“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.

Imogen