when broken, must be punished.”

I cocked my head sideways. I didn’t understand how that last point had affected her, but I had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t good.

She pounded the final nails into the coffin. “So, while love and fun are good things, the law is above all. Although I would like to do as you wish, I must complete my mission. It is
my
people’s law and I must obey.”

I blinked at her in shock.

“I would like to meet with the rest of your staff tomorrow to announce my arrival and purpose for coming,” she said.

This just kept getting better and better.

Chapter Nineteen:

Plans

I could have pointed out that I didn’t have a “staff.” I wasn’t the leader of anything. Not even my own household. Hadn’t that alien been paying attention to anything? I couldn’t even make a
cat
find another home to terrorize. Sure, I could command obedience for a measly ten minutes, but that hardly made me the chief of the world.

Yet, somehow, it had become my responsibility to carry the bad news to the Synod that our worst dreams were about to come true. The aliens were here and they were
not
friendly.

Before I could really work up some emotion on the subject, I had to drop a more or less sober Sarah back at home. We’d stopped at an all-night gas station and pumped her full of cheap coffee. I wasn’t going to pay for Starbucks in this situation. A little vindictive? Perhaps.

Mom and Dad had slept through Sarah’s entrance and barring any vomiting hangover tomorrow (I’d also made her down a half gallon of water) we should be in the clear. Now all I had to do was get myself and the alien back in the house without waking my toddlers and come up with some story (lie) to tell my husband about how it was all a misunderstanding at the police station.

After all that,
then
I could start my planning for the next day. I’m a list maker. I like lists. There is something cathartic about little check marks, or drawing a line through an item. I wasn’t dumb enough to write any of this down (not unless I decided one day that living in an insane asylum would be peaceful compared to this). My list, if I
were
to write one, would look something like this:

1. Get some sleep

2. Find out how to contact Synod - would Bastet know?

3. Contact Synod and arrange meeting - do I have to attend?

4. Get alien to meeting

5. Prepare for alien domination.

That last one I imagined would be sort of like preparing for a hurricane. Stock up on water and canned goods and make sure the generator had gas and so on. We were good at that in Florida, and I would have the added bonus of being the only one who knew it was time to prepare so I wouldn’t be fighting lines at the grocery store.

I tried to imagine the mass panic that would ensue if people knew that a hostile alien race was coming. It boggled the mind. Yet, wasn’t it my responsibility to warn people? How could I prepare for
my
family’s safety and ignore the plight of everyone else? But who would believe me? No one would pay any attention to the ravings of a mad woman. And I ran the risk of being locked up as a crazy person. Or worse, having my children taken away from me.

But becoming Chicken Little also meant that I would have to come clean with Mark. Seven years of lies would have to come out in the open and be, hopefully, forgiven. I was pretty sure that he would eventually understand. It was the time in-between telling him and the forgiveness that I didn’t want to have to live through.

I quickly checked on Megan and Cassidy to make sure they were okay and still sleeping. Then I peeked in at Mark; he was asleep too. Not surprising, since it was the middle of the night. I wanted nothing more than to climb in bed next to him and try to forget everything for a few hours. But no, I had to get a stupid alien to a meeting. The aforementioned alien was getting ready for bed in the den, but I wanted to talk to Cecily alone, so I didn’t disturb her.

I tiptoed back outside and ran quickly over the wet grass to Cecily’s house. She was waiting by the door, alert and scanning the neighborhood for danger. Once again, I’d forgotten all about Matthew. Maybe I
wanted
him to whack me. Then I would have a lot less stuff to worry about.

Once inside, I gratefully took the steaming cup of cocoa that Cecily had prepared, kicked off my flip-flops and tucked my feet up under me on the couch.

Cecily sat gracefully in the arm chair with a long-stemmed glass of dark red liquid in her hand. Funny how it didn’t really bother me that much anymore. I wasn’t going to be drinking blood myself any time soon, but it didn’t give me the heebie-jeebies like it used to.

“The alien is still going to send the message back and she wants to talk to the Synod,” I began. “She still thinks I’m the chief, but she wants to meet with my ‘staff.’” I still had to snicker at that.

