Serena

Larna stops suddenly, grasping his chest, sighing deeply, just as they approach the gallery where Alison suggested Byron might show up to tonight. "Do you smell it?" Larna moans with longing. "What? Odessa?" Serena asks: if Odessa is here, Byron must be with her. But Larna sighs again, mournful, "No, not her....Food. I smell food," he says, and enters the gallery. Serena follows, looking for Byron, but he's not here. Larna makes directly for the food, which is odd, as he never eats, but Serena rather he occupy himself with that than by mingling. She's only here on the chance of seeing Byron, like one of his obsessed fans: she doesn't eat or look at the art, just keeps her eyes on the door, waiting. Alison eventually shows up, but of course has no news about Byron. She had said he 'might' show up, but the gallery closes and he never comes, and Serena goes home disappointed again.

Only after a couple of days had passed did Serena realize she hadn't seen Larna since the night of the gallery opening. He doesn't generally ride in her car, so she drove home alone, expecting he'd be in her house when she returned. When he wasn't, Serena assumed he'd be there in the morning when she woke up, and she went to sleep with a heavy heart, still no closer to getting Byron back. Larna wasn't there in the morning, but Serena did not make note of his absence right away. He comes & goes by his own schedule, often appearing suddenly out of the air, answering a question she'd posed to the universe in general, or commenting on what she was doing. The fact that he isn't visible to her doesn't mean he isn't there, so Serena went about her day without truly noticing Larna's absence. But when days passed & he'd not made even the briefest appearance, Serena began to worry.

"Why didn't you say something earlier?" the dream lord asks her sternly. "I told you, I didn't realize right away he'd gone missing," Serena answers, only to be glared at. "I expected more of you," is all he says, and then suddenly points his thin finger at her forehead, and the scene changes to the gallery opening of just a few days ago. "This is the last time you saw him?" the dream lord's voice asks. When this was happening the first time, Serena paid attention to nothing except the gallery entrance, she barely noticed what Larna was up to. But as the memory plays back for her, she sees details she missed the first time. "I had thought you'd have been properly trained for this," the silvery voice of the immortal chides. Well, of course I was, Serena thinks with chagrin, she just has been doing a very poor job of living up to her training lately. The first real crisis of her career, of her life, and she's crumbled under the pressure. Now, she thinks, now is the time to change that, and she puts aside her worries & fears & just watches, looking for what she missed the last time she saw Larna. Larna spoke to one person at the gallery that night, Serena watches as Larna shakes his hand. There's something about the man, Serena cannot quite identify it, but the unworldliness of his aura is so striking that Serena is ashamed at herself now that she didn't see it immediately when she entered the gallery. But what is he? Serena wonders. "Do you know who he is? Where he is?" the dream lord asks. Serena shakes her head, "I can't determine that from my memory." Suddenly, it's all gone, and Serena is alone in the dark. "Then you have nothing else to offer me," the dream lord's voice fills the emptiness briefly, and then he's gone, and Serena is alone & awake in the darkest hour of the night, dismissed by the immortal, useless to him because she failed herself.

"Is it possible a guy could get from L.A. to N.Y. and back, just like that, without anyone noticing?" Alison asks her. "You aren't talking about airline travel, are you?" Serena replies, forcing herself to remain dispassionate, to behave as she was trained and use her senses to find out what she needs to know, rather than stumbling about confused & blinded by her fears & worries. Alison sighs heavily, "I know how crazy this sounds, and maybe I'm going crazy, but I figured you would understand. There's this guy I know, I knew him when I lived in N.Y., but I just ran into him in L.A. Now my friend in N.Y. is saying he's in N.Y., on the same day that I've seen him in L.A." The question makes little sense to Serena, it seems the kind of thing that would have a more commonplace explanation, mistaken identity or a fraud, certainly not the kind of thing that would make a skeptic like Alison turn to Serena. But there is no mistaking the fear radiating from the redhead: clearly, there is more to this than Alison is letting on. Serena doesn't have to pry very deep into Alison's mind to get a mental image of 'the guy' in question, it's right up on the surface...and it's the same man Larna spoke to at the gallery. Coincidence? Maybe, though Serena doesn't really believe in coincidence, "Does he by any chance know Byron?" Serena asks. "Who, Justin?" Alison asks, and now Serena has his name, "No, I don't think so. He's Gavin's friend." Serena pauses, listening to the panic in Alison's breath. "Why are you so concerned about whether Gavin's friend is in N.Y. or L.A.?" Serena asks. And what has it to do with Larna speaking to him in the gallery the night before he disappeared?

Alison tells her a long roundabout story, about a film she did in college, about this man, Justin, and his hold over Alison's friends, which continued even after he'd left them suddenly, strong enough that they formed a little cult around his image. Alison ran into Justin again at the gallery, and homesick for N.Y., called one of her old college friends, who told her Justin had returned to N.Y., had taken up with his cult again after all these years. "I even went to his house," Alison sighs, "He's in L.A. & says he hasn't been back there in years. It's just..weird, it's freaking me out. I'm actually losing sleep from it & that's why I came to you. But you're right, it's stupid for me to be making a big deal out of it." Alison gets up as she finishes, but Serena takes her hand & gently persuades her to sit back down. "I never said it was stupid. When you are disturbed by something about a situation you cannot identify, that's when you need to pay attention & see what it is that is wrong, rather than dismissing your perceptions." Serena had sensed something different in this man Justin's aura, maybe the kind of something that would give him the ability to teleport, but probably not. Larna had spoken to her about starting up a cult of their own, to distract Odessa from her plans for stardom by establshing a proper temple: now Alison is telling her that the last person Larna spoke to before he disappeared has recently & mysteriously reappeared in N.Y. to revive a cult of students that had formed around him, while at the same time appearing to have not left L.A. That's a little too much coincidence for Serena. "He's going to bring them here," she says out loud, as the realization comes to her, Larna has made his own plans, without consulting her. Alison cocks her head, "You think it is Justin, then?" she asks. Serena shakes her head, "No, but he's involved in this somehow. I want to meet him."