Alien in the House

down, looking stressed. “Kitty, you need to get up here, right away.” He turned and ran back up.
    “Okay, that was different.” I started forward.
    Chuckie held me back. “Me first.” He drew his gun and started up. I went after him.
    Jeff held me back. “No. You come after me.” He followed Chuckie.
    Looked at Vance. He shrugged. “I’m great with you going ahead of me.”
    “Hiding behind the girl?”
    “Protecting your rear.” Vance added a leer in case I’d missed the double entendre.
    “Don’t let Jeff hear you say that, particularly in the way you just said it.”
    “I’m a lot of things, Kitty, but as stupid as I appear actually isn’t one of them.”
    “Vance, this actually could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”



CHAPTER 57
    V ANCE AND I HEADED upstairs. No one was waiting for us. Under the circumstances, this boded.
    “Com on,” I whispered.
    “Yes, Chief?” Walter whispered back.
    “Wow. You’re good. What’s going on? Where is everyone?”
    “Everyone is in the Ballroom, Chief. And I’m not sure what’s going on. However, we have visitors, and neither Pierre, nor I, nor anyone else let them in the Embassy. And the shields are up and active, I’ve verified.”
    “Gotcha.” I headed for the stairs. Vance stayed close to me.
    We trotted up as quietly as we could. Reached the second floor. No one was on it. Figured Walter had really meant
in
the Ballroom. No worries. We’d had, and won, a standoff here before.
    Slunk around, keeping our backs to the wall. “We look ridiculous,” Vance whispered.
    “Yeah? You feel free to just saunter on in then, Mister I’ve Got Your Rear.”
    “Oh, no, I’m happy following you.”
    Considered options. I could pull out my Glock and activate my Poofs, but that could be overkill. Then again, all the men who’d been with us weren’t around. How to tell what to do?
    “New plan, Vance. You go in, and if things are scary, you scream.”
    “No way.”
    “I’ll come in and save you.”
    “You’ll save me last, after you save everyone else. I know where I fall on your particular totem pole.”
    Hard to argue with the truth. “Fine. Coward.”
    “You know it.”
    Decided we needed to get closer anyway. Got to where I could see into the ballroom but they’d only see me if they were looking through the door at a certain angle. No one seemed to be doing much other than standing around.
    Of course, that was reminiscent of the last standoff in our Ballroom. Sighed.
    Jeff stuck his head out. “Stop playing around and get in here,” he said quietly, but with a lot of emphasis. “They’re here for you. I think.”
    “What do you mean, ‘you think’?”
    “They won’t let us talk and they have ways of ensuring we don’t. My head hurts enough. I can read them, I think, and they don’t like any of us other than Nathalie. And they are waiting for a woman, and I think it’s you. Now get inside.”
    Well, that seemed clear. Resisted the impulse to make a joke in a fake Nazi voice and instead entered as requested. Everyone who’d been in the two limos was in here, as was Pierre. Pierre was wringing his hands, probably because he was afraid we were going to have a fight and destroy all his birthday party decorations.
    But it wasn’t just them in here. They were all standing around looking at two women, who weren’t really looking at any of them. No one was speaking.
    One woman was taller than the other, and both were taller than me. The taller one, who I was also sure was older, looked like she’d stepped off the
Mad Men
set and into our Embassy. She was dressed in a very 1960s business suit, hair pulled back.
    The younger one had just left a revival of
Dynasty
. She was sporting a suit with some serious shoulder pads and big jewelry. Her hair was big, too.
    “It’s a costume party. Who are you and why are you here?”
    The taller woman looked at me. “Our message is for the leader of the American Centaurion people and her alone.” She clearly hadn’t gotten the joke, nor had she taken it as an insult. The shorter woman hadn’t either. They seemed blithely clueless—and not at all intimidated to be surrounded by all these men, most of whom were pretty big, all of whom weren’t looking friendly.
    Vance scurried over toward Nathalie, who was off in a corner of the room behind our two costumed chicks. Well, he tried. He made it near the women and was flung back. Most of the men I could see winced, and it was a