Colder than Ice Read online

  “Oh, you should write that story!” Joanna cried, just as Prasad said,

  “Argh, don’t lose focus, we still have a script to get through!”

  Get through it, they had. Everything was down to the wire now.

  Studio execs had run countless focus groups to judge and rate different facets of the plot, and some things couldn’t be changed back at this point. Other movies now depended on it, along with countless jobs and—oh yeah, plenty of money. The new script didn’t lose her vision, but it had expanded the scope of the “Morgannaverse” to include other planets from Card One properties that would be developed into films down the road. Laying groundwork for interconnectivity. That made sense to her.

  What she wasn’t sure about was the… the only way to describe it was high-drama theatricality constantly going on inside the Toluma’a, the living spacecraft where Mordred held court and Lucius schemed alternately between helping his father and leaving his family forever. There was a lot of monologuing and sudden, startling yelling at quiet moments that she couldn’t help but feel pulled focus away from Morganna’s time on Earth. She hadn’t focused nearly this much panel space on Lucius’s issues—why did the movie seem to insist on developing him so much as a character?

  But then again: Colin Younger, professional genius. And also again, the man paying for her working staycation in Los Angeles. She’d yet to meet him, but Prasad’s job was contingent on making the man happy, so she couldn’t exactly blame her coworker.

  What to do—just accept that this was how Hollywood operated and get out of the way? Or fight for her work because she hadn’t done enough the last time? She sighed and looked at the stacks of screenplays in front of her. Everything was a compromise. Even her social life.

  The instant she’d woken up, Sophie had cringed because the first thing she remembered was confessing to Tristan what Derek had done. God, another thing to regret. As though she’d needed his sympathy and reassurance, or had the right to ask for it. Like he could do anything about some idiot ex-boyfriend stealing her work. Opening up always seemed good in the moment, until your brain replayed every split second of the other person’s reaction, and began to pick apart how they could have been bored to death, or just hoping you’d shut up so the conversation could move on.

  He’d been a good listener, though. Didn’t step on her toes, or interrupt her, or seem like he was just waiting until she closed her mouth so he could say something brilliant.

  Sophie had her head tilted to the side, the memory of Tristan’s bare forearms with a few bubbles of dish soap clinging to them still strong, when the conference room door flew open, and the man attached to Movies Now magazine’s “Most Lickable Forearms” (an honor that teetered oddly between embarrassing and accurate) burst in, slammed the door shut, and heaved his back against it.

  The two of them stared at each other for a moment, both sets of eyes wide, Tristan breathing hard, floppy curls out of place.

  “Uh—” Sophie began. Tristan strode forward, grabbed one of the chairs at the table, and wedged it underneath the door handles to make a barricade. She wondered momentarily if she should be concerned for herself, but Tristan started pacing the other end of the room, both hands clasped at the back of his head.

  “You okay?”

  Tristan whirled around, opened his mouth to answer her, then seemed to think better of it, and kept up the frenetic pacing. He was paler than usual, which was saying something.

  “Because you don’t seem like you’re okay,” Sophie continued carefully. She remembered seeing a PR statement in a blog post comment that Tristan Eccleston had recently taken a rest holiday, which didn’t exactly mean rehab, but didn’t sound like something you did when you’d just joined a blockbuster franchise and your star was about to peak.

  Just as she was wondering if there was a protocol for this that she didn’t know about—and then felt guilty for automatically assuming that the man in front of her was experiencing something requiring a full psychiatric crisis team—Tristan turned to her and said in a voice that surprised her with its depth,

  “No, I—”

  He dropped his hands to his sides almost immediately. Without thinking about it, Sophie got up and went over to him. He looked genuinely distressed, but before she could ask him anything else, Tristan gave a sigh that tipped over into a frustrated groan and sank into one of the conference room chairs.

