Colder than Ice Read online

  These familiar things lived coiled up inside him, ready to be sprung out and executed with precision at a moment’s notice. They were just under the surface of his chest, always waiting for his cue in the play or the film.

  That was what the screenwriters wanted. A bit of restructuring, a good line, and it was all fixed. He’d saved Moon Beyond the Staircase, won Yolanda Newman an Academy nomination for Unfold the Rose, and had actually helped Tom Stackman completely restructure the third act of Akalina by making sure the heroine would see her lover reflected in a mirror instead of seeing a photograph of him.

  When he’d finally admitted to this secret work to a very drunk Prasad, his new friend had remarked that it was probably genetic, that he couldn’t help being able to regurgitate Shakespearean drama with a family as disgustingly tied to the ancient theatrical stages as the Ecclestons were.

  “Seeping out your pores,” Prasad had slurred. “You can’t help it, so the best thing is to get rid of it while you can.”

  Tristan had decided that Prasad was the best friend he’d ever had after that, especially since his confession never wound up on the gossip sites. Helping screenwriters was just something he did, like proofreading a friend’s term paper or giving away pots of honey he’d never eat from a beehive in the back garden. There was no point to not doing it, and it was another of those things that made people happy.

  And he enjoyed it, mostly.

  “You’ll see the rewards of my labors soon enough,” said Prasad as the driver pulled in to the Card One lot. “Our labors. Along with the other thing.”

  Tristan was intrigued, but held off on asking his friend what he meant by that until the driver had been instructed to take his luggage home and they’d gone inside to Prasad’s new office—huge desk, 4k computer monitor, and all.

  “See?” Prasad leaned back in the leather executive’s chair, arms behind his head. “All those late nights typing on the couch have been worth it.”

  “What’s the other thing, then?”

  “Hmm? Oh, the other thing.” Prasad sat the chair back down on its base. “They’ve hired a script consultant.”

  Prasad’s face didn’t give away whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. On TV shows, consultants were brought in for authenticity, like on police procedurals or in hospital dramas. Tristan already felt rather defensive of Dark Magic, especially since it was the first big popcorn film he’d ever gotten to work on, and at last he settled on a slight frown.

  “Why do we need a consultant?”

  “Because,” said Prasad, jumping to his feet and grabbing his tea mug off the desk, “the studio heads want the comic’s creator to be fully invested in the brand.”

  “Fully invested in the brand?” Tristan echoed as they walked down the hallway toward the kitchen together.

  “They don’t want her being poached off by some rival, so inviting her on an all-expense paid ‘job’ here in LA is their way of impressing her enough to keep her around.”

  “I would’ve thought the Eisner had done that,” replied the blond as Prasad filled an electric kettle. That was why Card One had snapped up the story in the first place; the comic had already won the Oscar of the graphic novel world. Make a film of something that’s already good—with the right tweaks and adjustments, of course—and you’re practically guaranteed a blockbuster that the critics will fall all over.

  Prasad gave him a wry look.

  “They’d also very much appreciate it if she stuck around to write them another story they could spin into a billion-dollar property.”

  “Is she already here?”

  “She’ll be here today, supposedly, so we will see.” Prasad set the kettle on its base, flipped the switch, and waggled his eyebrows at Tristan significantly.

  This was an interesting development, one that could go either way.

  Creators getting involved in the reinterpretation of their darling child, especially a first-born, could be either helpful in their suggestions or a priggish micromanager.

  Tristan hoped Sophie Markes wasn’t the latter. She was new to comics creation, but had won the Eisner for a reason. Her story crafting was solid, she had a knack for character development and producing tension, and he’d very much enjoyed the Imperium reboot, studying it so many times he’d had to buy the graphic novel after the individual issues finally fell apart. Usually artwork was more interesting than the text, given the way comic authors could sometimes fill the page with word bubbles, but Ms. Markes let her illustrator breathe into the panels. She wasn’t afraid of silence serving as its own dialogue.

