Alien Diplomacy

feeling ready to figure out what the hell was going on again.
    Sadly, I hadn’t paid much attention to where we’d gone, and while there were a ton of people milling around, they weren’t all heading in one direction anymore. It occurred to me that I actually had a good chance to examine the spaces outside of the ballroom with a legitimate excuse of being sort of lost if someone stopped me.
    I rounded a corner close by the bathroom and heard some weird sounds. No time like the present to investigate. I walked over slowly, so my heels wouldn’t make noise. There was a curtain blocking something, and the noises were coming from behind it.
    I slipped behind the curtain. It was fairly dark, but not so dark that I needed to use my phone as a flashlight—more murky than anything. There were a lot of boxes piled up. They seemed innocuous. I worked my way through them, toward the sounds.
    I rounded a corner and stopped dead. What I was seeing I definitely hadn’t been prepared for.



CHAPTER 78
    A MAN AND A WOMAN WERE in the middle of going for it in a very real and very animalistic way.
    I tried to back out and knocked into a set of boxes. While they fell, the couple separated and stared at me. It was murky, but not that murky. I pulled out my phone and turned it on them, just to be sure. “Nathalie?”
    She gulped. “Kitty. Ah…”
    I looked at the man. “ Eugene ?”
    He looked only slightly embarrassed but a lot worried. “Kitty, I can explain.”
    “Um, I’m clear on what you two are doing. It’s called having an affair. I just…wow, let me just say that I honestly would never have guessed.” In a million years.
    Nathalie shrugged. “Edmund used to have time for me. You’d think running a thriving winery and being married to an international fashion model would have been enough for him. But no. And now that he’s here, he spends all his time with those people and almost none with me. I have needs he’s no longer meeting.”
    “And Eugene is?”
    She ruffled Eugene’s hair. “Yes. He’s more man than Edmund in so many ways.”
    My jaw was hanging open. I expected this when it came to the Dazzlers and their whole brains over looks mindset. I was shocked to see it playing out with humans, though. “Um, what about Lydia?”
    Eugene looked defiant. “What Nathalie said, in spades. I’m tired of feeling like an embarrassment.”
    “But you cut him dead every week!”
    Nathalie nodded. “No one knows, not even Marcia. She knows I’m having an affair, but not with whom. She helps me cover, though. I’m only in the class to get to see Eugene.”
    “We meet up after class, each week,” Eugene admitted.
    “How and where?”
    “Wherever we can. Lydia thinks I spend time with you at the Embassy after classes.”
    “So I’m your cover?” I didn’t know whether to be enraged or impressed with his ingenuity. I settled for a little of both.
    “Yes. Kitty, I’m so sorry,” Eugene said desperately. “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t think you’d understand. Or approve.”
    As Caroline had said only the other day, having aliens on Earth wasn’t even close to the oddest thing going on in D.C. And people having affairs was as old as recorded history, if not older. Admittedly, this wasn’t a pairing I’d have ever guessed at. A question nudged. “Is that why you’re always on your phone?”
    Nathalie nodded. “We text all the time. I don’t want Eugene to think I agree with what the others say or do. But…” she shrugged. “A cover’s a cover, n’est pas ?”
    “True enough.” I contemplated my options. “Why were you and Marcia on Embassy Row the other day?”
    They both looked embarrassed. “I hadn’t gotten to see her because we were delayed the other day,” Eugene said. “So we’d planned to meet up…”
    “And a friend of Marcia’s lives in one of the houses between Embassies near you,” Nathalie concluded. “We saw you, and I realized Eugene couldn’t risk coming, because you might spot him and ask why he was in the area but not visiting you. Marcia knew your young men had spotted us, so she went for a frontal assault, so to speak, so we could get out of there without raising suspicions.”
    Didn’t work, but then, the suspicions raised hadn’t been about adultery. Well, one weird event was explained. “Any thoughts about Jack Ryan’s death?”
    Nathalie nodded. “I think he was murdered.”
    “He’s dead?” Eugene asked, sounding shocked and horrified.