As it darts left, I cut across to head it off. It stares me down like the evil green-eyed gremlin it is—

Until a guy adorned with ram horns, wearing nothing but boxers covered with hearts, scoops up the hairless beast with a pillowcase. It jerks and yowls, hissing and spitting in its fabric prison. He holds it out frightfully.

“This, uh, is this yours?” he asks.

“Close enough,” I say and gingerly take the pillowcase. I can see claws poking through the fabric. How in the hell am I going to get this thing out of this pillowcase?

As if knowing my question, he says, “You can keep the pillowcase.”

“Um, thanks.”

“No problem,” he replies, and leaves me with a squirming bag of angry cat. But now that I have it, what the hell am I supposed to do with it? Natalia Ford hates me!

No, she more than hates me.

If there is a level even lower than hate, the slow and simmering rage of a thousand exploding suns, that is how Natalia Ford feels about me.

Harper seems to have the same question. “So, um, do we know where Natalia Ford is?”

“I have no idea—”

Another artist leans over from his booth and says, “Isn’t she in the photo ops right now? Jessica Stone’s supposed to be over there, too.”

Great.

Stubbles howls again, but this time it sounds strangely pitiful. Harper shrugs and says, “I’ve already started packing up, so I can close down my booth and we can head over there.”

“Really, you don’t have to go—”

“Are you kidding?” she says with a laugh. “This might be my only chance to see Natalia Ford in the flesh. It’s going to be amazing.”

I don’t want to burst her bubble and tell her that my run-in with Natalia was a good deal less than amazing, but I just smile and say “okay” before I follow her back to the booth to close up shop. She finishes putting away her art pieces and thanks her neighbor—a guy who looks the part of a starving artist, all gaunt face and jutting bones—for looking after the booth while she was gone. After throwing a thin blue blanket over her table, she turns to me and says, “Okay, let’s go find Princess Amara.”

It doesn’t take long to find her. In the photo-ops area there are standing posters with the names of who is in which black-curtained area, and lines that wrap around half of the large room. My—I mean, Jessica Stone’s—is one of those lines. I hope Imogen can handle it. Ethan’s with her, of course she can.

I don’t have to worry about her not sounding like me, either. She’s eerily talented at mimicking my voice.