The Princess and the Fangirl (Once Upon a Con #2)(17)

This is not a good conversation.

“Yes, she’s here,” he says, and hands the phone to me.

I have to talk to her; I don’t have a choice. Is it about the script? Is she calling to say that I am in the sequel as some pointless five-second flashback? Or am I free?

Please let Amara stay dead, I think as I bring his phone to my ear. “Diana?”

“Do you still have the script?” she asks tightly.

What script? “Yes.” I lie.

“Oh, thank God.” She lets out a breath. “Because it’s leaked, and as long as we know it isn’t you, that’s all we care about.”

Dread slithers down my spine. The tweets. Are they real?

My heart is beating loud and ferocious. Please let Amara be dead. Please let Amara be dead. Please let— “So we know for sure? Am I in it? Am I free—”

“Jessica,” Diana interrupts calmly, “the execs are thinking you leaked the script, but as long as you didn’t then we’re fine.”

“Why would it be me?”

“Exactly. You’re the most recent person to be given a physical copy, no one else in the cast has been given one yet. But if it wasn’t lost in transit or anything, it must have been leaked from the studio—one of the interns, maybe, who got a hold of it when they shouldn’t have. Anyway, I’ll go ahead and tell the studio that it didn’t come from our end. Just hang tight and sandbag every question about the sequel, do you understand?”

Oh no. I swallow the lump in my throat and nod numbly. “I understand.”

“Good. Talk to you later with more details.” She hangs up to call whoever and tell them that I am, in fact, not the villain in this story.

I exhale hard and hand Ethan his phone.

He quirks an eyebrow. “You don’t actually have the script, do you?”

“Of course I don’t. Why would I—oh.” My eyes widen, and he must realize it at the exact same time. “Oh no.”

“Jess…”

Oh no—oh no no no no no— “The package. The one from Amon. The one I was supposed to open.” My voice breaks and I can feel myself shaking.

Oh my God. I actually threw away a copy of the script for the Starfield sequel. And someone must’ve taken it out of the trash. And started tweeting it. This is my fault.

“Jessica!” Ethan looks more freaked out than I am. “You threw it away?”

“In the garbage, where it’s supposed to be!”

“You don’t mean that,” he says.

“Of course I don’t! I’m angry!” I bolt off the bed and dart out of the hotel room, Ethan instantly behind me.

Two minutes later, the elevator doors open into the lobby. I all but sprint to the trash can where I tossed the envelope, peering down into the dark crevice now filled with Starbucks cups and used napkins and candy wrappers. I have to dig through that? I reach in but Ethan grabs my wrist and motions for a clerk, who looks more than a little grossed out about someone trash picking in a five-star hotel.

Which is definitely not something Jessica Stone would do. But right now, I am definitely not Jessica Stone. I am a ball of anxious wet cats.

Ethan points to the trash and says to the hotelier, “I think my friend dropped her phone in here. Can we take this outside and dump it out?”

“Oh! Of course.” She looks relieved. “You can go into the back hallway, Miss Stone,” she adds.

I grimace.

Half the people in the lobby—the half who recognize my name—turn to look. Begin pulling out their phones. Clicking on their cameras at my arm elbow-deep in trash. I grab the lid with one hand and push Ethan toward the emergency exit with the other and we escape into an EMPLOYEES ONLY hallway that connects to a few offices and the laundry service.

“I hate this,” I mutter as Ethan takes off the ornate golden lid and drags out the clear plastic bag. “It’s at the bottom, isn’t it? Isn’t that it?”

He twists the bag and holds it up with one arm. “I think that’s a fast-food container.”

It is.

“Maybe it’s more toward the middle?” he reasons, but I shake my head.

“No, I remember the clunk as it hit the bottom.” I step back and press my palms against my eyelids. “Someone found it. Someone saw me chuck the envelope and then went after it.”

I feel myself spiraling just as inevitably as a spiral galaxy.

Breathe. Think. Breathe.

I press myself against the wall and slide down until I’m sitting because I can no longer stand upright. I can’t feel my knees.

“I am in so much trouble,” I whisper.

Ethan puts the bag back in the garbage can and digs into his pocket, bringing out a small bottle of hand sanitizer. He squats next to me, squirts some into my palm, lathers his own, and stuffs it back into his pocket.

I take out my phone to look at the Twitter handle that leaked the scene. A faceless gray icon. Whoever it is posted a photo of the script. In it, the page is surrounded by retro green carpet. I know I’ve seen it before, but the longer I wrack my brain the less familiar it looks.

Ethan glances down at my phone and makes a face. “Looks like the hideous showroom floor. Well, I guess there’s no accounting for taste.”

“What did you say?”