Alien in the House

to host the party.
    “Are you alright to have a dessert like this?” Nathalie asked. “It
is
made with alcohol.” She sounded worried, not nasty.
    “It only has alcohol in it if it’s flaming.” I knew this because the only part of the meal I’d been interested in was the dessert course, and Pierre had already reassured me that we weren’t going to be setting the Baked Alaska on fire, and therefore all the A-Cs could eat it in safety.
    Everyone dug in and the conversation slowed a bit and turned toward who’d been on a cruise and where they’d gone. Shocking no one, everyone had hit a cruise somewhere along the way, so there were a lot of sea experiences to cover. Coffee and tea were served, or another round of sparkling water or fruit drinks, depending on preference.
    Armstrong was regaling most of the table with a rather hilarious story about their first cruise ever, when he and Elaine were in a cabin so small he couldn’t stand up straight, when Reyes put his hand on his stomach. “Excuse me a minute,” he said quietly to me. “Think I need to go to the powder room.”
    “Are you okay?” He looked a little pale. Tried not to worry that something in the food had made one of our most important guests sick. Failed.
    “I don’t think I should have had another fruit drink with the Baked Alaska.” He grimaced. “That’ll teach me not to like hot drinks with dessert. I’ll be right back. One floor down, right?”
    “Right.” Tried not to contemplate how Reyes getting sick at this party would get spun by everyone, Marcia Kramer in particular. Failed again.
    “I’ll go down with you,” Camilla said. She shot me a look.
    “I’ll join you both. Group trip.” Reyes didn’t argue and no one else was really paying attention. The three of us got up quietly. “Bathroom break,” I said softly to Brewer when he turned to give me a questioning look. He nodded and turned his attention back to the Armstrongs.
    The three of us either had to work our way through the room in order to get to the elevators or we could take the stairs on this side of the room, which meant we only had to walk past one table. Offered Reyes the choice. “Stairs,” he said firmly.
    We moved quickly past Reader’s table and headed downstairs. Reyes was sweating, was definitely pale, and, when my hand accidentally brushed his, felt clammy. This was so not good. The heck with the party—Reyes was clearly not doing well. Didn’t know what to do for food poisoning, but Camilla was trained in medicine, and Tito, Nurse Carter, Lorraine, and Claudia were only a floor away.
    “Santiago, did something in the meal disagree with you?”
    “Maybe. Not sure. Maybe I’m coming down with the flu, which would be the worst timing in the world.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Kitty, I don’t want to wreck your party.”
    “That’s okay, I just don’t want you to feel bad or get sick. Are you allergic to anything you might have eaten?” I smelled garlic on his breath and tried to remember which of the courses had had a lot of garlic in it.
    “No, no allergies to anything.” He swallowed hard. “I really think it’s either the flu or the combination of the fruit drink and the dessert, that’s all.”
    “I’d say botulism,” Camilla said. “But we had nothing that would have been suspect and, as far as I saw, no one else seemed to be in distress.”
    We reached the second floor and got Reyes into the stall closest to the stairs, which didn’t have the gate in it. We were the only ones racing someone to the bathroom, so Camilla’s impression that food poisoning wasn’t to blame seemed potentially correct.
    The individual stalls were unisex and each one was large and nicely appointed. In addition to the usual amenities, Pierre had installed small couches in each one, in case someone wanted to lie down. He insisted these were necessary. I’d let him win that one, because I was much more excited about the fact that we had stacks of real hand towels, not paper ones, in the bathrooms. Hey, it’s the little things you treasure.
    The stalls were also really soundproof, which everyone considered a good feature.
    All this was great for Reyes, but made getting to talk to Camilla alone in the bathroom awkward. “Do we talk out here or do we share a stall?”
    She rolled her eyes. “I don’t actually need to go. If you can hold it, we can sit on a couch.” She looked around. “Or we can just stand here. The kitchen staff