  Prasad boiled enough water for two mugs of tea, and pulled a tin of Yorkshire Gold from the back of a cupboard.

  “I didn’t ask how the Dreaded Tome is coming along,” he remarked, trying to be casual. Tristan could always tell from the way his friend wouldn’t look at him when he said things like that.

  “I honestly don’t know where to begin,” Tristan replied.

  “Is he threatening to cut you out this time?”

  “Last I saw him, and mind you, this was around the time—”

  “—many months ago—” Prasad stepped in to save him from having to say it.

  “He mentioned something about footnotes and how they tended to result from things like this,” said Tristan, gesturing around them.

  “What, the kitchen!” Prasad was being dense on purpose.

  “Projects like this one.” Tristan accepted the tea and blew on it exactly the way he’d been taught not to as a child.

  His father Rufus (seven BAFTAs, three Oscars, narrator of an award-winning four-part documentary series on Marlowe’s influence on modern theater) was writing the definitive and lengthy Eccleston family biography.

  “Fathers are often hard on their sons when they’re hoping for success. I’m sure he wants the best for you.”

  “Wants the best, that’s for sure.” Tristan didn’t press the issue; it was exhausting trying to explain the threat that his father had disguised as vague disappointment and manuscript formatting. He wondered if his time away had done any good after all.

  The two of them wandered back down the hallway back in the direction of the office.

  “Something else you might notice,” said Prasad in a low voice, “I think Madison at the front desk got plastic surgery—”

  A loud voice nearby made both men stop. They both looked around in confusion, and pretty soon a short young woman with plain brown hair pulled back into a messy bun atop her head stomped out of the conference room, rifling a thick packet of paper back and forth in her hands, as if it were a bug she was trying to shoo away.

  “I didn’t write this, this is not what I wrote,” she was practically shouting again, shaking the book in her clenched fist, and then piledrove straight into Tristan’s side, sending half the contents of his tea mug onto the floor.

  “Erm, you alright?” said Prasad as Tristan winced, shaking off his hand. “Everything okay?”

  The girl just kept flipping pages back and forth, cycling through several variations of astonishment, rage, exasperation, and despair almost all at once.

  “No, everything is not okay,” she said in a wavering voice, and Prasad took a step backwards, looking a bit stunned. “This is insane!”

  “What is?” said Prasad at the same time that Tristan said,

  “What are you reading, anyway?”

  The young woman didn’t seem to have heard them, because she kept going.

  “I get that sacrifices have to be made,” and here she took a large breath as if she was gearing up to deliver quite the sermon, and Prasad and Tristan exchanged a look, “Especially for the sake of a jump from a static medium to one that moves. But changing the entire goddamn motivation for the main character is just…” She sighed and looked down at the script in her hands, flipping through it.

  “Like this,” she continued, almost desperately, “Halfway through the story Lucius takes over as the narrator and it’s all about him. Ten scenes alon
e on the bridge of Mordred’s ship! The whole thing is this father-son dynamic when the story is about Mor-gan-na, for Chrissakes!”

  Tristan blinked rapidly and turned to see Prasad with what must have been the same expression on his own face.

  “Lucius as the narrator,” she said again, and her tone did not sound pleased. “Tristan Eccleston is taking over this entire project, and I’m supposed to put up with Hollywood’s Hottest Ass? Yeah, no kidding.”

  Prasad clamped one hand over his mouth, as Tristan could only stare at her.

  “Oh my God,” the woman said as she stopped cold in the middle of one page. “There’s a gold statue of Mordred in the middle of his ship. There’s no gold statue! It’s a sleek warship, not a floating city!” She looked up, and seemed to be about to start yelling at them again.

  “Why don’t we make you something to drink, and we can track down the person you need to talk to about this,” said Prasad carefully, reaching to take her arm as a bomb disposal tech might. The woman looked from him to Tristan and back again.

