Touched by an Alien (31 page)

“None at all.” Martini’s voice and expression said differently, though I didn’t think his problem was with me not being in a heap at his feet. “Things are handled. You’re sure your side has things under control?”

“Positive.”

“I ask because you seemed a lot more interested in Kitty than in ensuring things are taken care of. We’ve had enough leaks these past few days.”

“Oh? You’re the only one allowed to focus on her instead of taking care of things? Interesting.” He shifted gears from #4 to #1. I figured he’d learned to always go with the classics when things were tense.

“I told you not to push me on this,” Martini growled in a low voice.

“And I told you to stop playing games,” Christopher replied in kind. “She doesn’t deserve that.”

“I’ll bet I know exactly what you think she deserves.”

“More than you can offer her? Yeah, I do think she deserves that.”

This was just like when we’d arrived from LaGuardia the night before, only Mom wasn’t here to pull me away. I had a feeling they didn’t remember I was sitting next to them, either, which was kind of awkward.

I cleared my throat. Both heads snapped toward me. Martini was glaring but put his bland “it’s all good” face on. Christopher reduced Glare #1 down to what I could call sadly pensive.

“Um, can you two save this for when we engage Mephistopheles? I mean, all the testosterone’s great, big cave men, girl impressed, and all that, but don’t we have the fugly of fuglies to stop?”

Christopher closed his eyes. “Sorry. You’re right.” I had to find out what happy pills he’d taken—I wanted to be able to slip them into his drink whenever he was being normal.

Martini nodded. “Now that things are handled, maybe you should go take care of Claudia and Lorraine,” he suggested.

Christopher’s eyes opened. “Fine.” He looked at me. “Be careful.” He headed toward the door.

“I’ll take care of her,” Martini said.

Christopher looked over his shoulder. “Right. Because you’re so good at that.”

He stalked out, and I risked a glance at Martini. The “it’s all good” look was nowhere to be found. He looked hurt and angry and a little bit scared. I didn’t like this look. “Jeff? You okay?”

He managed a smile, which erased the other expressions so that now all he looked was tired. Martini took my hand and helped me up. “Yeah, baby. I’m fine.” He kissed my forehead. “The world’s safe for another few hours. So, let’s go see your parents.”

WE GOT ABOUT TEN PACES
outside of Command Center Central when Reader ran up. “Jeff, I just heard about the clusters. Are we secured?”

“Yeah.” Martini managed to sound exhausted with only one syllable.

Reader’s eyes narrowed. “You need to go into isolation.”

Martini snorted. “Like we have the time.”

“We can wait on this a day.”

I cleared my throat. Both men looked at me. This throat clearing thing really worked around here. “No, we can’t wait. I know Mephistopheles is coming, and this clustered stuff was proof.”

“How do you mean?” Reader asked. “Clustering does happen.”

“Yeah? Does it happen right after Mephistopheles or another in-control superbeing manifests?”

Uncomfortable looks between the two of them. Reader sighed. “Usually right before.” Another fun fact no one shared with me. I wondered if they couldn’t stop the fuglies because they didn’t feel the need to trade information or do analysis. Then again, the person they weren’t sharing with was me, so maybe it was just some sort of bizarre initiation rite—figure it all out without help, we teach you the secret handshake sort of thing. “But never as many as I heard. Thirty? Really?” he asked Martini.

“Over fifty.” Martini sighed. “Kitty’s right. We don’t have the time. I’ll manage. I’ve worked with less energy before.”

Reader’s expression said this wasn’t a lie so much as scary business as usual. Didn’t know whether to be relieved or freaked out. Went for both, to show my range.

Martini filled Reader in on what he’d done in the Command Center. It wasn’t at hypertalk level, but after the first few “and then Team 27 was deployed to Sector WV1 while support was called up from AB12,” lines, I stopped listening. It wasn’t making me want to pass out from dizziness, just boredom.

Impromptu briefing of boredom completed, Martini and I headed for my parents’ room. Again. Stopped by a variety of A-Cs along the way. Put my fingers in my ears and hummed Aerosmith’s “Eat the Rich” to myself so Martini could do the hypertalk and we could keep moving.

I would have thought all this debriefing would have tired him out more—it certainly was making me feel tired—but by the time we reached the elevator banks, Martini seemed back to reasonably normal. We’d taken so long that I was pretty much over the nausea, too. We got into an elevator and spent the entire trip kissing. I was very disappointed and completely aroused when we got to the right floor.

He merely held my hand as we left the elevator, which was okay, since I had no idea if we’d come upon my parents suddenly and really didn’t feel like explaining what was going on with me and Martini, since it was getting beyond complicated.

On the way down the hall Martini pointed out where my room actually was and where his room was in relation to it. I was on the elevator side, a few rooms down, he was on the opposite side of the hall, a few more down. Now that I was really looking around, it was like a combination hospital and hotel. Very austere, no decorations, but lots of rooms, and, once inside them, they were pretty darned nice.

My parents were near the end of the hall, much farther away from me than Martini. I wondered if he’d had anything to do with the room placement. As we neared the door, I could hear the sounds of four dogs barking. Ah, all was normal—as long as they could bark, our dogs were happy.

Martini knocked on the door, and the barking got much closer. “Hush!” Dad shouted as he opened the door. The tide of canines crashed into us. This time I steadied Martini as Dudley leaped up and put his paws on Martini’s shoulders.

“Argh!” Dudley shared he really liked Martini by licking his face.

