Her empty seat is bittersweet, and her voice in CARMINDOR’s head returns –
AMARA (V.O.)
Look how you’ve fallen, ah’blen. I warned you not to play with fire.
CARMINDOR struggles to his knees in front of the council.
CARMINDOR
Let me go or you’ll face the wrath of the Federation ––
MYSTERIOUS VOICE
Oh, my dear brother, can we not talk peace? We have both suffered such a tremendous loss at the hands of the Black Nebula.
CARMINDOR
(through gritted teeth)
You have suffered nothing of the same.
A figure steps out from behind the throne, clad in threads of gold that glow like the sun. At the sight of him, the council bows as if to a god.
CARMINDOR cannot believe his eyes.
CARMINDOR
You?
Now’s my chance. I have to find this trash human before the worst happens.
The script is being held up this time, the background is blurry. I squint, trying to focus it. It’s colorful, with lines? Drawings?
I can see people in the shot. The backs of heads, cosplayers—and then I see the World of Warcraft guy who just stopped by our table.
They’re here. In Artists’ Alley!
I quickly look around, but my peripheral vision is constantly blocked by these nerd glasses. I shove them onto my head but of course don’t see anyone suspicious. Everyone’s looking at their phones, gossiping about the script. I couldn’t care less. The only thing I care about is who is leaking it.
I don’t notice that Harper is looking at me until I’ve already decided to leave and look for the thief. She doesn’t stop me, and I lose her booth in the crowd.
The photo was taken somewhere nearby—that much I know. There’s the purple in the banner in the background, and the retro carpet, and the narrow aisles…
I spin around, trying to gauge where the thief would have been when the photo was taken. I pass another aisle, glancing down at the tweet, at the background around the script page, up at the sea of cosplayers and fans. I feel like I’m suffocating.
How can so many people congregate in such a small space for…what? A bunch of vendors that only want one thing: their money? Don’t they realize that most of this stuff doesn’t really matter?
It’s just make-believe. A bunch of adults pretending that their love for a TV show or a movie or a game means more than it actually does.
I just don’t get it.
I walk along the aisle until I think I come to the spot where the photo was taken. The thief was here, overlooking Artists’ Alley. I had been less than fifty feet away. I grip my phone and scan the masses of humanity, but I don’t recognize anyone from the hotel lobby.
Blond hair, biker jacket, pink nails, lip gloss, mole-on-cheek, bunny, I recall the lobby scene in my head. The girls on the sofa, the guy at the desk with his back turned. None of them are here.
I approach a girl behind a row of anime plushies. “Was someone standing here just a few minutes ago?”
She looks up. Her hair is streaked with pinks and purples and greens, her glasses are large and round. She blinks at me, and then slowly shakes her head. “I haven’t seen anyone.”
But then I notice that she’s playing a game on her phone. I doubt she’d have noticed someone standing here, anyway. I turn away from her but then she says, “Hey, you kinda look like Princess Amara—that girl.”
That girl.
In alarm, I pull on my glasses. “Thanks, I get that a I—”
“MONSTERRRRRRR!”
I look up, along with half of the crowd, and see a particularly tall and muscular guy coming toward me, his brown hair almost contained in his backward snapback, a curl twisting out of the opening. His arms are flapping in the air, as if he’s waving someone down. He’s looking directly at me.
“Hey! Monster! You wouldn’t believe what just happened!” he shouts again.
I glance around to see if anyone is responding.
No, no they are not.
That leaves only one possibility.
The girl selling plushies looks at me and says, “I think he means you.”
“I was afraid of that,” I reply. Imogen definitely didn’t tell me about him, or the person with him—ebony skinned, slender and waspish, dressed in a half cape and pointed witch’s hat, an umbrella resting on his shoulder. He’s cosplaying as someone, but hell if I know who.
And I am definitely not going to stick around just so they and the plushie seller can find out that I am most certainly not “Monster” and am, in fact, that girl who plays Princess Amara.
I slip my phone into my pocket and take a step backward, and then another.
“Monster! Monster?” the muscular guy shouts. His thick eyebrows furrow. He’s about twenty feet from me and—
All right. I’m leaving.
I take off out of Artists’ Alley as fast as I can, pushing through a group of people dressed as angels, and to my absolutely awful luck, Imogen’s friends pursue.
Here’s the thing: I’m terrible at running (especially in heels—hello, I tripped on the freaking red carpet). Never mind sports. Tennis, softball, track. I am horrible at literally every form of exercise. I’m even bad at the elliptical, which is something no human being in the world is bad at, except me. And that is why I never do my own stunts. It’s just not something I’m good at.
So when I take off running out of Artists’ Alley, I am praying that my knees don’t buckle and I am able to worm my way between enough people to lose Hunky and his friend in my wake. I’m lithe. Just have to pretend I’m a dancer and swirl through the crowd. Plus, it’s much easier to run in flats.
My shoes slap hard against the tiled floor as I turn onto a skybridge, dodging under a cosplayer with a six-foot wingspan.
They call again, “Mo! Mo, watch o—”
I’m hanging a left at the end of the skybridge when my foot slams into the long purple tail of someone dressed as the Nox King (of course). I pitch forward and slam into the ground.
THIS MANY PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE able to fit inside a room this size, although I know, from being a plebian squeezed into the back row last year, that indeed they can. I was smooshed between a Deadpool and a comics collector when the cast of the fantasy series Blades of Valor, starring the dreamy Vance Reigns, played an impromptu game of Never Have I Ever onstage. Vance had put a finger down for “Never have I ever had a crush on Ron Swanson.” (“We’re all on a sexual spectrum, and mine is girls and Ron Swanson,” he clarified later.) I thought that was going to be the highlight of my life in this room.
Alas, I was gravely mistaken.
I peek out between the black stage curtains, pulling at the high collar of my—well, Jess’s—dress. It’s navy blue with white trim, and my hose is a shimmery black. The blue isn’t the right Starfield shade, the hose is demonic, and don’t get me started on the heels. Given her history with these torture devices, you would think she’d have sworn them off long ago.
Apparently Jessica Stone is one of those people who double down.
So now I have to worry about tripping in front of three thousand people. How nice of her.
Is it hot in here or is it just me? I’m trying not to sweat too much and keep my arms chicken-winged from my sides so I don’t leave pit stains.