“He’s an alien?” I ask. Then my head tilts. “The cape and your trench coat.” My gaze flits to his face. He looks human. He also looks guilty, and he shoots an apologetic glance at Inara. “I’m so sorry,” he tells her.
My eyes are slits. “Why? And what’s with the long coat fetish?” I slide my gaze to Inara. “What’s he hiding, and what’s he done to you?”
“Wings,” she says. “His species has wings. And I suspect he’s the one who alerted my brothers of my whereabouts. Did you, Jonoh?” she asks. “Please tell me.”
The woman in the headset hisses at her like Inara shouldn’t have asked.
“I did,” he admits in a rush, like Inara’s dragged the answer from him before he was ready. “Sincerely, I apologize.”
Smoke curls from Inara’s nostrils, and I don’t know if he knows she can breathe fire, but I’d be nervous if she were giving me a look like this. “I suspected before that you were an Academy graduate. Are you?”
“I am,” he confirms, swallowing hard enough to make his Adam’s apple fly up and down.
Inara sighs and flicks her tail. “Forgiven, then.”
He bows his head, sagging low enough he’s almost hidden behind the ladies standing guard in front of him. “Thank you.”
“What is going on here?” I ask.
Inara bends down and starts scooping up my gum and cramming it in her bag on the side that doesn’t have a giant tear in it. “Hobs are selectively bred for biddableness. Very selectively. If, say, a well-bred hob were informed that a lone Rakhii female had braved the dangerous skies to visit Earth, and if he was asked to inform her family if he came across her—he would obey.”
“He’d rat you out.”
Every alien in the room cocks their head.
The women protecting the Jonoh guy aren’t thrown by the idiom though, and they pipe up, protesting, “He didn’t have a choice!”
Inara closes her bag, and lets me take it up by the handle, not fighting me this time now that she doesn’t feel she has to smuggle the contents. “I say I understand that, and he’s been forgiven. Allow my mate to ask his questions. He knows nothing of hobs.”
She says this nicely, but she says it with authority, her mane of hair and her straight back and her cute horns and her chest (with her breasts, which have gotten even plumper in the last couple weeks, much to my delight) thrust out. A defensive stance. Her tail snaps, the blades flashing, and Jonoh takes each woman by the arm and tugs them back.
Inara relaxes and adds, “And I appreciate what he did for me.” She inclines her head, her tail soothingly rubbing up and down my shin like it wants to prevent me from being jealous at this impersonal interaction with the male. “Thank you, Jonohkada.”
Then she motions to me. “What of your collection of inedible fish?”
Dropping her bag at the door, I send her a look. “Oh, now they’re ‘inedible?’”
“I’ve apologized for the ones I’ve consumed,” she says penitently.
“You ate his fish?” Christian cries before Stacy muffles him with her hand.
Inara looks at him in some surprise, not expecting judgement from a stranger.
I wave the fish-murder question away. I tell everyone, since everyone is looking at us, (and from the aliens in the room, there’s a sense of weird curiosity), “I can’t take them.” Because if you’re going to transport fish, you need an established setup to move them to. This is especially true of marine fish, when the water quality has to not only be perfect as far as the ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites go (plus the pH and temperature), the salinity has to be calibrated too. You can’t just toss salt in a tank and add the fish; the sodium can take days to dissolve.
Waiting for all that is not feasible in this case, and rather than risk my fish, I don’t intend to transport them at all. I turn to my sisters. “Just find them a good home if none of you guys want them. There’s a reef enthusiast’s forum—”
“ReefCentral?” Christian asks, voice timid, arms around Stacy, not unlike Inara’s brothers are holding their women.
I blink at him. “Yeah. You know it?”
Eyes wide behind the glasses he’s wearing today—which make him look older and more studious—he nods. “I’ve been a member since I started raising corals in junior high.”
“You’re into reefkeeping?” I ask, stunned. I look to Stacy. “How did I not know this?”
She’s crossed her arms over her chest, his fitting under hers at her waist. She’s giving me a glare that might light me on fire. “You never asked.”
I tip my head in apology. “Sorry, Christian. Would have been cool to know.” Swallowing, I gesture to my collection. “Would you be interested in them? If you don’t want to keep them, you could sell—”
“Oh, sir, I’d love to keep them,” he says earnestly. His eyes go to my tanks. “These are beautiful setups.”
I release Inara’s hand and cross to him and Stacy. I extend my arm, positioning my hand in the air over the pair of them. When Christian cautiously puts out his own hand, I drop my keys into his palm. “Move them at your leisure. The heat and electricity are paid here through the end of the month, so you’ve got some time to acclimate them to their new place.”
“Awesome,” he says. “Thanks… Matt.”
I give him a chin jerk and step away. Throat tightening, I look to Stacy. “What’s the most important thing to remember?”
“Never to buy a car with a CVT transmission,” she spits out like she’s been cramming this answer for a really important test.
(Public Service Announcement for CVTs: continuously variable transmissions. Everybody’s starting to use them, but talk to your mechanic before you get a car with one under the hood—because nobody outside of a dealership wants to touch them. Excessive complaints forced a couple companies to extend convoluted warranties, but in the end, repairs will slap you with a bill to the tune of five grand, minimum.)
I point at Stacy. “Damn straight, girl. I’m proud of you.”
Her eyelids turning puffy, her eyes going glossy, she gives me a sad grin.
Behind me, I hear Tahmoh asking Inara, “None of them are for eating?”
Inara responds with soft puzzlement. “He says no, but Tahmoh, they taste delicious—”
I send her a long look that she feels, because she turns to me.
“I only ate the four,” she tells me quickly. “And I couldn’t help myself. I vow to you, Matthew, they came right up to me—”
“Yeah, because they were friendly and didn’t know they would be eaten.” I roll my eyes to the ceiling before pinning her with another look. “Geez, Inara. You should be ashamed of yourself, woman.”
“Did they taste like the fish on our homeworld?” her brother Arokh asks. His triplets are being held by my family so his mate is free to place both of her hands on his cheeks, and she tries somewhat unsuccessfully to turn his face, at least until she kisses him. Then he focuses on her, his eyes heating.
I send Inara a pointed glance. “Clearly, I should have kissed you more.”