“At least it makes the day less boring for them. You should try it.”
“I think I’ll abstain from faking criminal activities for now, thanks.”
They got to the passport check. Chris effortlessly scanned hers, then showed her tongue to the face detector for a second before letting it properly scan her face. Simon shook his head, though not so much in disapproval as in amusement. He scanned his passport and automatically stepped to the swinging door, but it didn’t open.
He scanned the passport again. The light on the scanner was still red.
“Excuse me.” He stopped an officer patrolling the line. “My passport won’t scan.”
The officer tried himself a few times, then shrugged. “You’ll have to go to the other lane for the manual check.”
Simon looked to the monster lane of people snaking through the majority of the long room.Great.
“Thanks,” he said, and went to the end of the line. Chris raised her hands in awhat’s wronggesture, and he made a vaguemotion with his passport before the rest of the people in the line obscured his view of her.
He waited for twenty minutes and moved one entire row.
Out of eight.
He should call Shanna. Not to complain about his small problem of having to wait in a line, but to hear her voice and know she’s well, and tell her they’d landed. He pulled out his phone and tapped his screen.
Dark.
He tried turning it on—nothing, not even a display of low battery.
He should have been annoyed, but instead, he smiled.Oh, Shanna.Even halfway across the world, she still managed to break his phone again.
Maybe that was the problem with the passport, too. Could her technology-breaking curse influence it in such a way that it couldn’t be read by scanners?
As he came to the end of one row in the line, he shouted to Chris, who was sitting on the chairs past the passport check, her head leaning to the side in absolute boredom. “Can I borrow your phone? I need to call Shanna,” he said as she approached as close as she could.
Chris tried to move past the counter where the officer was checking the passports but got stopped by another officer. “I just need to give him the phone—ah, never mind.” She rolled her eyes, stepped back, and shouted over the officer’s shoulder, “I’ll call her!”
Ten minutes later, she returned, shouting in the same manner, “I told her we landed safely. And that you snored throughout the whole flight!”
Simon chuckled, then, at the looks of not-so-amused passengers waiting around him, cleared his throat and resumed his normal position in the line.
Finally, after only about six years, he reached the passport check. An older man, looking bored out of his skull, took his passport, glanced at Simon, back at the passport, and the computer.
And stopped.
He did another few passes—Simon, passport, Simon, passport, computer.
With a bit of nervousness tingling in his belly, Simon smiled. “Nice day we’re having, isn’t it?” To be fair, he had no idea what the weather was outside. But a little smile could go a long way.
The man gestured to one of the patrolling officers. They whispered for a few seconds, and then the officer said, “Step with me, sir.”
“Is there something wrong?”
“Come with me, please.” The officer maintained his poker face.
So Simon followed him, only managing to yell, “It’s okay, I’ll be right back,” at Chris before the officer led him down several hallways and into a small office with a single desk and a computer. As he left, Simon remained alone for mere seconds before another woman came in and sat down behind the computer.
“Mr. Montague, is it?” she said, checking the screen and then him.
“Yes?” He coughed, adjusting his tone to a more self-assured one. “Yes.”
“We’re having some trouble with your passport. Any idea as to why?”
