Alien in the House

attending.”
    “I know. Olga doesn’t want to miss any hilarity that might ensue.”
    Olga was the wife of the Romanian ambassador. The Romanian Embassy was across the street from ours, and through a variety of circumstances, we’d become close with Olga and her granddaughter and personal assistant, Adriana. That Olga was former KGB and training Adriana in all the skills was a secret we were all happy to keep.
    Olga was suffering from multiple sclerosis, so she was mostly confined to a wheelchair. This didn’t stop her from somehow knowing everything that was going on in D.C. and many other places as well. My personal goal was to surprise or know something, anything, before her. It happened, but very rarely. Hoped that she wasn’t aware that the Dingo was in town, but I wasn’t willing to bet on it.
    “Since Pierre’s been here, we haven’t had any really disastrous social events,” Len reminded me.
    “True enough. I’m thankful for Pierre every day.” I chose not to mention that an interstellar invasion definitely counted as a disastrous event.
    We reached our floor and entered our palatial suite. I was adjusting to living in a portion of a huge building that was larger than the house I’d grown up in, but I still wasn’t a hundred percent comfy with it, and I didn’t know if I ever would be. Had we not had the Elves, I’d have hated this place based solely on having to keep it clean.
    But we had the Elves and they’d prepared Jamie’s dinner for me. Because the Elves wisely didn’t trust my food prep skills. I didn’t always make the smoke alarms go off, but I was close to batting a thousand.
    The boys let the cats and Poofs out, and then I sent them to take the dogs for walkies. The Peregrines had their own areas, courtesy of the Elves, both in our rooms and at the Zoo, where they did their business, so to speak. They were really good at acting unlike every other bird out there and holding it until they were in their Dump Zone. I was grateful for this for a variety of reasons, Jeff’s reactions to the idea of casual bird poop dropped in his home being number one.
    Jamie was midway through both her dinner and the recounting of her exciting day spent with the letters of the alphabet, the colors of the rainbow, and the numbers one through ten when the boys and dogs returned, bringing Jeff along with them.
    “Daddy!” Jamie was still in her highchair. Or rather, she’d been in it. But I blinked and she was out of it and in Jeff’s arms. Her plate and cup hadn’t moved. At least not that I’d seen. Meaning she’d used hyperspeed.
    Heaved a sigh. Had to determine if this was a battle worth fighting while Jeff gave Jamie tons of Daddy Kisses and she started telling him about her day—at hyperspeed.
    When A-Cs talked at their normal speeds, it made the humans in attendance woozy. While I was enhanced, my hearing had yet to catch up and I got nauseous fast. I could tell the boys, cats, and dogs weren’t enjoying it either.
    “Slow down, Jamie-Kat,” Jeff said soothingly. “We need to talk slowly so we don’t make everyone else here feel sick.”
    “Too late,” Len said quietly. He sat down at the breakfast bar. Kyle followed suit. “You know, has anyone considered you guys just talking at what you’d call normal speeds as a viable weapon?”
    Jeff and I looked at each other. “No,” he said slowly. “But it’s an interesting idea.”
    “Bad idea if publicized,” Kyle said. “It makes you scarier than you already are. I mean, I’m not scared of you guys, but that’s because I’m on your side and you know it.”
    Jamie looked at all of us, a worried expression on her little face. “Sorry.”
    I got up, took her from Jeff, and gave her a snuggle. “It’s okay. But that’s why we have to practice being more like Mommy than Daddy sometimes. Okay?”
    She hugged me. “Okay, Mommy. I’ll talk to the kitties and puppies more.”
    “Um, the kitties and puppies don’t like it when you talk fast, either, Jamie-Kat.”
    Jamie shot a look toward me I was becoming familiar with—her “oh, Mommy, you see but you do not
observe
” look. “I meant like you do, Mommy. In their minds.”



CHAPTER 10
    H AD TO SAY this for Len and Kyle—they knew, absolutely, when it was time to make a hasty retreat.
    “We need to dress for dinner,” Len said as he stood quickly.
    “Right,” Kyle agreed. “Call us when you need help getting the animals over to the Pontifex’s