On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3) (2 page)

“So, I'm Kate...” She said, looking up, sounding a little
hesitant, since no one had really paid attention to her here yet, not at this
table. A girl sitting two tables
over
wet her lips and tried to make eye
contact with her.

The boy next to her pushed back in his chair just a little,
making a high pitched screech against the smooth gray floor, as if about to run
away or something. He held his ground after the initial movement, mainly by keeping
hold of the table's edge. He probably didn't want to watch yet
another
girl get sucked in to the black hole that the two across the table probably
meant for his love life. Luckily for her, social conventions said that when
someone talked to you directly, you
had
to answer. At least if you
didn't want to seem like a total jerk. That gave her an edge with this one,
since he didn't really want to seem like that at all.

“Oh, yeah. Nice to meet you. I'm Don. Don Karver. The two
over there are Blaine and Britney. You may have noticed that they have a slight
family resemblance, which they should, being twins and all. Don't worry, I'm
sure that they'll look over this way
any
minute now.” He grinned at her
then, a little knowingly, as if to indicate that he knew why she'd really sat
down with them.

In a way, he was right, of course. She'd come over to make
first contact with them, so that they could work out the boundaries and rules
of the situation. They were here first, so by Alede convention, they could do
anything from dividing up the campus with her, introducing her to specific
people they claimed as their own, or even asking her to leave all together.
That last one would be
really
rude, since two Alede didn't really need
twenty thousand people each to survive. If they couldn't survive happily on a
couple dozen they needed to go back to school for a refresher course. Real
school. Alede school.

She casually started flashing introductory signs to them,
though neither bothered looking over at her at all, almost as if they didn't
see her. This
could
be due to how little lust she cast into the room, keeping
her feelings locked down so tightly that she barely seemed Human, she knew,
much less like the Succubus she actually was. Not to someone reading her from
outside. After a few minutes of small talk with Don, flashing hand signals,
body postures, dropping key phrases into the conversation and trying to catch
their eyes while she spoke, without doing so in a way that might insult the man
she talked to, she finally decided on a more direct route.

Curling the last three fingers of her right hand down, forming
a letter L with her thumb and first finger, she held it up toward them, her
wrist on the table, as she kept chatting with her new friend. This was the very
first Alede hand sign that any of them learned. At her school kids had
practically walked around their first grade year making it constantly. True, it
had been replaced over time with more subtle things, but when in doubt, make
the sign. They'd always been told that, even as they got older. It was what
they did instead of the pledge of allegiance most days. Get a little lecture
that reminded them about proper communication skills. Not really, but still,
they should have noticed she was there at least.

It had made for some amusing situations back in the nineties
she'd heard, when people had started making it on their foreheads. Meaning
loser. In school it had been suggested to them that this may have come about
when a few famous Alede were trying to signal people in a crowd and had
explained it poorly. Coming up with good new stories off the cuff was
not
a strong point of her people, so she could pretty much buy it.

“So, you're into computer programming? That is
so
cool!” She told him, actually meaning it. What she knew about computers ended
just slightly past checking her e-mail and surfing for porn. “Software or
hardware?”

This got him talking about his dream of making it big as a
game designer, an area of computing that, if she didn't have a lot of personal
experience exactly, she'd
heard
a lot about from some of her friends.
Don was five minutes into a discussion of a game he wanted to design, which
actually sounded pretty cool, when she decided to make an even bolder move,
since her wrist had started to ache a little from the unfamiliar hand sign.
When he finally stopped talking again, just for a moment, Kate made a point of
noticing the t-shirt the girl across from her wore.

On each breast a logo of a large red Valentine's heart had
been emblazoned, cupping over nicely, the girl having about the same chest
measurements as Kate. The letter I before the one on the right, Britney's
right, an 'ly' on the outside of the other one. It took her a second to work it
out.

“I heart,
Hartley
?” She spoke the words aloud, not
quite staring at the other girl's chest, but looking at the shirt fairly
openly. It was a soft powder blue color, that offset the bright red hearts
really well, and gave the girl a very soft look at the same time, with her
light colored complexion.

Both the Alede finally looked over, though neither
acknowledged seeing the hand sign. Tapping her hand on the table didn't seem to
help either. The girl's eyes
had
lit up when Hartley had been mentioned.
That being the only thing that had gotten their attention so far, she decided
to keep on in that vein, carefully, since almost all of their kind knew
about
the 'Line Walker', but only a few had met the man himself. That he'd be showing
up in her dorm room three times a week would probably impress them, but
wouldn't keep who
she
actually was a secret very well.

Britney nodded and brushed the right heart with her hand,
stroking her own chest pretty blatantly, not that anyone around her seemed to
mind
.
Looking hard at Kaitlyn she smiled, as if just realizing that someone potentially
tasty had sat down with them.
Finally
, Kate thought. Turning on the
charm suddenly, a wave of potent sexual power flowed across the table at her.
It didn't affect her, since learning to ignore such things had been the second
lesson that Zack had taught her when they first met. A time that was a little
over a single year
and
nearly forty years before, depending on what you
counted as time passing. In the void they'd been together a lot, in the real
world less time had passed.

“Yep! I heart Hartley! He's... Uh, a fictional character. You
probably haven't heard of him...” The gorgeous blond girl made a point of
running her right hand over her left breast, causing the nipple to stiffen
visibly through the flimsy cotton of the shirt. Her brother rolled his eyes and
snorted a little at the antics he witnessed.

“Hartley! The whole thing is ridiculous. On-line fan fiction,
not even an actual novel or anything. It's just some fantasy thing my sister
does, pay no attention to it. Or her...” He made eye contact well, picking out
a highly emotive pattern. One that practically screamed that he was interested
in her, locking eyes for four seconds, looking away, down and to the right,
then looking back for six second before breaking off again. It was familiar to
her, since they
all
learned it in second grade and were required to
practice it daily from that point on. He probably hadn't even realized he'd
done it, she knew, the pattern being so well ingrained in them all.

