Wait—she thought that I’d be mad at her? I’m furious, but not at her. I exhale through my mouth, the one thing I can do to keep myself calm as I process this. “And you’re okay?”

“Me?” She gives me a surprised look. “I want to punch his teeth in, I’m so mad.”

“You and me both,” I reply, and on my phone I pull up the email for the con’s management team.

“Do you know this asshole’s name?”

“I don’t know if he’s going under his real name or his YouTube name, but I’m supposed to meet him tomorrow after the con anyway. He wanted to tell me something. Me, Imogen. Not you,” she clarifies, and with a relieved sigh, she stands to put the mop back into the bucket. “I can really pick ’em, you know.”

I send off the email. “Well, if you meet him tomorrow, I just told management—although I’m sure Ethan already has, too—to tell security to come by so you won’t be alone.”

“Pff, I don’t need backup.” She puts up her arms and flexes them. “I got these deadly weapons.”

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning. “Do you always resort to jokes during serious conversations?”

She lets her arm flop down and sighs. “Yeah, it’s kinda a natural defense.”

“You must be great at funerals.”

“Oh, I’m dead serious,” she says with a straight face, and for a moment I can’t tell if she’s joking, but then she snorts a laugh and shrugs. “I’m just silly. I can’t help it.” She glances back at the booth where she and Vance were sitting. “Trying to be you was a lot different than I thought it’d be.”

That amuses me. “Because my life is so perfect?”

“As if.” Then she slowly turns her eyes to mine. “Because you’re a real person.”

Oh. I quickly look away.

A group of Starfield cosplayers comes in and sits down at the opposite end of the restaurant. They barely even glance over at us, chattering about the latest Starfield news and the leaking script, discussing rumors about Amara’s return—and lack thereof.

“I don’t think I want her back,” says the Carmindor cosplayer. A genderbent Euci glares at him. “Don’t start again.”

“I think she’s whiny and too perfect. I mean, she can pilot a Starkadia without any training and resist General Sond’s conscription? Come on,” he scoffs, “she’s a Mary Sue. She doesn’t even do anything, and the actress who plays her isn’t even hot.”

“Shut up, Mike,” says a General Sond cosplayer, snapping open his menu, “and stop being a sexist asshole.”