She released with a laugh. “Sorry. Just been a long week.”
“I’ll bet.” I studied her. She was in a simple black velvet dress that looked great on her. But Mom normally didn’t hit me with the bear hugs unless one of us had been in extreme danger prior. “What were you working on?”
She grimaced. “Can’t tell you. But, happily, that’s because it doesn’t involve any of you.”
“Well, that’s good.” I hugged her again, praying the whatever that didn’t involve any of us had nothing to do with the Dingo. “Glad you made it through safely, Mom, whatever it was,” I whispered in her ear.
Got another bear hug, but this one was shorter. “Me too.”
“I do hate to break up the mother and child reunion,” Pierre said. “But more guests are coming, and I believe Angela and Sol have assigned duties.”
“We do,” Dad said. “Lead on, and we’ll get to work.”
Pierre and my parents headed off as the doorbell rang again. It was going to be a long night.
Unsurprisingly, our nearest neighbors were the next to arrive, in part because most of them had walked across or down the street. By now we knew most of them, and Pierre had a laundry list of their quirks, habits, and dislikes, as well as who was cheating on and with whom.
When we’d first moved to D.C. I’d been forced into the Washington Wife class. I’d hated every moment of it, but, shocking one and all, I’d actually picked up some tips and decorum along the way.
Therefore, I did all the greetings to foreign dignitaries properly. Oh sure, not as well as Jeff did them, but I made do. Of course, I didn’t have to give Olga or Adriana any fancy greeting other than a big hug, but I did pull out all the stops and give Olga’s husband, Andrei, a decent curtsey. Hey, he was the Romanian ambassador and his wife and granddaughter kept me informed and, in at least one case, alive, so I figured he deserved a good showing from me.
“Don’t Get Mad, Get Even” from Aerosmith was playing. “Excellent song choice,” Olga said with a wink. “I heartily agree with the sentiment.”
As our local neighbors headed to the main room, “Ray Bands” by B.o.B came on. Jeff winced. I ignored it. I had a nice tune from ELO coming right after this one, and that’d teach him for telling me that I had to have some bands other than Aerosmith playing during this party.
Sure the song was about someone trying to get goodies based on another person’s fame. But that was appropriate for D.C. Besides, it was especially fitting considering who I could see on our near horizon.
Sure enough, the invitees that excited me the least were here—the Cabal of Evil had arrived.
CHAPTER 12
I DIDN’T WANT HALF of these people in my home, but Cliff had overruled any and all objections with a very simple point—these people were important enough that slighting them would cause us far more problems than if we just played along and pretended to like them. He’d been saying this to us for months, and we’d listened and played along and, honestly, liked a few of them now. But not all of them.
Of course, many former members of the Cabal of Evil were dead or in prison, all thanks to us. Our importance in the grand scheme of things was proven by the fact that the rest of the Cabal went on as if their former members’ deaths or imprisonment had merely been unfortunate circumstances we’d had no choice but to help facilitate. Washington, it really had the best people.
It also had pretty much all the same people it had had before Operation Destruction. What Pierre called our New World Order was simple, but somewhat scary as well. This year was supposed to be an election year, for the House and a third of the Senate. However, due to the massive alien invasion, and terrifying proof that there was a lot of life on other planets—much of it paying attention to Earth—the President had requested that elections be suspended.
It was unprecedented and, per many protesting groups, unconstitutional, but the President wasn’t asking for total control. No one was sure Earth wasn’t going to be invaded again tomorrow, and the President wanted to ensure that the U.S. government remained stable. And that meant keeping anyone who was holding elected office in place an extra two years, which was when his