I roll my eyes and scowl. But Miss May is grinning at me.

“You really are your father’s daughter.”

“He acted like I was invisible,” I say. “I just did what anyone would do.”

“Nope, that was all Robin.” She shakes her head. “I worked with him for so many years I can see when he comes out in you. You barely gave that boy a snowball’s chance in hell.”

“He was being really rude to you,” I point out.

“Mm-hmm.” Miss May nods and swivels back and forth in her chair, picking up a walkie-talkie. She radios the new director—Herman Mitchs, one of Dad’s old buddies, balding, beer gut, loves to cosplay as Chewbacca—about Darien Freeman before turning her attention back to me. “So what can I do for you?”

“Well…” I wring my hands. “See, things happened and my passes were stolen—two of them, for me and a friend. I have the receipt here, but the guy at the ticket booth said—”

“Receipt?” Miss May laughs, leaning back in her chair. “Elle, the daughter of Robin Wittimer never needs to buy a pass! You’re part of this con, honey. You’re family.”

From her desk, she draws out a badge. The top is marked yellow, the highest type of badge you can wear—the all-access kind that tells everyone else you’re not just somebody but you’re somebody important. This is the Stan Lee of badges.

She extends it to me and I take it, my fingers gliding over the black name printed at the bottom. Robin Wittimer. Tears sting my eyes.

“We’ve printed one for him every year,” Miss May says. “Just in case you decided to come.”

“Every year?” I ask, my voice distant. “But—”

“Didn’t your stepmother tell you?” Miss May frowns. “For the first few years we sent them to your house, but when we kept getting them back we just decided to keep them here.”

So Catherine knew I was welcome at ExcelsiCon all this time? She knew I had a badge just for me—from my dad—every year and sent it back? I chew on my bottom lip, trying not to cry.

“I had no idea,” I whisper. “If I’d known…”

Miss May sees my face crumple and offers up a bowl full of butterscotch candies. “Well, you’re here now. And your friend can wear this one,” she adds, taking out one of those extra badges I knew they had lying around for special guests. “What’s the occasion, anyway? Here to see the Starfield panel? Because I’m afraid you’re missing it…”

“Actually, I’m here for the cosplay contest.”

She smiles, unwraps a butterscotch, and pops it in her mouth.

“Your father’s daughter, indeed.”

“YOU NEED TO CALM DOWN, DARE.”

Thanks for that, Gail. Understatement of the century.

We’re walking out of the giant auditorium, away from the panel that just let out. Spots blink across my vision from the flash of a zillion selfies that people who just love me in Seaside couldn’t wait to take (even though, if they really loved me, they would’ve not had the flash on). All the audience questions from the panel are swimming in my head like the insides of the Blob.

How do you feel being the new Carmindor?

What do you bring to Carmindor that Mr. Singh didn’t?

Since filming just wrapped, can you tell us a little about what to expect from your take on Carmindor?

Why did you think you could be the Federation Prince?

Jess didn’t get those questions. Calvin didn’t either. And every time Amon got asked why he cast me as the Federation Prince, he would simply say, “Did I cast the perfect person for the role? I think I did.”

Which is, of course, media interviews 101. When you’re asked a question you don’t want to answer, you redirect it by asking your own question and answering that one instead.

So between that blogger in the convention office and the panel, I’m in a pretty terrible mood. I can’t believe I ran into the Rebelgunner blogger. And it was a girl. Fate must be trolling me. Not even seeing Nathan Fillion will help this dark cloud over my head.

“That girl really got under your skin, didn’t she,” Gail says, shuffling behind me. Lonny follows behind us like a hulking shadow.

“She wasn’t a girl so much as the spawn of Satan,” I mutter, opening the GUESTS ONLY door to one of the private hallways.

“She had a point, you know,” Lonny rumbles.

Gail nods. “Darien, you’re usually so good with fans. Darien.” When I don’t stop, she grabs me by the arm to halt me in the middle of the hallway. The dude from that demon show passes, and I give him a bro nod. When he’s out of earshot, she whispers, “What’s really wrong?”

What’s really wrong?

