It turned out, after all the backstage brawls, Amsterdam cookie disasters, and Milan meet-and-greets from hell, that the quietest part of the entire European tour… was thirty-seven thousand feet in the air.
First class was almost too comfortable. Thane actually slept. Mark had noise-canceling headphones and a perfectly chilled ginger ale. Maya and Cassie watched movies back-to-back, whispering jokes through half-bitten biscotti. Jonah sprawled out with both arms flopped over the armrests like a defeated octopus. Even Rico passed out halfway through reading a paperback thriller he’d bought at the airport.
Gabriel, however, was nowhere to be seen.
Which, of course, made Thane sit upright with a sudden jolt of suspicion.
Emily wandered over a few minutes later, grinning like she had just unlocked a new level of nonsense. “Uh. So… Gabriel made friends with the pilots.”
Thane blinked. “Come again?”
“They let him in the cockpit.”
“What?!”
“Yeah, apparently the captain’s daughter is a massive fan. Has all the merch. And Gabriel was being so… Gabriel that he ended up getting invited up front. The co-pilot looked vaguely concerned, but I think the captain was too starstruck to care.”
Mark, who had one eye cracked open under his headphones, grunted. “We’re gonna be a federal offense by the time we land.”
Emily held up her phone. “Wanna see the photo?”
The entire pack crowded around her screen.
There he was: Gabriel, seated in the cockpit of a massive Airbus A340, grinning like an overgrown cub, wearing the captain’s hat at a jaunty angle. His clawed paws were hovering dramatically over the controls as if he were about to land the damn thing himself. The captain stood behind him, beaming like a dad at graduation.
“This is the most Gabriel thing that’s ever happened,” Rico muttered, shaking his head.
Emily giggled. “I captioned it ‘We let him fly the plane. Pray for us.’”
“Post it,” Thane sighed. “Might as well give the internet something to scream about before we touch down.”
By the time the wheels hit the tarmac at Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City, the post had already gone viral. News outlets were calling it the “Werewolf Pilot Moment,” and fans were arguing online whether or not it was Photoshopped.
It wasn’t. And they had the muffled cabin speaker audio to prove it, where the pilot had said, “We’d like to thank Captain Gabriel for his brief command of the flight… and hope the FAA isn’t listening.”
The tour was officially back on American soil. And something told them Oklahoma had no idea what was coming next.