Alien Collective (19 page)

“He does, it’s Berkowitz, sorry, forgot to mention it.”

“So figures.”

“All of them know each other, of course, and I wouldn’t say any of them are enemies, though not all of them are friends with all the others. Speaking of Ansom, by the way, I think you also should consider—”

William’s voice came over the intercom. “Excuse me, Ambassador.” It was still weird hearing him instead of Gladys, especially because William was unfailingly polite and Gladys had never felt the need to bother. Shoved the pang down. Gladys would be the first one to tell me to pull up my Big Girl Panties and handle the business of protecting her people.

“What’s up, William?”

“You’re needed in conference. Immediately.”

R
ESISTED THE URGE TO CURSE
or sigh. “Super, we’ll be right up. Or over, depending on where we’re meeting.”

“Fifteenth floor conference room, Ambassador. Only you were requested.”

“Gotcha. Over it is.” The com went off and I looked at Vance. “Well, I guess you and I have sort of formed a plan for one of the many problems. You want to go find Pierre and Raj and get that rolling?”

“I’m going with you to this meeting. They can tell me to leave, but I’m not going to wander off just because I’m considered useless.”

“You’re not useless, so, yeah, come along. Besides, for all we know, Pierre and Raj are there, too.”

“By the way, why have you been playing that one song over and over?”

“I have been?” Listened. Sure enough, Foster the People was still on, but instead of the album playing, only “Pumped Up Kicks” was on our personal airwaves. Figured this was some kind of a clue from Algar. Filed it away to pay attention to later.

“Yeah. Nonstop.”

“Whatever. It’s a good song.” Grabbed my iPod out of the dock and dropped it back into my purse. Looked at the animals. “We’ll continue our discussion later. For now, um, those of you who need to stay here, stay here. Everyone else, go back to your assigned person or people or come along with Kitty.”

Bruno, Harlie, Poofikins, and Prince and his K-9 crew all came with us. Happily, Bellie stayed in the Lair. Wondered about my new definition of “happy.” Didn’t care for it all that much.

“So, you lived in those rooms?” Vance asked as we left the Lair. Noted he had an unattached Poof on his shoulder. Well, it probably had been unattached at one time. Now? Now I’d ask what Vance had named it later. But at least that meant that Vance and Guy were truly our allies. So, another one for the win column, go us. Poof Power, and all that.

“Yeah. I liked it, too.”

“Right by jail cells?” We were passing the containment area. “You enjoyed living next to your people’s version of County Lockup?”

“They aren’t used a lot. Besides, the other housing here is kind of . . .”

“Awesome. Like a luxury hotel. I can see why that would get dull.” Vance’s sarcasm knob was back at eleven.

“The automatic alarms every morning suck. You literally have to have every person’s feet on the floor and not be sitting down on the bed for them to turn off.” And the soundproofing was far better in the Lair, possibly because we were several floors away from the others sleeping. Not that this was any of Vance’s business, Poof on his shoulder or not. “Besides, how do you know about the rooms on the transient floors?”

“We’re all staying here at least overnight, per everyone, just to be safe. The Alphabet Agency Bigwigs you hang with and are related to are worried about all of your allies’ safety, and I can’t blame them.”

Vance and I and our animal honor guard finally reached the giant conference room and joined what appeared to be pretty much everyone. We were missing the Mossad and Israeli and Bahraini embassy personnel we didn’t know well, and, thankfully, the kids and those on Daycare Duty, but otherwise pretty much everyone else was in attendance, including the Mossad, Israeli, and Bahraini folks we did know well. Heck, even Mrs. Maurer was in attendance.

“Good of you to join us, Missus Chief,” Buchanan said quietly. He and Siler were both leaning against the wall just inside the door. Siler was again cuffed to Buchanan for whatever reason.

“I like to make an entrance.”

They both chuckled as Vance went one way and I went the other, toward Jeff and Christopher. The room was normally set up in a round, but today we had the Corporate America Classroom setup, with U-shaped lines of long tables and chairs curved toward the far end of the room. Alpha and Airborne were in the front, with Jeff and Christopher in back for whatever reason.

“You really need to go everywhere with an entourage, don’t you?” Christopher asked as I settled into the available chair between him and Jeff, animals settling in behind me.

