“Don’t be silly. We’re going much too fast. Plus there’s a paparazzo trailing us.”

I glance behind me, and sure enough a black SUV with tinted windows is following us a few cars behind. “I didn’t even realize. How did you know it was there?”

“I might be an ancient Hollywood actress who has no career to speak of, but I have dated enough starstruck manbabies to sense a camera from a hundred feet away.”

“I honestly wasn’t thinking when I said that in the interview,” I say, but she waves me off.

“Don’t apologize. If you apologize for everything, then your apologies will never mean anything. That woman was drilling you terribly hard. What did you do, interrupt her flirting with your costar?”

Is she…joking? Is Natalia Ford trying to crack a joke? I can’t tell. Talking to her is like playing poker with the Godfather. “I…might have. Or I said something wrong. Or any number of things that I can’t really remember doing—jeez, this convention is driving me insane. I’m not usually like this. I’m cool and composed. I don’t flub interviews. I don’t offend other people…How did you do it?” I ask, looking over at her. The leather seats are warming up, and I’m not shivering anymore. “How did you survive all of this? All of the fans hating you?”

“When I played Amara, there were barely message boards on an old dial-up computer. I didn’t have to worry about the general public giving me an earful of critique I didn’t need. But now all you young people are socially connected to everything. Your fans have you at their fingertips. It must be a nightmare.”

Her hairless cat slinks over to me and curls up in my lap, purring like a contented pet. Gently, I drop my hand down to pat it, but it hisses and swipes at me with claws out. Mixed message received.

“Nostalgia’s a hell of a drug,” she says after a long pause.

“And the greatest honor,” I add wryly, “a female character can have is death. Especially a useful one.”

A spark ignites in Natalia’s eyes, and she turns to face me. Her cat slinks over into her lap again and begins kneading her legs with its long, lethal claws. “Yet it isn’t an honor at all, is it?”

“No—and it’s not just Starfield. Even after this, if there is an after this for me, in the next film I’m either going to be fridged, or I’ll be cast as a forty-year-old actor’s love interest, or I’ll become that quirky secondary character. Or I’ll just be nothing. That’s all I’ll be. That’s all Starfield will ever be.”

“Then change it.”