PROLOGUE
TWO YEARS EARLIER
“There’s a lot of people here.” I looked around the convention center of the riverside New Orleans hotel and tried to tamp down my anxiety. I was many things, but calm in a crowd was not one of them.
Nathan Cooper—N. D. Cooper to horror readers—cast me a sidelong look. “What did you expect? This is the second biggest reader convention in the country.” His tone was flat and dry.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t expectthis, though.”
There were people everywhere. Authors setting up tables. Assistants frantically searching for the stuff that had been shipped to the hotel and was supposed to be trucked into the convention room by event personnel. Random people who clearly had a function, though I had no idea what it was.
Nathan smirked. “This is your first big convention. You’re nervous. But you shouldn’t be. You’re Brody Bates, the world-famous fantasy writer. You own this venue.”
He extended his fist to bump. I just stared at it.That was a ridiculous thing to say.
“Technically, as far as these people are concerned, I’m B. B. Bates.”
“Yeah. What does the second B stand for?” Nathan looked curious. “Like… is your name Brody Bart Bates?”
I shook my head. That was a stupid name.
“Brody Brian Bates?”
I shook my head again.
“Brody Batman Bates?”
That made me crack a smile, although it was weak. “My middle name is Mark.”
Nathan blinked. Then he blinked again. “Mark? How is that a B name?”
“It’s not. When I was picking my penname, I liked the alliteration. B. B. Bates.” I stretched out my hand in front of me. “It has a nice ring to it, right?”
Nathan didn’t look as impressed as I was hoping. “B. M. Bates sounds better to me.”
“That’s like Boston Market Bates. It’s weird.”
“Boston Market.” Nathan snorted. “I totally forgot that was a thing.”
“I like their creamed spinach.”
Why did I volunteer that information?Geez, I was bad at making small talk. Had Nathan figured that out yet? We’d only met a year before. We were both new authors for Hyperion Way, a start-up publisher out of Los Angeles at the time. It had since been absorbed by one of the big three, which meant we’d been catapulted into the stratosphere.
Back then, we were both on our first books and nervous about the process. We shared an editor and had met at a mixer and glommed onto one another within the first hour. We were going through the same thing, so bonding made sense. Fortunately, the friendship stuck even as he was trotted out to horror conventions left and right and I was slanted into dragonand elf cons from one end of the country to the other. This was the first time we’d been at the same convention, and it was definitely the biggest event I’d been to as an author.
“Creamed spinach, huh?” Nathan cocked his head, his shaggy brown hair falling to one side. “Well, that’s a conversation starter.”
When he laughed, my insides unclenched. He was easygoing by nature, and I fed off his energy. I was not easygoing. In fact, I was as high-strung as they came. My best quality was that I could acknowledge that.
“Now you see what I’m up against.” I held out my hands and shrugged. “How am I supposed to talk to all these readers when all I can think to bring up is creamed spinach?”
Nathan considered it but not for long. “Perhaps you should come up with talking points.”
I was a big fan of preparation. “Sure.” I bobbed my head. “What sort of talking points should I be focused on?”
He made an exasperated sound deep in his throat. “How should I know? What do you like talking about?”
“Creamed spinach.”
