On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3) (15 page)

“I
tried
to get them to bring their grown up selves,
but the excitement proved, once again, to be too much. Like kids on Christmas
morning. I'm afraid we're in for antics.” He looked at each visiting woman in
turn, but froze when he saw Merri. After a few moments he recovered, realizing
that he'd been staring at her.

“
Damn
. Not even in the room for three seconds, and the
guys have both figured out who the pretty ones are, already.” Libby shook her
head. “Well, at least he looked at
me
first, instead of you Merri. Ugly
as I am, he may not have even seen me the other way.” It was joking, and not
that down on herself, but she was staring from one guy to the other, as if
waiting to see if anyone would notice her for longer than a glance.

Don's eyes went big as he turned his attention back to Libby,
staring without blinking for a good fifteen seconds.

“That's not it at
all
, and you claiming to be ugly is
like me claiming to be
Sasquatch
. Funny, clever maybe, but also totally
untrue. Maybe most people miss your looks at first, because you're
exotic
,
instead of perfectly average, but that doesn't make you less good looking than
these others, just harder to find. For morons, I mean.” Turning to Valerie and
Merri he added, “You two are great looking, no doubt,” He swiveled his
attention back to the coppery red head that looked like she had a buzz cut that
had grown out. “But... really, they're not
better
looking than you are,
just different.”

He sat down then, and blushed a deep scarlet red, realizing
he'd probably said way too much, and to someone he hardly knew. Kate noticed
that
Libby
smiled, however. A huge grin crossed her face, and she seemed
to actually relax. For all that she joked about her looks and came straight out
with the fact that she didn't measure up in that department, Kate knew it
bugged her. Don probably couldn't have come up with something better to say to
her if he'd had a speech writing team to work on it.

Valerie moved to the other Alede first, and gave each a hug
and a kiss. Since no one moved to put an arm around Don or showed any of the
other “ownership” signals, she did the same with him, explaining that it was a
traditional greeting where she came from. She made a point of standing a little
closer to Don, then she started licking her lips and looking at him saucily
through her lashes, trying to pretend to be coy Kate noticed. Natural enough,
since he was the only Human in the room. It would be a matter of pride to her,
scoring with Don or even “borrowing” him from the others if she could. The
Alede equivalent of one-up-manship. The blonde, who really did look a lot like
a slightly older version of Britney, smiled at him when she caught his eye.

Merri followed suit with her own version of traditional
greetings, which involved bowing over Britney's hands, then quietly standing
behind Kate. Her friend
and
the friend of the new men, bowing and
holding it, while she introduced the tiny woman to them. Don bowed back to her
when he was introduced, getting a smile from her, though Blaine had just stood,
not knowing what to do.

Libby came forward then, grinning playfully, and sank to her
knees directly in front of Don.

“Well, if it's
traditional
greetings all around...”
She started working on his belt, as if to remove it. After a few seconds
everyone started laughing, and after a few more Val moved in and told Don he'd
best move back a few steps.

“Libby's a dear, but she'd
totally
blow you in front
of a group of people, just to get a laugh.”

Don put a hand up suddenly, causing Val to stop for a second.

“Wait... I need to think this through... On the one hand,
public ridicule and possibly getting kicked out of the room forever. Embarrassing
Kate's friends and having my own think I'm a freak, on the other, blowjob from
a hot chick... Ooh, this is hard.” Libby looked up at him and murmured,
“Uhn-hmm!” Then she went back to work on his belt, smiling.

Blaine finally tackled Don, carrying him away, making
everyone laugh.

“Not to mess with you here Don, but we really,
really
need to impress Merri...” Clapping Don on the shoulder he put out a hand to
Libby, who playfully pretended to pull him over to take Don's place. Everyone
laughed again.

