Alien in the House

days, good to have.
    His wife, Elaine, was with him. I’d gotten to know her over these past months and actually liked her. Sure, she was a career politician’s wife, but she wasn’t odious, obnoxious, or even overly fake. Mom liked her, too, which was the final seal of approval I required.
    Barely had a chance to say hello to the Armstrongs when the unofficial spokesperson for the Cabal came toward us, smile beaming. On some people this would be pleasant. On Lillian Culver, it was horrific. The woman was attractive, but only at first glance. Longer looks shared that she was all bones and angles, a well-dressed skeleton with skin on. She also possessed the widest mouth this side of a top super villain. I called her Joker Jaws to myself for a reason.
    Culver was all in red, including dramatic red lipstick, which just made her look more like the Joker in drag to me. Managed to control my impulse to jerk away from her outstretched paw—I was pretty sure she didn’t have an electroshock buzzer hidden in her palm, though I’d never have bet money on this.
    However, Culver was a powerful lobbyist for a variety of defense contractors, and therefore a bad person to be overly rude to.
    “Kitty, you look amazing,” Culver said.
    “You, too.” Hey, I was amazed with her resemblance to the Joker.
    Culver’s husband, Abner Schnekedy, self-proclaimed artist, Most Influential Spouse of Someone With Actual Power on Cabal Campus, and odious twit, grinned at me. “Happy Holidays, Kitty.”
    “To you, too.” I was doing great with the short, polite replies, and they were doing great with the not saying anything obnoxious. So far, this part of the event was a success.
    My ability to remain monosyllabic was instantly tested. Always the way. Eugene and Lydia Montgomery were the next from the group to come within speaking distance. Lydia was the junior senator from New York, and Eugene was her husband. She was racing as fast as she could into the power centers of D.C. He was dull and normal and an actuary by profession.
    When we’d first moved here, Eugene had been my only friend in the Washington Wife class. That friendship had been strained to the breaking point when I’d discovered that he’d been using me as a front for his affair with Nathalie Gagnon-Brewer, who I could see standing with her husband, Representative Edmund Brewer, right behind the Montgomerys.
    Nathalie was a French expatriate and a former international model. But unlike Reader, who was a faithful spouse to Gower, Nathalie didn’t enjoy her husband’s preoccupation with being a fast-tracking politician. She’d been happy being married to a successful California vintner; not as happy married to a political animal. Couldn’t blame her, of course.
    Meanwhile Eugene had felt ignored and shoved aside by Lydia. Opposites had attracted and she and Eugene had started a passionate affair, which I’d discovered during Operation Assassination.
    Over the past months Eugene had moved into the Cabal with what appeared to be ease. Oh, sure, he was clearly Low Man on the Cabal Totem Pole, but he was accepted as one of them now, which meant he was dead to me.
    He also kept trying to repair our friendship, but I wasn’t having any of it. In part because I couldn’t trust that he wasn’t trying to renew the relationship in the hopes of yet again using me as his excuse for when he went off to do the deed with Nathalie. Or even worse, for some new, nefarious Cabal plan.
    “Hi, Kitty,” Eugene said. “It’s great to see you.”
    “Yes.” Focused on keeping to the single syllables. I couldn’t get into trouble with those, could I?
    Lydia nodded. “We need to get together and do a couples’ date sometime.”
    My gaze traveled to Nathalie without benefit of my brain’s approval. “Ahh, sure . . .” My only other single syllable options were “No,” or “No way in hell,” neither of which seemed diplomatic in any way.
    Jeff disengaged from Abner and Joker Jaws and rescued me. “We’d love to. We’ll need to coordinate schedules.” Jeff flashed his Happy Diplomat Smile. “Of course, it’s not appropriate to do so tonight.”
    “Of course not,” Lydia said with a bob of her head. “Whenever it’s convenient for
you
, Ambassador.”
    The Brewers stepped up and we were suddenly outnumbered two to one. Brewer and Armstrong had been having a lot of meetings with Jeff over the past months, and Jeff actually seemed to like Brewer. He certainly