Alien in the House

were, like the rest of us, “out” as being aliens, and they went on display a couple of times a week. We kept said times random for security reasons.
    The Poofs had been spotted during the invasion, too, so some of them did Zoo duty as well. We had every toy manufacturer in the world in a bidding war over who was going to get the Poof licensing rights. Chuckie, by dint of his business acumen and ability to multitask like no other, was handling all of that “fun.”
    We’d also built an enclosed walkway from our second floor to the Zoo’s second floor, as well as kept the top three floors of the Zoo for regular people use. Which, apparently, included tonight’s dinner party. The idea made sense, so I wasn’t surprised that Pierre had come up with it.
    Thusly escorted by my exotic feathered and fluffy friends, I entered the daycare center. Before we’d taken over the Embassy it had been an exercise room, and much of that, the pads on the floors in particular, were still around. But Pierre and Denise Lewis had really done it up nicely and it was now totally safe for children, Poofs, and Peregrines. Dogs and cats, too, since my parents’ pets were still housing with us and, per Jamie, were lonely without her.
    Speaking of my favorite bundle of cuteness, she saw me, and ran to me, squealing, “Mommy!”
    I picked her up and gave her a big kiss and hug. “Good job, Jamie-Kat!” She was working on moving at human speeds, and doing well with it. Jamie was, in point of fact, doing far better moving between human and A-C speeds than I was, but I chose to look at it as her being gifted and super-special.
    She was just days under a year, but Jamie was moving fast in terms of development. All A-C babies did some things faster than humans, but Jamie was beating the normal A-Cs. She’d said her first word at the end of Operation Destruction, and in the months since then, had moved from baby talk to little kid talk. She’d started standing on her own at the end of our last fracas, too, and wasn’t toddling so much as being kind to the adults and human kids and not really going for it in terms of all-out running and such unless the circumstances were dire.
    No sooner than Jamie was in my arms, than the tide of canines hit us. “You sure having them here isn’t a problem?” I asked Denise.
    “Oh no, they’re very well behaved and the children love having them.” She had the cats in their carrier, and trundled it over to me. Due to Jamie’s demands that the cats go everywhere with her in the Embassy, their carrier was now an extra-large luxury deal on wheels with a handle for pulling.
    The cats seemed okay with their Feline Winnebago, probably because they liked traveling in style and with their own band of Poofs along. I wasn’t positive, but it seemed to me that Sugarfoot, Candy, and Kane had Poofs that they considered theirs, just like the rest of us. For all I knew, the dogs had their own Poofs, too. There were certainly enough Poofs in there with the cats to accommodate every Earth pet we had and then some.
    “Where are the rest of the kids?” I asked, as the human kids, Raymond and Rachel Lewis, trotted over, too. These days, we had several other hybrid children at the center—all those who had parents working at the Embassy, on Alpha, or Airborne—and I was used to seeing them and getting daily hugs and kisses.
    “Picked up already. You’re a little late, but that’s never a problem. We all like spending extra time with Jamie.”
    Decided not to offer any excuse for why I was late since Denise didn’t seem to care. Besides, getting rid of the Bomb of Badness was a good thing, right?
    Raymond was a serious little boy of six and his sister was a sweet little girl of four. Their father, Kevin, was a gorgeous black guy with bags and bags of charisma. Denise was a gorgeous blonde with her own bags of charisma. Both of them had fantastic smiles with fantastic teeth on top of everything else. They were pretty much the perfect couple, and you couldn’t hate them because they were also incredibly nice.
    Surprising no one, their children were also gorgeous, with fab smiles and their own little bags of charisma. I wasn’t sure if Raymond was too old for Jamie, but I was willing to go for the arranged marriage idea, because in addition to all their other fine qualities, the Lewises were also all smart. Hey, I wanted my daughter to marry well. Sure, after she’d grown up and found herself a career she