 They went on a tour of the campus after that, spending a lot
of time looking at the buildings, some of which actually warranted it, and at
their class rooms which really didn't. Then, as darkness approached, they went
to the dining hall for dinner. As Kaitlyn had predicted, Merri looked
horrified
by the food. Slightly green actually, a color that Kate didn't know the other
woman could turn. She sniffed when she saw the trays, then got a look on her
face like she felt sorry she'd inhaled through her nose. Trying to be a trooper,
she selected a few items, hoping that they'd taste better than they looked and
that the lack of presentation didn't mean a total disregard for quality. From
her face, Kate saw, that wasn't what she came to at all after examining the
food for a few minutes. Her face becoming first shocked, then horrified. Then
more than a bit angry.

“If I tried to serve this to the dogs back home, I'd have
been beaten and cast out!” She told them this in a hushed voice. “I'm not even
sure what half of this
is,
and I work with food every day. I mean, I
recognize the noodles in this as a pasta, if horribly over cooked, but... this
sauce... Is this... supposed to be like Italian food? Mae would have someone's
tongue ripped out for making this, since they apparently aren't using it to
taste
the food anyway.” She glared at the tray, refusing to eat anymore.

Val picked at hers and seconded the motion.

“I know that Merri tends to be a bit of a food snob, but this
really
isn't
very good. I mean, the food at my old university was
horrible
,
but it at least had fairly even heat in foods that were supposed to be hot.”
She picked at her plate though and tried the occasional bite.

Libby chowed down. “I've had worse. In training we had to
make do on nothing but insects and carrion for a week once. After that,
anything not actively rotting seems fairly reasonable. I would have killed for
food this good back then.”

Blaine stared at her for a moment.

"Were you in the military? Or... Are you still? You have
the haircut for it. Also you seem
really
fit."

 Kate could see his reasoning, her hair really was short,
especially for a woman, no more than two or three inches of red on top, shorter
on the sides. Kate knew that her hair just grew that way, it being one of the
distinctive Bat traits in their Human form. Her body had a lean and hard look
to it, which when you knew that the woman turned into a bat made sense, but
otherwise spoke of either monstrously hard training or an eating disorder.
Possibly both. Since the woman tucked into the food fairly well, it seemed a
likely question to ask. That, or how bad her bulimia was.

“Me? Well, kind of. Most Weres are given military training in
our late teens. I served for a couple of years before I started embassy duty,
then, you know, things happened... But the training I got really helped out
later in life. I recommend the military as an experience to anyone. Not a
happy
experience necessarily, but something worth doing.” She ate for a while,
totally oblivious to the fact that she'd just declared herself a Were in front
of the whole room. When she looked up she saw everyone staring at her, except
Don. Kate could hear her mutter “oh, crap” softly under her breath.

Everyone scrambled for some way to cover this, but Don spoke
first. “Oh, a Were? Like in Enigma Seven? I always play a fighter myself, well
sometimes
a thief. I've tried playing Weres though, it doesn't work too well with the
game mechanics.” He told them then, seamlessly, about the game he planned to
build, if he could master the skills.

Merri looked at him with awe. As if he were discussing the
idea of creating a new world, all by himself.

“Really? You plan to design your own game world? It's like
being a Wizard, only useful! Here I thought that Enigma Eight sounded
interesting, but your world sounds so much better. When do you think you can
have it finished by?” She looked only a little down fallen when he mentioned it
would be a few years at least. Faster if he could find funding for the project.

Merri clapped her hands excitedly and told him she'd work on
that portion of things for him,
if
he wanted.

“That... sounds really cool! I'll have to push myself then,
to make sure I'm ready just in case. Even if nothing happens with your effort,
well... it won't hurt me to try a little harder. I'm here to learn this stuff
anyway. For now, how about we go somewhere else that has something approaching
food that everyone can eat? I think I saw some
real
food back in Kate's
room...”

Merri came around the table, and kissed him on the cheek.

“If you weren't going to be busy with Libby later, I'd
entertain the idea of taking you for myself.”