  “Are you having a panic attack?” she tried helpfully. If she just knew what was going on, she could at least guess at what to do. Tristan’s response was to make another groaning noise that she could only assume was the word no. “Do you want some water? Some fresh air? I can call Prasad, maybe he knows what to do—”

  “The only thing I really want,” Tristan’s voice came up at her from where he’d buried his face in his hands, “Is to be alone for a bit.” He resurfaced and looked at her a bit blearily, “But I didn’t think anyone was in here, and I don’t want to kick you out.”

  “What are you doing in here?” She was starting to wish he’d gone to Prasad’s office instead. This was very awkward.

  “Hiding,” he said, sounding miserable. And groaned again, this time turning it into an aaaargh.

  Sophie couldn’t think of anything else to do, and hoping he wouldn’t think she was making fun of him, joined in, trying to be encouraging, if nothing else.

  Both of them making a frustrated groaning noise.

  This went on for several seconds.

  The door opened, and Prasad came in to the conference room. The sound of them both aaarghing cut off suddenly. He squinted at them curiously for a moment, then pointed at the conference room chair that had easily slid out of the way when he’d pushed the door.

  “You know those things have wheels, right? What are you two doing in here? Sound like a pair of foxes screaming at each other in the woods declaring their love.”

  Tristan and Sophie stared at him, and Prasad stared back.

  “Oh my God, where’s my phone, we need to watch that right now.”

  “Prasad,” Sophie began.

  “Eh, it’ll keep,” he replied. “So, have you seen… her?” He directed this to Tristan, but snuck the briefest of glances to Sophie. The way he’d said it almost made it seem like the word her deserved some reverb, or at least a dramatic sting.

  Tristan pressed his fingers into the center of his forehead and looked over toward the bank of picture windows along the far side of the room as though he’d like to leave an unusually long-limbed hole in the glass like a cartoon escape.

  “What’s going on?” Sophie said carefully, squinting at Prasad.

  “Is she still out there?” Tristan said, apparently rediscovering his ability to string words together.

  “Did you know she’s got a meeting with Colin? Can she even do that—”

  “She’s always doing it, it’s practically her calling card, that’s what she did in Sylvia. And Musings Uptown, that one was yours, and looked at what happened there! Complete retool, but it’s alright—”

  “—because someone got a BAFTA!”

  Tristan nodded and began worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. Prasad threw his arms into the air and let them flop down.

  “What d’you reckon she wants? Script changes? Is she fucking the director this time? Producer credit? Oh God, a role?!” Prasad took a moment to steady himself against the back of a chair. “I cannot, cannot rewrite an entire fucking script literally the day before a table read, I won’t do it. I’ve said it in the past—”

  “No, I know, I know,” Tristan replied, bolting out of the chair to return to his pacing, running his hands through his hair. “We’ve all been burned,” and this part he said with a brittle laugh that nearly collapsed into something sharper and more fragile altogether, the look on his face very strange.

  “Nobody wants this, surely,” said Prasad, placing both palms face down on the table. “Nobody wants this to turn into a Gabriella Zahn Production.”

  “Is
that who’s out there?”

  Sophie was taken aback when both men turned to look at her incredulously, like they’d forgotten she was there. Tristan gulped, turned to Prasad and said,

  “Has she really been dating Colin?”

  “I’ve no idea,” the screenwriter said, and then looked at Sophie. “She’s got a nasty habit of elbowing her way into productions at the last second, upending months of careful planning and wrapping the production heads around her finger. You think you’re insulated, all greenlit for production, daily sides are printed up, and suddenly—bam. It all goes tits up.”

  “She sabotages things frequently?”

  Tristan and Prasad exchanged a surprisingly dark look.

  “It is what she’s known for,” Tristan murmured in a diplomatic tone of voice.

  “No idea how she pulls it off, but it’s a routine with her, or a game. She starts working some kind of black magic so she can steal everybody’s thunder, charm the press at the publicity tours, and walk away with an armload of awards.”

  “And she’s done it to both of you,” Sophie said, gesturing between the two men.

  Prasad nodded, and Tristan looked away, out the windows again. She tilted her head, thinking back to that PR release. There was something else… she wasn’t exactly a noted connoisseur of Hollywood gossip or entertainment industry information, but scrolling through Tumblr every now and then made certain garbled bits and pieces of information stand out from the intense academic analysis that fans liked to use to obsess over their favorite characters.

