Three Immortals Walk Into A Bar...

Clyde

I cannot convince him to come with me to meet up with Levant. Honestly, it would be so funny. I found all his growling and glowering to be kind of cute. I still would never agree to bring him home, and I am glad he is only passing through Atlanta, but I wouldn’t mind seeing him again. If nothing else, I almost feel like I should apologize for barging in during his dreams when I had promised that he’d be left alone. I was forced to do it by circumstances beyond my control, but still I know how unpleasant that must have been for him.

“Oh, good grief, Gregor, now you’ve gotten me feeling kind of sorry for him!” I say, and he laughs, over on his seat several feet away from me. “Fine, fine, we’ll leave him alone.”

“Good,” he smiles. “Whose turn is it?”

“Ummm, I think we were talking about family….”

But he interrupts me, suddenly pressing his hands to his face and moaning “No, no, no,” in a tone of both deep amusement and regret.

“What?”

He drops his head into his hands, elbows on knees, and starts laughing helplessly. “I am going to have to change my flight again,” he says, barely able to catch his breath enough to speak.

“Oh no! Are there more cancellations?” I look out the window at the weather, which appears perfectly clear.

Leaning back in his seat, he looks up at the ceiling, and shakes his head. “No, not that. Wolk just told me that Levant managed to get himself a seat.” I stare at him and lift my hands in bemusement. He continues, “On the same flight as me.”

“Ha!” That’s it, I bust out laughing again, and he joins me, and it is several solid minutes of hysteria.

He gasps out, “Will the hijinks of this trip never end?”

I push my hair back from my forehead, catch my breath, and say, “Oh come on, Levant can endure being on the same plane as you. He rode in a car with you, remember, we were both able to get by as long as you stayed in the back. It wasn’t comfortable but it also wasn’t debilitating.”

He waves his hands, laughing all the harder. “He has booked an adjoining seat in first class!”

Oh no! I haven’t laughed this hard in decades. My sides are actually aching before we both start calming down again.

We finally get control over ourselves, and I follow him back down a few gates, where he finds an obliging gate agent to try to book another flight. I linger at the back of the gate, and watch for twenty minutes or so while the agent very patiently checks their computer, shaking their head. This doesn’t look good.

When Gregor returns, he says, “Nothing doing. There isn’t another seat to be had to New York for another two days. Every single flight is booked solid. I’m thinking of giving up and renting a car and taking a road trip.”

“Do you really have to abandon your flight just to accommodate that grumpy vampire?” I ask him. “And driving all the way to New York is going to take you days.”

He shrugs. “I don’t need sleep. I can do it in fourteen or fifteen hours, I think.”

“What about just switching seats with somebody at the back of the plane?” I ask. “Surely enduring a coach seat would be better than driving for fifteen hours?”

He shakes his head. “I still don’t want Levant to be annoyed by seeing me on the same plane. Poor guy!”

“Listen, dude, this self-sacrifice is entirely unnecessary. Let him suck it up. You don’t have to make him talk to you.”

He considers. “I admit that I don’t really feel like taking a road trip right now. I don’t know, though. Do you honestly think it would be safe for him to be stuck on an airplane with me?”

I grin. “Come on, let’s go back down to the deserted gate. We can do an experiment, see how far away you have to be for me not to feel you at all. Then you can just make sure to switch to a seat at least that far away.”

He huffs out a laugh. “I’ll consider it.”

I get out my phone while we walk back to the end of the terminal. “Let me do some research and figure out what type of plane you’ll be on, see how much distance we can get between you and first class.”

It takes a few minutes, but eventually I have gotten a measurement of the passenger cabin for his flight, and I pace off that distance in the seating area of the gate, where we are again alone.

I point to a seat. “Here, sit down in that chair.” I move away before he complies. I walk a few paces away, so as to be the same distance away from him as first class is from the very last seat on the plane.

He watches avidly, and also amused, as I evaluate, sending some ribbons of darkness into the air around me. “Okay, I don’t think I can feel you from here,” I say. “So I am sure that Levant would not be bothered by your presence if you can be this far away.”

He snorts. “Oh, he’ll be bothered by my presence. He can’t stand me!”

“Bothered physically,” I clarify. “His emotional state is his own problem.”

He shakes his head and chuckles.