“Dad, any chance of calling off the hounds?” I grabbed Dotty and Duchess and wrestled them back into the room. Duke, however, followed Dudley’s lead and jumped on Martini. I didn’t think he was going to remain on his feet much longer.

“Down boys, down. Come on now, be good dogs, get down.” Dad was not having the slightest effect.

“Dogs, SIT!” Mom called. Both male dogs’ butts hit the floor.

“Thank you,” Martini said weakly, as he wiped the slobber off. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Sure, sure,” Dad said, ushering us in while the dogs trotted over to Mom and pretended they were well-behaved. “You know where it is, Jeff?”

“Guh,” Martini said, and walked through their living room. He closed the bathroom door, and I heard it lock.

“Nice digs. Your place is like triple the size of mine.”

“Christopher took care of us,” Mom said.

There was something about her voice that made me look around. “What are you doing here?”

Christopher was leaning against the far wall, standing behind a sofa, petting two of our cats. “I came by to visit your parents.” He said it as if it were a totally normal thing. “Why is Jeff here?” he asked snidely. Ah, the Christopher I was used to was back.

“Because I can’t find anything without an escort. Now, hope you enjoyed, sorry to see you go, catch you at the launch site.” If Mister Pissy was here, I didn’t want him around. I’d kind of liked him for a moment or two when he was being nice, but now I wondered if I should have instead taken the opportunity to throw up on him.

“Kitty, stop being rude.” Mom gave Christopher a sympathetic look. “She gets cranky when she’s tired.”

“She’s tired a lot,” he replied with a grin. They shared their chuckle. I tried to remind myself that I could just use this whole situation later to get my rage going.

“Did you take care of Claudia and Lorraine?”

“My father had already thought of it. They’re both good.”

“Then, again, nice to see you, clear out. I’d like some time alone with my parents.”

“Alone with them, you, and Jeff?” Glare #1 was in full force.

Before I could answer this, Martini came out of the bathroom. He spotted Christopher, and his eyes narrowed. “Nice to see you. Why are you here?”

“I invited him,” Mom said icily. “Unlike you, he wasn’t suggesting using my child as bait for an alien monster.”

Martini winced. “Look—”

“No, I think Angela’s right to be upset,” Dad interjected. “You were intimate with our daughter, and then the next morning you suggest she be tossed into the jaws of death.”

Martini winced again, and Christopher was running through his full assortment of glares.

“Frankly,” Mom said, “I really think we should ask you to leave, Jeff, not Christopher.”

Martini had his eyes closed, and his expression headed from painful headache to total migraine. He looked awful and then started to look worse.

“Mom, Dad, shut up.” I ran and got to Martini as he started to collapse. “I mean, it! All of you shut up and stop hating on him right now!”

I flung his arm around my shoulders and led him into their bedroom. I managed to get him onto the bed. His face was pale, and his skin felt clammy. I stroked his head, and he groaned. “Hang on, Jeff,” I whispered as I kissed his forehead. It seemed to help him a little bit.

I went back out to the living room and spoke to my parents. “I need Jeff, and I need him functioning. He’s an empath, and all his blocks are shot. This is grueling for him—he can’t block out anything right now—and you hating him is making him sick. For all I know, it could kill him. He needs rest, and we don’t have the time. And instead of helping me, you’re sitting around with Mr. Wonderful here plotting against me and ripping Jeff.”

“We’re not plotting,” Mom said. “We’re upset, and, as your father said, I think we have a right to be.”

“No, you don’t. This isn’t about whether you do or don’t like a boyfriend of mine. This is about national freaking security. You of all people should be clear on that.”

“We’re clear, but we don’t like it,” Dad said.

“I don’t care. What you do or don’t like doesn’t matter. You need to stop, to calm down, and if you can’t calm down, to get the hell out of this room. Jeff can’t take it, and he doesn’t deserve it, either. If he hadn’t been smart enough to suggest me as bait, I would have suggested it myself.”

“Why?” Dad asked.

“Because it’s the intelligent and right thing to do. That is, if we want to actually save the world. If we don’t, then, by all means, please keep on raging and sending off emotions that Jeff can’t deal with. Maybe you can kill him and save Mephistopheles some time and effort.” I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “I have to check on him.” I went into the bedroom and saw an interesting sight.

Duchess, Dudley and Dotty were all on the bed with Martini. He was cuddled next to Duchess as if she were me, but I chose not to take it personally. Dudley was alongside his back, and Dotty had her head on his legs. Duke was on the floor at the foot of the bed, completely alert. All four dogs looked at me, but none of them barked or tried to get up.

Our cats were there, too, all three of them camped out around Martini’s head. Sugarfoot was grooming Martini’s hair and purring. Candy and Kane were curled up and appeared to be sleeping, but they both opened their eyes, and I got the same look from them as I had from the dogs. Martini wasn’t reacting to anything—I got the feeling he was asleep, and I knew he needed to stay that way for a while.

I backed out of the room. “Mom, Dad, come here . . . silently.” I felt them move up next to me. “You want to hate on Jeff anymore?”

They were both quiet for a few long moments. “No,” Dad said softly. “I think it’s clear we were in the wrong.”

Mom closed the door as quietly as possible. “I think we’ll meet you out in the hall.”

We went back to the living room. Christopher still looked angry. I decided I wanted some of this handled before we went out to take on the big fugly, even if it meant I’d have him less angry out there.

“Mom, Dad, do you think you two can calm down so you could stay here and watch over Jeff?”

“Sure, kitten,” Dad said. “We’ll be fine.”

“Good.” I pointed to Christopher. “You, come with me.”