Val looked amused and winked at the two blonds. “
I
wasn't aware that you'd already called him Libby...” The incredibly hot blonde
said, projecting more than a little bit of lust behind it, directly at the
Human, Kate noticed. Kind of mean of her actually, since Don had shown
real
interest in Libby, just based on her own appeal. Not a common thing for someone
to pick up on as fast as he did. Most people had to kind of grow into it, much
to the bat woman's displeasure. Plus, he'd done it in a room full of Alede.
That was... Nearly impossible to pull off.

Libby just nodded, taking a sip of some kind of fruit punch
that probably didn't contain fruit at all, but had a lot of red dye to help
make up for it. It left her tongue a bright pink color with an even brighter
stain down the middle of it, which she showed everyone when she stuck her
tongue out at Val.

“Yep! Called him
last night
. You weren't there. In the
kitchen with Zack. Merri
was
there, she can tell you.” The girl
pretended to throw her hair over her shoulder with a flipping motion of one
hand, something Val did habitually when proving a point. The effect got a
laugh, what she was going for, even getting one from Merri, who seldom laughed
at jokes that someone else might take offense at.

“Indeed,” Merri spoke softly, but with a gleam in her eyes,
looking dead at Val. “Zack even recommended the boy to her himself. Our husband
seems to think he has promise, you know. I can see it myself, now that we've
met.” The small woman wet her lips and made coy eye contact with Don, then
blushed and looked away, covering her mouth with a tiny hand.

Britney looked at them all, baffled. She took in each of them
in turn, sizing them up and not understanding the situation at all. Finally
Blaine, a bit baffled himself, asked who Zack was.

Don looked at him, and tossed his hands in the air.

“Seriously? You've been hanging around with Kate for how long
and you don't know that Zack's her adopted father? She's only mentioned it
like, a half dozen times... Seriously folks... I think the school food's
getting to our brains, let's get out of here.”

Kate waved at Jelly who hadn't joined them, but had obviously
been listening to the whole discussion. The girl, who wore a teal green jacket
with blue stripes waved back, and covertly blew her a kiss. Both Libby and Don
saw the move and as one blew kisses back to her, their movements looked almost
choreographed, big and showy. The girl didn't blush, but looked like she wanted
to, really badly.

Kate linked arms with Merri and Val and led the way out.
Libby, seeing this, bowed in a comical fashion and linked arms with Don,
leaving the blond twins in the back. If they felt like they were out of place,
they hid it well, linking their own arms with great dignity. When everyone got
outside, they both remembered that they had appointments to keep, and since
they still had to keep themselves alive the old fashioned way, Kate understood.
So did the others, though they all acted sad to see them go.

As they did, Merri made a sound that didn't fit her normally
high pitched voice.

"I'll not see these children starve. Being forced to
live off the pig swill that this institution claims as nourishing food. We need
to repair home immediately, so that I can make enough to sustain you all, until
at least the middle of next week. Then I'll send more to you. I swear it."
There was the sound of a sacred oath to what she said. Also, she looked
incredibly determined. It was cute, but Kate knew it wasn't a thing to ignore.
Not if they didn't want to hurt Merri's feelings.

Val made a call to Zack, who showed up for them about two
minutes later, and passed everyone through quickly, including Don, who hadn't
expected it. He boggled for a few seconds, then caught himself and played the whole
thing off like it was perfectly normal in his life.

"What, a two thousand mile trip in less than a second?
Well, not
this
week. Ho-hum." Kate filled the words in for him,
based on his expression. It was kind of impressive. She'd had a bigger reaction
the first time she'd ever gone anywhere with Zack. Of course they'd been
carrying a dead body at the time, so that may have skewed her perception just a
bit. Zack left without saying more than that he'd be back in a few hours if he
could. With the time change it had gone from six-thirty to four thirty in an
instant. That meant he still needed to be at work.

Zack patted the boy on the back, and laughed before he left
from the kitchen where they'd all moved so that Merri could get started working.
The room was impressive. Filled with silver industrial cooking appliances and a
bigger working space than most major restaurants. The floor was a polished hard
wood that Kate thought might be teak. It never dented, no matter what hit it, pots,
pans or part of the wall.