Con Quest!

In front of him, he saw a horde of people making their way over to the hotel next door—Alex heard that was where the press did all their celebrity interviews. To his left, the rest of the city. And to his right—

A door.

A totally unguarded double door.

Alex stared at it for a second before turning to his messenger bag. He rooted around in it for a couple of seconds—apple, sketch pad, comic, that guy’s heavier-by-the-minute book—before he found the GeekiCon guide. Flipping to the map in the center, Alex took a hard look at the convention center layout. Then he looked around. Then he looked at the map again. Back to the door. And back to the map again.

There was no doubt. Alex was certain of it. That was the press door to Hall M.

And no one was watching it.

Alex sidled over toward one of the handles and, super-casually, gave it a tug. It opened with no problem. There was a small antechamber inside, leading to a set of black curtains. Beyond that could only be Hall M. Wait until he told Cat—

Alex froze. He kept the door ajar in his hand.

Cat. Was he just going to forgive her for what she did? Could he? Or did he want to hurt Cat just as badly as she hurt him? Plus, if Alex let her in through this door right now, she might feel like what she did was right. Or like it didn’t matter.

But it did matter. It mattered to Alex a lot.

A lot more than the Quest mattered to him right now.

Alex dropped the handle, and the door shut silently in front of him. He needed more time to think.

18

Fi

Fi had been running.

She was a soccer player, so no big deal. But the twins hadn’t been at the Pixel Comics booth—Fi had missed the end of the signing by minutes. And she couldn’t go back toward the AC Comics booth for fear of James M. And so she just started … running, to every corner of the con, ignoring texts from her parents, in the hopes that she might find her siblings. And the worst part about it?

She was now …

As sweaty and smelly …

As everyone. Else. Here.

Fi finally slowed to a brisk walk in one of the more sparsely populated areas of the con and decided to just accept it. This was her life now. She lived here. She lived here in this nerd convention surrounded by smelly nerds and would just slowly become one of them. It was inevitable.

But, Fi wondered to herself, slowing her pace even further … was it that bad? She thought about Rowan again and swallowed.

Rowan was a nerd. And she smelled great.

How did she even manage that in here? Fi made a mental note to ask her later.

If Fi ever managed to find her again. Ugh.

All hope lost, Fi decided to stop looking into the faces of the people around her for her siblings and to start looking at where she was. She found herself in a couple of rows that a giant ceiling-hung sign identified as ARTIST ALLEY. This looked different from the rest of the con, Fi noticed; there was no corporate branding or flashy TVs, no gigantic lines or people in branded T-shirts trying desperately to shove a free bookmark in your face. Instead, there were rows upon rows of individual tables set up like a craft fair, each booth with its own unique flair. And so many of the people sitting behind the tables, Fi noticed, were super-stylish young women. They were selling prints and original sketches and pins and stickers; that one had Lunar Soldier–themed art, but all the characters were dre

ssed like cool tattooed biker babes; this one had a ton of Vigilante League art, but the boy Vigilante Leaguers were smooching. Cute.

“Here, you can have a card!” said the girl behind the Vigilante League booth. She couldn’t have been that much older than Fi.

“Oh, thanks,” Fi said, grabbing the business card from the girl’s outstretched hand. The card had all the artist’s social media info on it.

“No problem. You a Vigilante League fan?” she asked, tucking a long strand of purple-tipped black hair behind her ear.

“Not really?” Fi answered. “I was just admiring the art.”