“Okay, stay right where you are,” I say, and take one step forward. I am glad to be having the opportunity to do this. In the Adabelle hotel room we had less area to work with, so this experiment seems more comprehensive. Totally aside from figuring out whether it would be safe for Levant to have Gregor on a flight with him, I’m glad to be furthering my knowledge.

I take several steps forward, before I definitely can feel the impact of his presence, a slight sense of weakness, of interference with my shadows.

“Well,” I say, “I think you can be sitting no closer than this. There should be room at the back of the plane, some seat must be available in the last several rows.”

“But what about if we are both touching the same area?” he asks. “Remember when I touched Fernando?”

“Oh, right. Hm. Okay, move down to the end of the row there.” There are about a dozen seats linked up together, all attached. I wait for him to take the last chair, and I stand at the other end of the row. I taste the air with my shadows.

“I can feel you here, but just barely. It isn’t too bad.” I take a deep breath, and sit down in the seat on the farthest end away from Gregor. “Oh, damn.” He looks at me, worried. “Yeah, that’s a little worse.”

He shakes his head. “Road trip it is.”

“No wait! Come on, this is only half the distance that is available in the passenger cabin. Let’s find another way to check.”

I look around and decide that the railing along the windows should be long enough. “Go stand there at the window, and hold the hand rail.”

At this point I think he is just indulging me, but he does it. I go to where the length of the plane would be represented, stand still for a moment testing the air, and announce, “All right, I can’t feel you here.”

I place my hand on the rail, the same rail that he is touching, check my shadows, then grin. “Good news! I still can’t feel you. Just stay there, don’t take your hand off.”

Walking forward very, very slowly, with my hand on the rail, I get a few feet closer to him, then say, “Okay, there. I can feel you here.”

“What about just standing on the same floor?” he asks.

“I’ve been monitoring that too, and I don’t think it makes as much difference as when you are you touching something.”

Smiling wryly at me, he says, “All right then, Professor Shadow, what is your experiment’s conclusion? Can a Seer and a vampire share the same flight?”

“Professor Shadow eh?” I laugh. I can’t wait to tell Ada about that one. Maybe I can get her to call me that in bed sometime! “I think so. If he is up in first class, and you get a seat in the back couple of rows, he won’t be able to sense your presence, his shadows should be intact, and he’ll survive with nothing more than a sore throat.”

“Sore throat?” he asks, amused.

“From all the growling, of course.”

He laughs and shakes his head. He pulls his phone out of his pocket as he returns to his seat. “Well, a couple of hours until boarding.” He pauses for a moment, probably listening to his Guardian. “Wolk says that Levant is at the gate, sitting in the back, in the shadows of course, and intends to board the flight at the first possible moment, and immediately go to sleep.”

I let him mull it over. After sitting silently for a few minutes, he says musingly, “You know, if he gets on first, and I board last and sit at the back, he could be asleep, and not even notice me get on the plane. He reaaallllly seems to like his sleep, and that is how he intends to spend the entire time on the airplane. I’d have to walk past him, though. Do you think he’d feel that?”

I shrug. “Who knows? It might just be part of his dream. Just be careful not to brush him as you pass by in the aisle, that’d wake him up. Don’t touch the seat he’s in.” I still think it would be funny to try to bother Levant some more, but Gregor wants to do this so I’ll support him, rather than see him forced to drive all the way to New York.

He nods. “I think I’m going to try it. Wolk will tell me if he is asleep before I board, so I could sneak past.” He grins up at me, as I remain standing by the window.

“What could possibly go wrong?” I ask, laughing.

He joins me, chuckling again. I have laughed more with this man than I have with anybody else in a century. “Nothing will go wrong,” he says. “Wolk will monitor him very carefully, and warn me off if there’s a problem. I’ll give up and rent a car if I have to, but I’m starting to think this can work, I’ll fly to New York, and Levant will never know.”

I know that we still have over an hour to kill, and I am ready to get back to our question and answer game, but Gregor has a new idea. “So,” he asks, looking sideways at me across the distance. “Will you be looking for new investors for the rebuilt Adabelle?”

“What?”

“I’m always looking for a good investment,” he says, “and I think I grew very fond of that hotel.” He smirks. “While it lasted.”

“Well, okay partner,” I say, “let’s talk.”