Cecily sipped thoughtfully. “So, your plan to integrate her into human life failed.”

I gave her a look. “It wasn’t that great a plan to begin with. You didn’t think it was really going to work, did you?”

She shrugged. “I have learned to not underestimate you. Somehow you accomplish things that should be impossible.”

I made a face. “Not this time.” I sighed. “How do we set up a meeting with the Synod?”

“Are we in a rush?”

I thought about it. I was
not
in a rush to start worldwide Armageddon. But I
was
in a rush to get Bastet and the alien out of my house. Playing hostess to goddesses and aliens was not something covered by Emily Post.

“She wants the meeting to happen tomorrow,” I said.

Cecily pursed her lips. “That will take some doing. We will have to send messages to the Synod members and arrange a meeting location.”

I held up a finger and pointed it at her warningly, “
Not
my house.”

She laughed. “Agreed. Your house is not the place for a Naga.”

I felt irrationally offended. “Are you saying my home is not good enough?”

She gave me a look. “No. But I agree that filling your home with
more
supernatural beings is not in your children’s best interest.”

I leaned back on the couch. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m so touchy.”

Cecily looked pointedly at my tummy. I placed a hand protectively over my baby. “Okay, so I’m pregnant and cranky. I apologize.”

“No apologies necessary,” she said magnanimously. “Don’t worry. I will contact the Synod tonight and find out where they would like to meet. You go get some sleep and I’ll let you know in the morning what the plan is.”

I couldn’t stop the yawn that threatened to split my head in half. “Okay,” I finished off the cocoa and dragged myself off the couch to place the mug in the kitchen. I stopped at the door and looked back at Cecily. Who would have thought that my best friend in the world would be a vampire?

“Cecily?”

She looked up at me questioningly.

“Thanks.”

She smiled. “Thank
you
, Piper.”

“Me? Why?”

She tried to put her feelings into words. “You … remind me of what it is to be … human. Thank you.” And for a moment, I caught a glimpse in her eyes of the horrors a vampire who no longer feels human can commit. I shuddered. She was my friend, but she was also a bloodthirsty killer, in a very real sense of the term.

She saw the revulsion in my face and turned away ashamed. Now it was my turn to feel guilty. Whatever her past, and it was much longer and more complicated a past than
I
had lived, she had been a true friend and I was lucky to have her with me.

I ran back quickly and gave her a quick hug.

“What was that for?” she asked surprised.

“For being my friend,” I said and left before we could get any more mushy and maudlin.

Chapter Twenty:

Ziplining

For some reason, I had assumed that the Synod held its headquarters in Orlando. Logically, I knew that they could meet anywhere they wanted, since the Zipline magic could instantly transport them across the world. But, not counting the meeting on the moon, the last time I had stood before the Synod had been at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. I knew they had just been renting the facility for the USB convention, but it just stuck in my head as the place to find the Synod.

I’d been too busy the next morning finding a babysitter for the girls to really spend time grilling Cecily on
where
we were going. My phone call to my mother had resulted in a big fat zero. She had a doctor’s appointment and couldn’t watch them.

I then tried Sarah. She wasn’t answering her phone, which I assumed meant she was still sleeping. After last night, that didn’t surprise me. What
should
have surprised me was the fact that I was willing to ask my irresponsible, drunk sister to watch my daughters before I would call my motherin-law. Well, maybe not so surprising since I mentally thought of her as a minion of Satan. What great choices I had in childcare: party girl or the devil.

Make that “what great choices I
didn’t
have.” Mom finally answered Sarah’s phone and informed me that Sarah was sick, down with a stomach bug. Yeah, right. A stomach bug called “hangover.” Drat. That left me down to my last option. The last time she’d watched the girls she had redecorated my bathroom and let an angry vampire into my bedroom. Pretty bad, but could she do worse? Was it even possible?

I mentally played with the idea of taking Megan and Cassidy with me to the Synod meeting. I got an image of Cassidy being swallowed in one gulp by a dragon and Megan being mentally enslaved by the UnSeelie Fae and decided that perhaps evil motherin-laws were better than evil supernatural beings. Marginally.