“Blah, blah, blah. As if Toby’s not in your pocket right now?” Did a fast headcount. In addition to everyone I’d expected, Gadoire was in the room. Vance sat between him and Culver.

“Whatever,” Christopher muttered.

“What were you up to?” Jeff asked, somewhat suspiciously.

“Vance and I were having wild sex with all the animals. It’s our new thing.”

Jeff laughed. “Fine, fine, I’ll stop. I wasn’t actually trying to be jealous.”

Patted his hand. “No, you’re just good enough at it to do it on autopilot. So, what’s our newest damage?” Had to figure something more was going on than just a meeting, or else they wouldn’t have had William call me in.

“More bombings. Still no one taking anything more than minor damage. Still unlikely that’s going to last.”

There was a giant TV monitor in the room that we were set up to be looking at—similar to the ones in Field and Imageering Main in the Bat Cave—and we were being treated to a variety of screen-within-screen shots. Figured we were here instead of Main because of how many people we had with us. A whole heck of a lot about covered it.

Serene and Horn were on one screen, Cliff was on another, and other images were on the other screens, mostly of bombings and protests. The screens were set up for video conferencing, so everyone on the other sides could see all of us in the room. This looked and felt like a War Room meeting.

Said meeting was in full swing and no one seemed likely to interrupt in order catch me up. No worries, I had a decent grasp of what was going on. And most of what was going on right now was recap.

Got bored fast, since I’d personally lived most of what was being recapped, so took in the room some more. Was pretty sure that no one on the other side of the screens could see where Buchanan and Siler were standing. Wondered why Buchanan had them in this position, but filed it away to ask about later. Went back to the screens.

Cliff was clearly in his office. I’d seen it. It was typical D.C. High-Up Worker Bee Dull and Semi-Stately. However, I’d also been to Horn’s office, and he wasn’t in it. I hadn’t seen whatever F.B.I. bomb defusing area he and Serene were at—in fact, I had no idea if they were in the D.C. area, back here at Dulce with everyone else, or in another clandestine location—so I concentrated on their screen. Which was why I caught sight of a younger Dazzler who looked familiar.

Nudged Jeff. “Who’s that with Serene and Vander?” I whispered.

“Our niece,” he replied in kind.

“You have a tonnage of nieces and nephews, Jeff.”

“But only one old enough to be working outside of school. That’s Stephanie, Sylvia’s oldest. You know her.” Sylvia was the eldest of Jeff’s five older sisters, and she’d married and started her family first as well. Stephanie was the oldest Martini grandchild, therefore.

“Yeah, just haven’t seen her since . . .” Since shortly after I’d had to kill her father, Clarence Valentino, during Operation Sherlock. He’d been a major traitor and had been trying to kill me and a lot of other people, but he was still her father, and while Sylvia had understood, we’d given their children the old Killed in Action story.

Stephanie was, like all female A-Cs, gorgeous. But she’d changed a lot in the past couple of years, leaving the awkward teenaged stage for the more mature, almost-a-real-young-adult stage. She’d be about 19 now.

Thought about the high-security cells again. Clarence had been released from them by Alfred, Jeff’s father, because Sylvia had been so upset by his incarceration. He’d then been taken out of the solar system, along with Ronaldo Al Dejahl, by LaRue DeMorte Gaultier, via a ship stolen from Alpha Four. Our lives were always filled with fun complexities like that.

So Stephanie had to know her father was a traitor. Maybe her younger siblings didn’t know or weren’t clear, but she’d been old enough to understand everything that had been going on, and all Dazzlers were not just great looking, but also brilliant. How hard would it have been for her to put two and two together? And if how she’d been when we first met was still how she was, she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.

But I hadn’t heard anything from anyone about Stephanie’s reactions to what had happened to her father, or what he’d done to her people, other than the usual platitudes everyone, human or alien, says during and about bad situations.

Jeff and I had talked about how to deal with his sisters and their families, in part because most of their husbands had worked for the former Diplomatic Corps and weren’t exactly confirmed to be on the side of right. Jeff had felt that my not trying to make amends with anyone and just letting him, Alfred, Lucinda, and White handle it was the right way to go. And because of his empathic talent, I’d acquiesced.

