Because it feels wonderful to be in Imogen’s shoes. To be anonymous. To be able to sit down on a bench in a hotel courtyard eating a pretzel, alone, without paparazzi snapping photos and the internet asking if I’ve gained weight. To not have to worry about where my next job will come from, whether it’ll be the one to sink my career or if I’ll be the dead Princess Amara, like Natalia Ford, for all eternity.

Will I be typecast as one thing for the rest of my life? How many other dead space princesses can there be?

I bite my lip so hard, I feel it going numb. I can’t answer her. I don’t know how to.

But I can’t stay silent either, so I begin to think up a lie when I see a gremlin head poke out from under the booth tablecloth across the aisle. It stares at me with its narrow green slits for eyes—

And then it disappears again.

So Amon was looking for Natalia Ford’s cat—what was its name? She never goes anywhere without that gremlin-looking thing in her arms. She takes it with her to interviews, she even took it onto Hello, America a few weeks ago to promote the re-release of the original Starfield series.

Harper glances over, but the cat’s already gone. “What?”

“Natalia Ford’s cat! Demonlike creature with glowy-green eyes.”

“Oh, Stubbles! He’s here?”

“Someone was looking for him earlier. I think he’s lost,” I add, and pop out of my chair, hurrying across to the booth that the cat disappeared underneath.

The artist in the booth glances at me, her long blue hair pulled over her shoulder and spilling down onto her sketchbook as she draws a weird-looking alien from what appears to be a video game she really loves.

“Excuse me,” I say awkwardly, and point at her booth, “but I think there’s a cat under your table.”

She gives me a strange look, but then draws up the corner of her tablecloth and gives a start. “THAT’S A CAT?”

At the same moment, with a yowl that I can only describe as warlike, Stubbles leaps onto the next booth’s table and squirrels across it, knocking over displays and posters as it hops onto the next one, and then the next one, eliciting horrific screams from each unsuspecting artist.

“Stubbles!” I call frantically.

It tears across the aisle, hopping from table to table, and I dodge through the crowd after it.

Then it turns, diving between the aisles, and I quickly run to the other side. Harper has already cut over and blocks the cat from heading the other way. It turns around, skittering under a Cersei Lannister’s robes, and pops out the other side with a hiss.

Stupid freaking cat.