Alien Tango

way toward making the rest of us go, ‘Oh, young girls get fanciful ideas’ and push for a really light sentence. For you and Helen.”
    “She’s like my mother.” Serene was crying again. “I can’t believe I got her into so much trouble.”
    “Help me, and I’ll help you get her out of it. Deal?”
    She was quiet again, but when she spoke she sounded both sane and determined. “Deal.”
    Just in time—I was dressed, and Serene was now acting as my personal spy, as Martini came back with Christopher in tow. Christopher had also chosen to put on only pants. This was unfair to me, in a lot of ways.
    Looking at both of them standing there half-naked, with rumpled bed hair, was enough to make me start drooling. Martini was big, broad, and ripped, with a perfect six-pack, awesome pecs and biceps, and just generally looked like the hard-body poster boy. Christopher was lean and wiry, muscular but a little less ripped, smooth-chested, but carrying the family rock hard abs. Not an ounce of fat on either one of them. Take the pants off and pose them, they’d make awesome Greco-Roman statues. My only saving grace was that they weren’t wet or oiled.
    The last thing I wanted Martini to catch me doing, ever, was lusting after Christopher. “So, Serene!” I said brightly, as I turned to stare intently at my phone. “Jeff’s back and Christopher’s here, too. Tell us about your talent. How do you do what you do?”
    Martini came around behind me, slipped his arm around my waist, lifted and carried me to the bed. He sat down at the edge and put me on his lap. Christopher pulled up a chair. We were all staring at the phone, nestled near a pillow.
    “I need to see someone,” Serene said haltingly. “In person or a picture.”
    “Right,” I said, hoping I sounded encouraging. She was either scared again or so busy staring at Christopher and Martini in her mind’s eye that she couldn’t talk. Me, I voted for option B. I was staring at my phone as though it were the most fascinating thing in the world. “Go on.”
    “If I concentrate, I can see them, in my mind. What they’re doing and where they are, I mean.”
    “Fifty-mile range,” Martini added.
    Christopher whistled. “Damn. Go on, Serene. Is that how you knew Kitty was coming?”
    “Not so much. I mean, I didn’t know she was coming, but when your plane was landing, I saw her.”
    “Why?” This seemed odd to me.
    “Brian’s been talking about your reunion. I . . . I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”
    I managed not to say, “No kidding,” but it took effort. “Okay, so we came within range and, what? My face appeared?”
    “Yes. I couldn’t see who you were with at first. But I’ve seen pictures of Alfred’s son and nephew.”
    “You can call us Jeff and Christopher,” Martini said dryly.
    “Where have you seen their pictures?”
    “In Alfred’s office. He has a book with pictures of them from when they were babies up until now.”
    I looked over my shoulder. Martini looked stunned. Risked a glance to my left. Christopher was the same. “Who else could you see with us?”
    “Their cousin and his boyfriend. Alfred has some pictures of them, too.”
    “Did he show them to you?”
    “Oh, yes, I didn’t sneak in to look or anything. But I’m filling in as his admin, and he showed them to me. He has pictures of all his family, but he has the most of, um, Jeff and Christopher.” She said their names like she was both afraid and a little thrilled. Maybe I was jaded—I didn’t find either one of them imposing, but then again, I didn’t find the Sovereign Pontifex imposing, either.
    “Why?” I figured one of us should ask.
    She was quiet for a few moments. “Because he says he almost never sees them, so he has his pictures to look at. He looks at them every day. Even more than the ones of his grandchildren, and he looks at their pictures a lot.”
    I didn’t look at either one of them. “Okay, so you could identify Jeff, Christopher, Paul, and James. Could you see anyone else with us?” I was driving the conversation instead of Christopher, but I had to figure he and Martini were still dealing with the news that Alfred, at the least, loved and missed them far more than he’d ever told them.
    “No. I can only see the person I’ve seen before. I can’t hear, only see. So I could tell by the way you were all moving and looking that there were other people with you, but I couldn’t see them.”
    “Now, this will be an