Alien in the House

isn’t near enough to hear anything.”
    “Okay, so, what’s going on?”
    She dropped her voice. “We think one of the ‘captains’ from the invasion has infiltrated and is nearby. Not sure who or what his target is, but we figure it’s either the Pontifex, the hybrid children, or you.”



CHAPTER 19
    T HERE WERE A LOT of responses I wanted to give to this statement. All of them related to Colonel Hamlin who was, if all was well, being guarded by Buchanan in the basement of the Embassy.
    Or course, my experience said things rarely went well. “Um, can you hold down the fort here for a couple minutes?”
    Camilla was a rarity among the A-Cs—she could lie believably and well. She’d told me the few A-C liars that existed were found early and trained in the various arts of spying and such. We were all still alive because Jeff’s father, Alfred, had put Camilla in place when Jamie was born, and Camilla had done her triple agent duty perfectly, helping us thwart Operation Confusion.
    Chuckie had put her on assignment to sniff out which A-Cs were traitors, or, in their minds, which A-Cs were Purity of the Race Patriots still supporting either their former leader, Ronald Yates, or the former Diplomatic Corps. So I hadn’t seen Camilla for a good long while.
    However, the reality was that the flip side of Camilla being a world class liar was that she was also world class at spotting liars. Her eyes narrowed. “What are you up to that no one else knows about?”
    “Oh, um, some others know about it. Look, we’re on the same side.” I truly hoped. “Give me about five minutes, or less, and then we can bring each other up to speed.”
    She nodded. “Fine. One of us has to stay here until Representative Reyes feels better anyway.”
    “Right.” I took off, using hyperspeed. I wasn’t enraged, but I was really, really stressed, and that seemed to be working for me in the same way rage did—I was in control of my A-C talents.
    Zipped from the Zoo, over the walkway, through the Embassy, and down into the basement, without hitting into anything. Which was good, because no one was there.
    Resisted the impulse to curse. Buchanan had moved Hamlin before; maybe he’d moved him now. Where to was the question. Dug out my phone and hit Buchanan’s speed dial button.
    It rang and went to voicemail. Hung up and called again. Same thing. Tried this three more times. Either Buchanan was somewhere where he couldn’t hear or see his phone, or something bad had happened. Or both.
    Had a lot of options, but decided freaking out really couldn’t be one of them. Instead, I called Christopher. Thankfully he answered.
    “Hi, Kitty, why are you calling me right now?”
    “Too much to explain. First, a question—is anyone at the party acting sick?”
    “Uh . . . no, not that I can see.”
    “Great. Next, can you find Malcolm Buchanan?”
    “Right now?”
    “It’s important right now.”
    “Excuse me, have to take this.” I could hear Christopher get up and leave his table. “Okay, now that I’ve rudely taken a call and left in the middle of a senator’s discussion of alien rights, let me search for your lost love.”
    “Geez, does Jeff routinely ask you to handle the jealousy for him if he’s busy elsewhere?”
    “No. That’s . . . weird.”
    “I’m gonna hate this, aren’t I?”
    “Yeah, I can’t find him. Should I search the cosmos?” This wasn’t Christopher being snarky. Well, it was, but he could make good on the offer. Since his Surcenthumain boost, Christopher could “see” all the way to the farthest planet in the Alpha Centauri system.
    “No, I have a horrible feeling he’s somewhere in the tunnel system.”
    When we’d first discovered the deep and, it turned out, ancient tunnel system, it had been cloaked at least as well as the Crash Site Dome, and had been impenetrable via A-C talents. At the end of Operation Destruction we’d been able to see and map all the deep underground tunnel system—everyone had thought this was thanks to the Poofs finding and taking the Evil Flying Dino-Birds’ myriad hidden power cubes.
    Everyone had also assumed we’d be able to see and fully function within the tunnels and their connected rooms from then on. But within two weeks the tunnels had gone back to being cloaked, we couldn’t get in and out of the rooms without a power cube, and tunnels and rooms both were once again impenetrable to the talented A-Cs, Jeff and Christopher