Alien in the House

wild goose chase? Oh, that’s right. So you can meet up with assassins you think are your friends now.”
    “They are. Anyway, how are you going to search if they stake out?”
    “Now, see, that’s where my special genius comes in. I told them you wouldn’t tell us exactly where you were meeting the Dingo. So we’re going to search the area first, which because most of us are human, will take a while. James, Airborne just landed in the Georgetown Student Center bathroom. We’d better get moving. Won’t look good if Mossad beats us there because they don’t get to use a gate.”
    “Okay, girlfriend, if it goes bad, which I fully expect it to, don’t play hero and call us right away. We’ll use a floater and get to you.”
    “Will do, James, I promise.”
    Reader hugged and kissed Gower good-bye, then he and Tim took off. The room, which had seemed incredibly full just a few minutes ago, now felt empty, despite the fact that we still had a lot of people in here.
    “What do the rest of us do?” Naomi asked, looking at her phone instead of any of us. “Sit here and wait around?” Abigail rolled her eyes and shot me a “sorry” look.
    “No. Let’s see if we can figure out who the mysterious L is and if there’s a deeper reason for why all the reps have been killed.”
    “But why?” Henry asked. “Everyone’s said that there’s no point.”
    “There’s still a point. We need to know if Santiago was killed only by accident or if he was on the hit list, too. Mimi, Abby, I want you two in charge of that.”
    “Why us?” Naomi asked, still looking at her phone. “Abby and I don’t have our powers working. And I have wedding things I need to focus on,” she added in a tone I could only think of as whiney and petulant.
    Maybe it was because I was tired. Maybe it was because she was whining and I wasn’t used to hearing any Gower whine, let alone Naomi. And maybe it was because I knew that she and Abigail felt they were handicapped now and I was tired of pretending that this was an okay attitude for them to have. Or maybe it was because she wanted to screw around with wedding stuff while everyone else tried to stop the bad guys.
    I snapped.
    “Oh, cry me a river.”
    “What?” Naomi looked and sounded shocked. Well, at least she wasn’t looking at her phone for the moment.
    “That means stop whining and acting like your life is all suck and no happy. Look, I get it. You have no talents any more. I’m sure that’s tough. But you still have all five senses, and you’ve still got your minds. Why are you refusing to use them?”
    “We can’t function like we used to,” Naomi said defensively.
    “I know, believe me. Everyone knows. You’ve been having a humongous pity party for the past several months and I guess no one feels up to telling you the truth. But I will, because we have a lot of dead people and they’d all trade losing one sense over losing their lives, I can guarantee it. So here’s the truth. You’ve taken the bravest, most important thing the two of you ever did and turned it into your excuse to never do anything ever again. And I personally think that sucks and you’re both better than that.”
    “Whoa,” Henry said quietly. “That’s kind of harsh.”
    “What Kitty means,” Amy said quickly, “is that we need your help, even if it’s not all the help you could have given in the past.”
    Naomi’s eyes were narrowed. “No, that’s not what she means at all.”
    “True enough, but thanks for the attempted diplomatic save, Ames. Yes, it’s harsh and yes, I mean it. I have two Cultural Attachés who haven’t done squat for this Mission or their people since Operation Destruction. All you’ve done, Naomi, is plan a huge freaking wedding that your fiancé would rather die than attend. He’ll attend it because he loves you, but he won’t enjoy it.”
    “What?” Naomi looked seriously pissed. “How dare you! You got the huge royal wedding. You’re the only one who’s good enough to get one, is that what you mean?”
    I snorted. “Hardly. I didn’t
want
the huge royal wedding. Jeff and I had no choice. And I’d like to remind you that we were fighting for our lives, and the lives of everyone on this planet, up to around ten minutes before we trotted down the aisle, around the ballroom, and through the woods.”
    “I didn’t want the big to-do, and neither did Christopher,” Amy said quickly. “It’s not the end of the world to have a small