His hands were the same way.
When Elspeth looked at him, startled by his incongruous appearance, he seemed to feel it. He glanced up, and his eyes sizzled her soul.
Then he smiled ever so slightly — and made a beeline right for her.
What the hell?
He nodded at the giant glass window of the airport. A plane was just leaving the gate, taxiing out to the runway. It was small against the expanse of sky filled with a setting sun and clouds: an orange flame on cotton candy. “That plane will not fly.”
“Excuse me?” Elspeth said, taken aback. Little man. Little weird annoying man who painted himself for attention. Oooh look at me! I’m interesting! She didn’t have time for this.
But the man continued: “Here’s a kiss from the Dolphin Queen: Heavier-than-air flying machines cannot fly. They never could. The plane will crash and people will die.”
Ice sucked the warmth from her heart at that. Crash? Die? Saving lives was her thing. She didn’t want to hear about people dying, and she would do anything to prevent it.
“What did you say?” Elspeth exhaled the sentence, not realizing she had been holding her breath.
“The plane will not lift. It cannot.” She could see the hieroglyphs covering him more intimately now. The makeup and paint job were exquisite, exact, precise. He looked like he was made of marble, and little black glyphs of india ink were etched with molecule-thin precision upon him. “It never could,” he added to no one in particular.
The man turned then and meandered off, whistling tunelessly.
Feeling suddenly vulnerable, and realizing this man may have just threatened to blow up a plane, Elspeth made her way to the front of the TSA line. She pushed and excused-me’d. Whenever someone turned around with an annoyed face and found themselves staring into her chest, their surprised gaze immediately jerked up to her eyes — and their expression changed immediately to deference.
She ignored them and reached the front.
“Excuse me,” she said to Agent Danny Trenton. “Hi. Yes. Hello, sir. Listen. Something weird just happened. See that guy over there?” She pointed. He hadn’t gone far, and was now looking at more newspapers. “The one painted all white with the writing all over his head? He just came up to me and said something about a flight exploding and killing people.”
Agent Trenton stared wordlessly, confused. It was her! This wasn’t at all what he had expected. In fact, this sort of ruined his whole plan. She wasn’t supposed to approach him!
Finally, he asked, “Did he say which plane, ma’am?”
“Yes. The San Francisco flight right there, the one just leaving the gate.” She pointed a long, manicured yet bony finger at the runway. Dear God, the plane was already out there —! It would take off soon.
Agent Trenton glanced around. “Which man, did you say ma’am?”
“That guy, the one right there, there. In the suit, with all the weird stuff on his —” But now he wasn’t there. “He was right there. Did you see him?”
“No, ma’am, I did not. Listen. Could you come with me?”
“Yes — yes of course. Certainly.”
Agent Trenton led Elspeth off to the side where the TSA extra screening booths were. Trenton whistled to Samuels, who joined them presently.
“Now ma’am … you say this man threatened to blow up the plane. Is that correct? You know that’s a serious accusation, and that even joking about something like that is a crime punishable by —”
One: Departure
Start from the beginning
