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“What assassin stops to have a tumble?”
“The overconfident kind,” Chuckie replied.
“She’s an imageer, and that’s rare in A-C women,” Gower said. “Maybe it’s made her unstable.”
My mind kicked. “Chuckie, how do you know she’s from Alpha Centauri?”
“Double hearts, strong, fast, imageer. Seems like a match.”
“Paul? Jeff? The other races in your home world system . . . what were they again?”
“Humanoid, reptilian, mammalian,” Gower answered.
“The warlike planet, what were they?”
“Humanoid, close to us, close to Earth, too. Probably why they were warlike.” Gower sighed. “They can’t get off the planet, Kitty. The PPB net there would keep them in.”
I looked at him. “Maybe their ACE got lonely, Paul. Or angry.”
Gower twitched. “Yes, Kitty, ACE agrees. Angry. Planet was angry, so entity would be angry.”
I thought about it. Earth was considered pretty warlike, but we were out in the middle of nowhere, spacewise, and we all knew it. So ACE took on our planetary loneliness as its own. The warlike planet over in the A-C system, on the other hand, would know there was a lot of company nearby. Company that had taken great pains to keep them from ever leaving said planet.
“ACE, did the Ancients visit all the planets in the A-C system?”
“ACE does not know, Kitty. Paul might.” Gower twitched again, and I restated the question. “We don’t know. Might have.”
I closed my eyes and relived my brief fight with the assassin in the dressing room. “Christopher, I hate to ask you to do this, but I need to test something.”
“Sure, Kitty, what?”
“I want you to pretend to be a female, full-on body image. Then I want you to attack me.”
“Uh, why?”
“Do it,” Martini snapped. It was an order—he was in full Commander Mode.
Christopher shrugged and turned into Martini’s mother. Then he lunged for me. I punched him as hard as possible in the solar plexus and desperately tried not to enjoy it. Failed. The image disappeared instantly as Chuckie caught Christopher. Felt bad now. Wondered if it counted. Figured it didn’t.
“Nice punch.” Chuckie looked at Martini. “You’d really better fix that relationship before the big day.”
“Are you okay?” I asked Christopher.
“Yeah,” he gasped out. “Why?”
“I hit that bitch a lot and a lot harder before she lost the image. So if the most powerful imageer on the planet can’t hold the image when he’s being attacked, that means she’s not an imageer.”
“What is she then?” Martini asked.
“She’s a shapeshifter. And I’m going to go talk to her now and find out what’s really going on.”
“Not alone,” Chuckie said.
“No problem. You, Christopher, Jeff, and Tito. Paul, you stay here.”
“No. She tried to kill Jamie and I’m sure she’ll try to kill you. I’m coming with you. He won’t wake up for a while.” Gower sounded as though he wasn’t going to back down.
“We’ll watch over James,” Lorraine said. “Go ahead.”
“Okay. Call Serene in while you’re waiting for us.”
“Why?” Lorraine was speaking for everyone, I could tell.
“Because we need someone who can see the real people, not what they appear to be. Serene might be the only one who can do that reliably. Get her here under guard.”
“Okay. Brian will probably want to come along.”
“Fine, we can use someone else we can trust who’ll be in life-threatening danger.”
Lorraine managed a laugh and pulled out her phone. She and Claudia went into the room with Reader.
The rest of us headed off. “Where is she?”
“Fifteenth floor,” Christopher said. “Sorry, it’s the only place we have for this kind of lockdown.”
“Not a problem.” I wasn’t going to let her get out, let alone into the Lair.
“She thought she was killing your mate,” Christopher said as we got into the elevator. “Believe me, Reynolds is C.I.A.”
Chuckie smile a very wolfish smile. “She tried to kill someone on my team. We have protocols.”
“My mate?” Reader and I called them mates, sometimes, but I’d never heard an A-C refer to a spouse this way.
Chuckie’s eyes were closed and I could see the conspiracy wheels turning. “Why did you ask about the Ancients?”
“Because they were shapeshifters. I’m pretty sure they’re our angels from Bible stories. We’ve figured they had trouble adapting to our bad air when they came back in recent times, since they died on the A-C home world.” He opened his eyes. “No spacesuits.”
He raised his eyebrow. “You’re kidding.”
“No. Anyway, according to ACE, our A-Cs are the most advanced of those races.”
“But that doesn’t mean the others weren’t around when the Ancients first came by,” Gower said. “But shapeshifting was an Ancient trait. They were trying to save the worlds, not destroy them.”
I thought about Operation Fugly. “Why are we assuming that every one of the Ancients was good? I mean, Mephistopheles is proof the devil was around. Couldn’t some missionary have gone bad?”
“They do all the time,” Tito offered. “I know plenty of priests who didn’t stay all that close to God. I mean, humans are fallible.”
“The Ancients weren’t human,” Gower said.
“That doesn’t mean they weren’t fallible. Or that they didn’t get tired and decide to settle down. Maybe they thought they’d help the warlike folks more by being there full time. There’s a ton of possibilities. But I think we’ve got Ancient blood in the folks from the warlike planet.”
Christopher nodded. “Okay, I’m good with the working hypothesis. Now what?” We got out of the elevator and, happily, went the opposite way from the Lair.
“Why the hell did she kiss me?” It still wasn’t computing. It had given her away, and anyone with half a brain would have known it would. Someone could imitate how Martini looked, but if he didn’t kiss the way he did, I’d know it wasn’t him.
“She thought you looked hot,” Martini offered. “Why does it matter? You didn’t like it, did you?”
We reached the holding cell. She was in there, extremely well strapped down. I could see signs of torture. I didn’t mind and figured I should. I saw her nose had been fixed, but it still had some tape on it. I took Martini’s jacket off and handed it back to him. “No, Jeff, I didn’t like it. You’re a far better kisser.”
“Why are you wearing security tags?” Chuckie asked.
“I sort of stole the clothes.”
“Yeah, but I paid for them,” Martini said. “Here, hang on.” He fiddled with the tags. “Your other clothes and shoes are back in the suite in Vegas, by the way.”
“Thanks, but, Jeff, the tags stain the clothes if you take them off wrong.”
“Only if a human does it.” He held out the tags. They looked opened properly. He’d also taken off the price tags. I took a look and quickly looked down. The scary expensive clothes weren’t stained. “Thanks. And, um, thanks for not minding that I bought this.”
“You look great. Maybe the outfit will last long enough to wear out to di
“Me, either. So, Chuckie, do I want to know what you did to her?”
“Probably not.”
“It was less than I was ready to do to her,” Christopher said. I could tell he was serious. “The C.I.A. just has some techniques that are more quickly effective.”
“Was she afraid of you?”
“Not really. She seemed contemptuous, honestly . . .” Chuckie’s voice trailed off. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
“Never piss off the comics geek-girl. Yeah, I’m thinking exactly that.” I looked up at him. “Kill her if she gets loose, but otherwise, I’m go
CHAPTER 22
THEY LET ME INTO THE CELL. It wasn’t all that large, but it was big enough that I didn’t have to be right on top of her. She had short blonde hair and was very muscular but in an attractive way. I almost laughed, though—she was clearly not from the A-C home world. Not that she was ugly, but she wasn’t a stu