Alien in the House

blowgun.”
    Clarence looked surprised. “Yeah.”
    “Why did you dump him in the tunnels under the Gaultier Research facility?”
    “For me to know—”
    “And me to never find out, yeah, yeah. So let me guess. Someone from Gaultier is trying to get in good with your boss, and you don’t like them.” His mouth twitched. “Either that, or you have friends who are working there now, and you were showing off.” His mouth twitched again, but he didn’t respond. No worries, had a feeling both guesses were right. “So you did kill Representative Juvonic.”
    “No, that wasn’t me.” Interesting what made him talk.
    “I saw someone up on the roof right before he was hit.”
    “Wasn’t me. Wasn’t Raul, either. Our jobs are to clean up their messes, not to help them.” Them again. There were at least two still vying for the Apprentice job—Whitmore and our mystery woman. Mystery woman could be from Gaultier, but if she wasn’t, then we had at least three vying for the job. Considering what was going on at Gaultier, we could have twenty vying for the job.
    “And Raul’s going to be here really soon,” Doreen said. Got the impression she also wanted to say, “Hint, hint,” but was smart enough to control herself. We probably didn’t have any more time for me to plumb the rest of Clarence’s information well.
    “Uncles Peter and Victor, you know how you’re the experts in your field?”
    “Yes,” the Dingo said tersely.
    “Well, I’m the expert in mine. Please put your guns down.”
    “What?” Surly Vic sounded shocked.
    “Guns. Down. Now. So Raul doesn’t shoot you as soon as he arrives.”
    “Do it,” Irving said, waving his gun at them. Really hoped he didn’t pull the trigger by accident.
    “Put yours down, too,” Clarence said, as the assassins dropped their guns down.
    “Maybe. Clarence, may I introduce you to Princesses Rahmi and Rhee? Girls, this is Clarence Valentino, Traitor at Large. Do you see him?”
    “Yes,” Rhee said.
    “For the past few minutes,” Rahmi added.
    “Just making sure. Rahmi, Rhee—kill Clarence Valentino.”



CHAPTER 92
    T HINGS HAPPENED VERY QUICKLY. Rahmi and Rhee leaped toward Clarence as Doreen and Irving flung themselves down and to the sides. White grabbed the assassin’s guns at hyperspeed, and Raj shoved Gower down.
    Clarence, however, was slow to react, presumably because this turn of events had really caught him by surprise. Which was fine with me, because the princesses caught him with their battle staffs.
    I’d grown up with relatively easygoing cats and dogs. But occasionally a cat would come into our yard and attempt the feline form of Mob Protection. My cats never stood for that. So I’d seen more than a few catfights where the cats were boiling around each other, so busy fighting and flipping, clawing, screaming, and biting, that it was hard to tell where one cat started and another began.
    This fight was like that.
    Clarence had speed, size, and strength. But he’d never been Field trained, as Doreen had so nicely reminded me.
    The princesses, on the other hand, weren’t exactly tiny to begin with, and they were the top fighters on a planet that pretty much lived for fighting. Plus they had the battle staffs, and memory reminded me that those things hurt like hell when they connected with you. When activated, as they were now, they also glowed at one end, and that one end was more “lightsaber” than “piece of wood.”
    White shoved the guns at Raj and Paul, then ran and grabbed Irving just before the fighters trampled him. Doreen, seeing that Irving was safe, got to us on her own.
    “Doreen Coleman Weisman,
you
, my young lady, are an impressive liar.”
    She grinned. “Thanks. I’ve been working at it for years. I still don’t think I can fool anyone for too long, but it’s an important trait to have in the Embassy.”
    “You were obvious, and your husband was worse,” the Dingo said. “Which is the only reason we dropped our weapons, because it was clear our ‘niece’ would not risk us shooting the two of you.”
    “Not obvious to Clarence, which was all that mattered.”
    Speaking of whom, he was still hanging in there. However, he wasn’t fighting with any skill, and the same couldn’t be said for Rahmi and Rhee. Clarence was doing a lot of flipping and jumping, while trying to grab the girls and slam them into things.
    The operative word was “trying.” The battle staffs gave the girls more reach and