So, other than Marianne’s family, who we saw fairly frequently, we only saw the rest of his sisters and their families on holidays or when jobs crossed, which was rarely, and I’d been busy enough that I hadn’t thought about it a lot. Marianne was the youngest of Jeff’s sisters, so I had the most in common with her, and her youngest daughter, Kimmie, had been our flower girl, so we were more closely bonded.

I was an only child, and these days I worked with most of my closest friends—I didn’t miss or even think about sibling interaction when Chuckie, Amy, and Caroline were right there, let alone Reader, Lorraine, and Claudia. And Jeff and Christopher were always together, which, though they were cousins, tended to cover my sibling thoughts about either one of them.

All of the Martini grandchildren were talented—about fifty-fifty empaths to imageers—and all of them were closer to Jeff and Christopher’s levels than normal A-C standards. Kimmie was empathic. But I had no idea what talent Stephanie had. Wondered if, in addition to anything else, she was, like Camilla was and Doreen was learning to be, a Liar.

Camilla was undercover in Gaultier Enterprises somewhere, and Chuckie wouldn’t let me contact her. So asking for her expert opinion was, sadly, out. Doreen was across the room and it would take too long to explain to her why I was suspicious. It wouldn’t take all that long, really—Doreen was high up there in smarts on the Dazzler Scale—but any time could be too much time.

Wondered why I was stressing about Stephanie right now, other than the fact that I’d seen her somewhere I wasn’t expecting. Maybe because of the song, “Pumped Up Kicks”. It had a cheerful, earwormy tune, but it was about a kid getting ready to go off and kill people. And Algar was a lyrics-focused clue giver.

The conversations washed over and around me—I concentrated on the screen with Serene, Horn, and Stephanie in it.

Horn and Serene were sitting—it looked like they were either waiting for their cue to talk or had already; they seemed alert and interested but not like they were going to be adding in at the moment. Stephanie was behind them, and she appeared to be taking notes.

“What’s Stephanie doing with Vander and Serene?” I asked Christopher, who was on my other side, in a whisper, since Jeff seemed to actually be paying attention.

“She’s working for Vander as one of his assistants,” he whispered back. “Favor to us kind of thing. And it’s good experience for her.”

“Yeah. Who asked for her to be put into that position?”

“Why? What’s wrong?” He didn’t sound annoyed or snarky—he sounded worried. Good.

I hadn’t taken my eyes off the screen. So I saw when Stephanie looked up and saw me. Her eyes narrowed and she shot me a look of pure venom. Her gaze shifted—the venom was being directed toward Christopher, too.

Considered this. She’d been the one who’d given Christopher and all the rest of the guys keychains as Arrival Day presents when I was pregnant with Jamie. Those keychains had had bugs in them, bugs put there by our Enemies of the Day at that time, which had included the former Diplomatic Corps, and Clarence.

Those keychains were part of how Christopher had been manipulated into becoming a Surcenthumain addict. I’d thought, we’d all thought, that Clarence had tricked her into doing it. Most had assumed Stephanie had no idea there was anything untoward inside her gifts. And no one, not even Jeff, maybe especially not Jeff, had asked her if she’d known what she was doing.

And if we asked her now, what would all the empaths feel? Nothing wrong. Because if she was working for our enemies, then she was one of the first people who they’d given an emotional overlay device to. Maybe she’d been the main tester for them—see if your Uncle Jeff can tell that you hate his wife’s guts, and your Uncle Christopher’s guts, too.

Algar had been warning me. That meant there probably wasn’t a lot of time. We’d lost far too many people I cared about last year—I wasn’t willing to lose Serene, and I had a feeling she was going to be the first in the line of fire. Her son, Patrick, was almost as talented as Jamie, and he didn’t have ACE inside him. They’d tried to get Patrick, and by extension, Jamie, last year by holding his father hostage and torturing him. That was why Michael and Fuzzball were dead—they’d been killed trying to protect Brian.

Serene would be an even stronger lure for her son, and that would mean that it was Horn who was going to die first, so that we would all know the situation was serious. Okay, so Serene was second in the line of fire; made things worse, not better. Plus, the death of the guy in charge of the F.B.I.’s Alien Affairs Division, especially at the hand of an A-C, would be bad for us in more ways than I could count.