She giggled a little and pretended to be a Hartley fan as
well.

“Oh, I
love
Hartley!” She laughed when she said it,
since it was literally true. The two across the table looked at each other,
clearly thinking that this new girl would say just about anything to get closer
to them, which probably happened several times a day in their world. It
happened in
Kate's
and she worked to downplay her sexual appeal, so it
must be a
lot
worse for them, she knew.

Nodding at her, Britney decided to call her bluff apparently,
since she moved in to some rather confrontational questions about what was
obviously one of her favorite topics.

“You like Hartley too? That's great! Other than Hartley, of
course, who's your favorite character?” The other girl leaned forward, a
slightly evil look in her eye. Or at least, Kaitlyn figured it was supposed to
be an evil look, on Britney it managed to look incredibly cute. Adorable even.

“Oh, you got me there... So many wonderful characters to
choose from. Who's your favorite?” After she said it, she realized how that
answer must sound. She wasn't trying to dodge the question itself really, but
since the “characters” she'd mentioned were real life people that she knew and
liked, picking between them for a favorite would actually be really hard.

The other girl gave her a sly look and listed off a couple of
names.

“Well... I think Clara's my favorite, you know, the werewolf
girl that runs the pretzel stand? Though I also like Hartley's boss, Lars, the
homosexual guy that runs the bar they work at?” She grinned, probably thinking
that she'd been fairly clever. Actually, Kate realized, the girl
had
been pretty swift. If Kate had actually been a poser, just looking for a
subject to bond over, she could agree with one of those choices confirming that
she didn't really know who Hartley was and at the same time allowing Britney to
let the whole thing go, not burning any bridges with her so that she could
still get her into bed later. Not a bad plan for being thought up on the fly.

Kate did know the correct names however, so she grinned at
the other girl and stuck out her tongue.

“Hah! You thought I wouldn't catch that? It's Claire, not
Clara, and she manages the frozen yogurt place, across from the candle shop
where Lisa, the homosexual
woman
, is the manager. But, you know, really,
Lisa's actually bi, not gay. I know that she
dates
women mainly, but she
and Hartley go at it on their lunch break about four times a week...”

Both the Alede across from her gaped for a bit, open mouthed.
It was Don that broke the silence then, pushing his tray back and leaning
forward to stare at the people across from him.

“I thought that you told me that
Brit
had made up this
Hartley character, Blaine...” He raised his eyebrows and stared first at one of
them, then the other, finally swinging around to look at her, his eyes focusing
on hers in an almost comical fashion, a single finger pointing up to the sky.

“This
proves
that you're both aliens! I knew it. Kate
here must be your alien advisor, come to punish you both for your wanton ways
and blatant fan-fic rip offs!” He managed to hold his face still for several
seconds before breaking out in a huge grin, one that made him look awfully
charming, Kate saw. He should do it more often she thought as he held up a
single French fry, apparently as evidence of some kind, though how the potato
product worked in she couldn't tell, only to have it fold over limply as he
stared at it.

“Or something like that...” He finished weakly, giving the
fry a forlorn look, then grinned again as he took a bite.

Kaitlyn smiled back at him and decided to provide a
reasonable back story for them all, since the first one to do so would set what
the story would be, possibly for the rest of the year, and these kids, though
nice enough seeming, would probably get them all into something too convoluted
for her taste if she let them pick.

“Or, just as another possibility, other than the alien
hypothesis, which really is quite a good one Don... may I put forth the
chance
that these two are
actually
related to me and that we met at a family reunion
a few years ago? I get why they don't remember
me
, but they're both
pretty memorable. The Alede family reunion? I'm cousin Kate, from Washington?
Kaitlyn Swanson?” She whipped off her glasses dramatically, shaking her hair
around in a sensuous wave, as if that should help them remember her or
something. If they went to a normal school, they'd know that they should go
along with her story. If they didn't, she'd have to start screaming at them and
throwing salad, because it was
such
a basic point that anyone should be
able to catch on, even if they were home schooled or something, which she'd
heard of, but didn't believe was real. Alede kids needed too many other people
around for one parent to handle alone all the time past a certain age.

They both looked shocked at first, then the boy, Blaine,
jumped up and ran around the table, grabbing her up in a hug, only to be joined
a few seconds later by Britney.

“Cousin Kate! I totally didn't recognize you, oh, man, it's
so good to see you!” Blaine told her as he hugged her again. Britney came in
for seconds too, wrapping her up warmly, even though they weren't actually
directly related. This kept going for several minutes, though they were clever
enough to skip the normal kissing and petting that Alede did when they first
met, since that ship had kind of sailed. If they did that now it would just
look wrong to the Humans watching. When they were done with her they both
pulled back, smiling. As if joking, Don threw his arms out wide for a hug too
and seemed shocked when she moved in and hugged him.

“What?” She asked him, a gleam in her eye. “I've spent nearly
as much time with
you
as I have them now. At least as far as the last
few years have gone, since
they
didn't even look up for the first ten
minutes we sat here talking... So of course you get a hug too, we're old
friends and all, relatively speaking.”

Don blushed a bright red, smiling, which Britney and Kate
seemed to think cute, but got a low murmur from Blaine about leaving the poor
guy alone. Neither of the women reacted overtly to this, though Kate backed
away from the Human, just in case the Incubus was claiming some kind of link to
him. They
were
roommates after all, and even if they didn't have sex,
that didn't mean Blaine wouldn't try to protect his friend from perceived harm
or threat, right? She'd gotten that from Don, while he'd described the game
idea he had.