Touched by an Alien

but put his bland “it’s all good” face on. Christopher reduced Glare #1 down to what I could call sadly pensive.
    “Um, can you two save this for when we engage Mephistopheles? I mean, all the testosterone’s great, big cave men, girl impressed, and all that, but don’t we have the fugly of fuglies to stop?”
    Christopher closed his eyes. “Sorry. You’re right.” I had to find out what happy pills he’d taken—I wanted to be able to slip them into his drink whenever he was being normal.
    Martini nodded. “Now that things are handled, maybe you should go take care of Claudia and Lorraine,” he suggested.
    Christopher’s eyes opened. “Fine.” He looked at me. “Be careful.” He headed toward the door.
    “I’ll take care of her,” Martini said.
    Christopher looked over his shoulder. “Right. Because you’re so good at that.”
    He stalked out, and I risked a glance at Martini. The “it’s all good” look was nowhere to be found. He looked hurt and angry and a little bit scared. I didn’t like this look. “Jeff? You okay?”
    He managed a smile, which erased the other expressions so that now all he looked was tired. Martini took my hand and helped me up. “Yeah, baby. I’m fine.” He kissed my forehead. “The world’s safe for another few hours. So, let’s go see your parents.”

CHAPTER 35
    WE GOT ABOUT TEN PACES outside of Command Center Central when Reader ran up. “Jeff, I just heard about the clusters. Are we secured?”
    “Yeah.” Martini managed to sound exhausted with only one syllable.
    Reader’s eyes narrowed. “You need to go into isolation.”
    Martini snorted. “Like we have the time.”
    “We can wait on this a day.”
    I cleared my throat. Both men looked at me. This throat clearing thing really worked around here. “No, we can’t wait. I know Mephistopheles is coming, and this clustered stuff was proof.”
    “How do you mean?” Reader asked. “Clustering does happen.”
    “Yeah? Does it happen right after Mephistopheles or another in-control superbeing manifests?”
    Uncomfortable looks between the two of them. Reader sighed. “Usually right before.” Another fun fact no one shared with me. I wondered if they couldn’t stop the fuglies because they didn’t feel the need to trade information or do analysis. Then again, the person they weren’t sharing with was me, so maybe it was just some sort of bizarre initiation rite—figure it all out without help, we teach you the secret handshake sort of thing. “But never as many as I heard. Thirty? Really?” he asked Martini.
    “Over fifty.” Martini sighed. “Kitty’s right. We don’t have the time. I’ll manage. I’ve worked with less energy before.”
    Reader’s expression said this wasn’t a lie so much as scary business as usual. Didn’t know whether to be relieved or freaked out. Went for both, to show my range.
    Martini filled Reader in on what he’d done in the Command Center. It wasn’t at hypertalk level, but after the first few “and then Team 27 was deployed to Sector WV1 while support was called up from AB12,” lines, I stopped listening. It wasn’t making me want to pass out from dizziness, just boredom.
    Impromptu briefing of boredom completed, Martini and I headed for my parents’ room. Again. Stopped by a variety of A-Cs along the way. Put my fingers in my ears and hummed Aerosmith’s “Eat the Rich” to myself so Martini could do the hypertalk and we could keep moving.
    I would have thought all this debriefing would have tired him out more—it certainly was making me feel tired—but by the time we reached the elevator banks, Martini seemed back to reasonably normal. We’d taken so long that I was pretty much over the nausea, too. We got into an elevator and spent the entire trip kissing. I was very disappointed and completely aroused when we got to the right floor.
    He merely held my hand as we left the elevator, which was okay, since I had no idea if we’d come upon my parents suddenly and really didn’t feel like explaining what was going on with me and Martini, since it was getting beyond complicated.
    On the way down the hall Martini pointed out where my room actually was and where his room was in relation to it. I was on the elevator side, a few rooms down, he was on the opposite side of the hall, a few more down. Now that I was really looking around, it was like a combination hospital and hotel. Very austere, no decorations, but lots of rooms, and, once