A muscle in my jaw feathers. “Gail, my phone is still missing and I haven’t gone this long without talking to Elle since we disagreed about the solar flux capacitor, Rebelgunner is a girl, and I have a signing in less than”—I check my invisible watch—“ten minutes where a guy who’s left threatening messages at my hotel might or might not show up.”

Plus—and I know it’s crazy—I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched. I mean I know I’m being watched but…this feels different. The same way I felt all throughout filming. Like when the guy locked me up on the roof and then those clips and photos got leaked.

“But I’ll be there,” Lonny rumbles, cracking his knuckles. “I’ll turn them into sailor knots.”

“Thanks, bro.” I exhale a long, stressful breath. “It’ll be fine. Absolutely copacetic. As long as I don’t sign anything that could be described as a mound.”

I MEET UP WITH SAGE IN the lobby and crown her with the extra-VIP badge—the same kind of badge I show to the ticket booth guy as we walk through the security line. His mouth falls open at the yellow band across the top of mine.

“Eat it,” I mouth, and do the one-finger-at-a-time wave as the security guard checks my duffel—and the costume—and lets me inside.

“Okay, so we need to finish up your costume and get you ready for this contest,” Sage says, patting the strap of the bag. “Still gotta make sure the stitching’s right on your shoulder and glitter up your coat and—”

“Sage.” I pull her to a stop.

She hasn’t even looked up at it all. “Yeah?…Oh.” She stares out at the expanse of showroom floor. Her mouth goes slack jawed. “Ohhh.”

Floor to ceiling, spanning the entire convention center. TV network and studio and game booths line the walls, lifesize replicas of World of Warcraft characters and Funko figures. People with pleasant smiles staff the tables that stretch from one side to the other, banners for Star Trek and Star Wars displayed overhead, waving gently in the air-conditioning. The crowd shuffles around photo ops mid-aisle, snapping selfies with cosplayers wielding cardboard swords and scythes, light sabers and phasers and starguns. A Deadpool bumps into me as he dodges out of the way of four Ewoks scuttling behind a mammoth Hulkbuster, their cellphones recording the event. And still no sign of the twins. Which is a good sign.

Sage and I slowly turn our eyes to each other. “Holy shit,” she says. “I’m in nerd heaven.”

“Oh, young Padawan,” I tell her, waving my hand toward the room, “everything the light touches is our kingdom. Let’s go explore it.” I pull her into the din of fantasy and sci-fi denizens and we get lost in the shuffle.

“God, look at all these people—so many Carmindors! Do you think yours is here?”

“Maybe,” I reply as we pass a booth selling Assassin’s Creed robes.

“Seriously? Are you going to meet up?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t answered.”

“Mm.” She nods toward a group of cosplayers gathered at the far corner of the showroom. One is holding a sign that reads TEAM FOUR STAR. “Do a lot of internet groups meet up at conventions?”

“Sure.”

“How about your Starfield peeps? The online ones you talk to?”

“Oh—well, yeah. A few of them are here.” We break apart for a moment as an elf with a scythe squeezes between us. “Anyway, we should get to the costume contest area and sign in, what do you say? And try not to run into the twins.”

“If we do I’ll shove them in a closet,” Sage mutters.

I laugh. “Ready to kick some Nox butt?”

She scoffs. “Elle, I’m ready to tell them to get down on both knees and call you Queen.”

“I thought you were going somewhere completely different with that.”

“Eh, this is a PG sort of moment.”

“Fair enough.”

She consults a convention map that she found on the showroom floor, but I take it from her with a scoff. “Oh please, I know this place like the back of my hand.”

“Yeah, how do you know this place so well?”

“Because my dad started this con,” I reply, grab her hand again, and follow my feet into the crowd, the map of the convention floor burned into my memory like the glow-in-the-dark stars on my bedroom ceiling.

SCRAWLING MY NAME OVER ANOTHER HEADSHOT of my character on Seaside Cove, I thank the pretty brunette for standing in line and hand the photo back to her. She hugs it to her chest like it’s made of gold, tells me she loves me in Seaside, and hurries off with her friends. It’s pretty amazing. I thought I’d be tired of fans gushing up to me, but there’s just something earnest in fandom that’s never boring. Sure, having fans inflates my ego, but I like to think that I’m not that shallow. I appreciate this job because I’m making things that people—all kinds of people, from the looks of my line—enjoy.