  “You two are production assistants?” Neither of them knew how to answer that question. “Who’s in charge around here?” Prasad opened his mouth, but faltered. “Do you know anyone who works around here?” Her tone grew genuinely inquiring and even a little wounded. “I mean, who do I honestly talk to about fixing this, because this is everything I’ve ever done, and I’m pretty sure this level of difference should invoke a contract review—”

  At the mention of legal proceedings, an inoffensive middle-aged man rounded the corner, and he must have been in charge, because Prasad both relaxed and perked up at the sight of him.

  “Ken!”

  “Ah, there they are! Just in time, welcome back, sir,” he said, clapping Tristan on the shoulder in what Tristan could only guess was a distinctly middle-class American dad way. Reassuring, just like a sitcom. It was nice. “Sophie Markes, this is Prasad Rangarajan, the screenwriter for the film, and Lucius himself, Tristan Eccleston!” Ken gestured to each of them when he said their names.

  Sophie Markes stood with her head tilted and her mouth slightly open as the pages of the book in her hands relaxed to each side with an audible thiwp.

  And kept standing there staring even as Ken’s warm and friendly grin dropped a little before he said,

  “Great! I’ll leave you to it!”

  And disappeared around the corner again.

  There was a very long and awkward pause while Tristan and Prasad stood watching Sophie turn chalk white and then a ruddy pink in gradual stages. She didn’t even seem to be looking at them, just staring off into the space beyond Prasad’s elbow as though she were trying to will herself to sink into the carpet.

  So this was Sophie Markes, Eisner Award winner, author of the Imperium series, script consultant.

  She was shorter than he’d expected, Tristan thought, and then Prasad said,

  “Well! Tea?”

  They managed to wrangle her into the office kitchen without touching her, where Sophie sat at the table very still and blinked a lot before looking first at Prasad, then down at the script in front of her, and then at Prasad again. He set a fresh mug of tea in front of her and pulled up his own chair, smiling in that broad, unflappable way that suggested first that he hadn’t heard any of the insults pouring out of her mouth about his script, and second, that he didn’t particularly mind any of them anyway.

  “I’m so sorry,” she began, hands already over her face, but Prasad waved it off.

  “No, it’s understandable,” he said, “Anyway, that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? It’s not finalized, anyway, we can redo it.” This said with a breezy tone, as if it wasn’t a big deal that the creator herself hated his final script product.

  Tristan remembered the late-night phone calls from Prasad, the whining, the sound of his head thumping against the edge of his desk, the drunk wailing that this isn’t good enough, this will never be good enough, I am finished with writing and Hollywood forever, I am pouring my blood and soul into a boundless void and for what?!, and snorted loudly.

  Sophie whipped her head toward him and seemed to see Tristan for the first time. He tilted his head and laid his forearms flat on the table. People seemed to like both those things about him, and it wouldn’t hurt to play into that reputation. He had a knack, after all, for defusing tempers with nothing but a light smile and general friendliness—and he could overlook her sarcastic remarks about him for the sake of saving her from such an embarrassing episode, at least.

  But this young woman didn’t blush or sigh at what Shhh! had called the Sexiest Forearms Ever.

  Instead, she frowned.

  Her eyebrows actually pinched together and her mouth turned down. The entire effect was like she was trying to place him, figure out who he was, even though the man called Ken had said his name and his character’s name very clearly back in the hallway in a way that did not allow for confusion or misunderstanding.

  Tristan Eccleston. Lucius. From the movie. Her comic. Dark Magic? She had just been complaining about him?

  And then Sophie Markes blinked, her face cleared, and she said,

  “Oh.”

  Just like that.

  Just, oh.

  It was Prasad’s turn to snort, which he gracelessly turned into a cough when Tristan kicked him beneath the table.

  “This is mortifying,” she said, turning back to Prasad and digging her fists into her eyes, “I’ve had the worst weekend. Can we… start over?”

  “Of course!” Prasad picked up the thread effortlessly and held out his hand for her to shake. “I’m Prasad, nice to meet you, Sophie. Welcome to LA and Card One Studios.”

  Sophie half-smiled and shook his hand, Tristan still sitting there looking at the two of them a bit stupidly, and then she turned to him and said,

  “I… didn’t think you’d be here.”

  “Oh,” said Tristan, taken aback. “Really?”

  “Actors aren’t usually involved in pre-production, are they? Don’t you guys have to finalize the script before the table reads and rehearsals?”

  “Well, er,” Tristan replied, turning to Prasad for help and getting a blank look. He searched for an excuse. “I came to… see Prasad’s new office,” he managed finally.

  Apparently waking up and deciding to aid in the cause, Prasad nodded.

  “Is that a big deal?”

  “It is when you’re Card One’s newest salaried screenwriter!” cried Prasad, gesturing to himself grandly. “Office and everything!”

  Prasad and Sophie went down the hall towards the stupid magical office, leaving Tristan to follow in their wake with his half-empty mug of now-lukewarm tea, and eventually find a visitor’s chair that certainly wasn’t the nice one Prasad pulled out for the script consultant.

  “Forget everything that happened over the weekend, even the traffic,” said Prasad after Sophie had told them about her time in Phoenix and the frustrating gridlock from that morning. “We will work, we will write, and we will rewrite this script until you are satisfied.”

  Tristan gave his friend a flat look, and Prasad smiled and shrugged.

  “Or at least until the studio heads and director are satisfied. They were the ones who wanted the story changed in the first place, mind you.” Of course Prasad would pass along responsibility for the story changes to executives—and he wasn’t wrong, they had looked at the comic series and asked for hard changes—but it also wasn’t worth starting another… discussion with the author herself about who’d actually done the alterations.

  Sophie sipped at her tea. Tristan looked at her sidelong, the pert little nose, the flakes of mascara dotted beneath her lower lashes. Hardly the angry little wolverine from twenty minutes ago. But her new complacence and warmth certainly wasn’t directed at him. He wasn’t even getting a little bit of it.

  Had he said or done something wrong? Girls never acted this way around him. Sometimes they went from loud and confident to shy and bashful in the spa
n of a few moments. Or they could hardly look at him. But he’d never been—what was the word.

  Dismissed.

  It was… confusing. And distressing. Did he smell odd today? Was it his shoes after all? He always tried not to be smug or arrogant, but the standard truth of life was that pretty much everybody who ever met him liked Tristan. Or at least they didn’t really have a reason not to like him.

  So how on Earth had he offended Sophie Markes so badly that not only was she not opening up to him, but that she seemed to be actively ignoring him in favor of Prasad?

  Chapter Three

  As bad social interactions went, it was top three, easily. Worse than the time she’d gone out for dinner with her friend Dinah and a homeless man had walked up to them asking for change and she’d handed over a few dollars, and for some reason when the girls had gone inside and sat down, Sophie had been so foolish and mentioned it again, musing out loud that maybe it had been a bit much (oh god), and Dinah had offered to give her some cash to cover “her portion,” and without thinking about it, without even considering the remote possibility that maybe Dinah was being sarcastic or was just trying to be nice or trying to get her to shut up or just make her feel better, Sophie had said yes.

  And the look on Dinah’s face had been more than enough to tell her it had been the wrong answer.

  Sophie pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until she saw rainbow fireworks and sparkles. Amazing how shameful memories never quite lost their edge. And now there was another to add to her library of guilt-ridden shower thoughts.

  She’d insulted the two people who mattered most on the film to their faces. This one was gonna stick, live inside of her and keep her up at night. It already was, and she was tired of curling in on herself alone in her apartment, thinking about doing that to the actual screenwriter Prasad and fucking Tristan Eccleston himself.

  She’d been so deep in her rage spiral—exhaustion from the convention, the long drive across a blank desert landscape, the futility of trying to sleep that first night in an apartment that wasn’t hers, the LA gridlock, and the clincher, the script plot she barely recognized—that she hadn’t even realized it was him standing in the hallway.