  It hit her suddenly, and Sophie snapped her fingers, making Tristan turn his head back to her.

  “You guys broke up a few months ago, didn’t you!”

  From their faces—and another look exchanged—it had been the wrong tone of voice. Too excited, not by the context, but about the fact that she’d managed to remember something from the tabloids. But, definitely the wrong words, too. Sophie lowered her hand as Tristan went red all the way up to the tips of his ears. Tristan was a person with feelings, she remembered too late, and not just a hot property.

  She shifted from one foot to the other, eager to move on. “So what do people do in a situation like this?”

  “You try to do your job as best you can, work around her,” answered Prasad with a shrug.

  “Can’t you talk to someone? I mean, it’s your job, your livelihood, and she can’t just do that, there’s at least four other movies with storylines that interlock with this one.”

  “She’s very well practiced,” Tristan’s voice was quiet from where he was now sitting on the edge of the picture windows. “Always gets what she wants in the end.”

  “If she gets to Colin and Poppy Ryan, she’ll wind up in every Card One production from here on out,” Prasad told Sophie. “Colin’s been in the trade papers quoted as saying he’d like to have a star of high caliber in the franchise. They’ve been slumming it—no offense—”

  Tristan acknowledged this with a blink.

  “—because the studio hasn’t been hiring Hollywood A-listers until now, they’ve been making them. And pretty soon they’ll have enough of the movie-going public’s money to bring in bigger guns, true household names. It won’t just be beefcakes who look good in spandex and can deliver lines well.”

  “So they’ll—”

  “Look. Gabriella Zahn might be horrid behind the scenes, but on the front side of things, she brings in awards and lucrative fashion deals, which has a halo effect on anyone associated with her. If she’s here to negotiate a part last-minute, especially a cameo for a future plot line setup, they’ll jump at the chance to get her, even if they have to create a role for her out of thin air,” Prasad finished. “And then we’ll never be rid of her.” He glanced over at Tristan, who was still looking out the window. “It isn’t a question of if, it’s when.”

  He sounded so resigned to it that Sophie recoiled a little.

  The idea of Gabriella Zahn infiltrating a film—a script—that she had so much stake in, had worked so hard on, had spent sleepless nights obsessing over, had quit a stable if mind-numbingly boring office job with a dental plan for, suddenly rose up in front of Sophie like the specter of her still-unpaid student loans. To cede creative control to one set of executives—that was a compromise. The prospect of giving it to an actress with an overinflated ego who seemed to think she was entitled to anything she wanted…

  She had no idea what it was that made her stand up suddenly—whether the simmering anger over someone ruining her project, or the way Prasad was drumming his fingers on the table, or the way Tristan looked so grim and unlike himself over the thought of his ex-girlfriend joining his first real foray into the world of Lucius—but she did. Both men looked over.

  Sophie brushed at a thread at the bottom of her shirt hem and lifted her chin.

  “Well, if nobody else is going to do anything about it, I will,” she said.

  “She’s probably already in Poppy Ryan’s office,” Prasad told her.

  “I will prevent this from being a disaster if I have to,” Sophie shot back at him, feeling a sense of righteousness at the thought of it. She leaned over to look at Tristan, gazing back at her with an inscrutable expression. For his part, Prasad looked… politely dubious.

  She turned and strode out of the conference room to head for the lobby.

  It was not difficult to locate Gabriella Zahn—hair dyed to platinum blonde, cherry red lipstick in place, a gorgeous strapless jumpsuit with pleats that would only look good on someone with two percent body fat, red-bottom high heels so high they looked like they’d crush a lesser being’s arches, and of course the signature move: a large, expensive, and totally empty handbag perched over the woman’s upturned wrist.

  The woman was looking down into the screen of her cell phone. Sophie looked around—was the director making her wait? Seemed like a risky move. Or maybe Gabriella was making Poppy wait.

  Whatever the case, she stepped up and said in a bright, chipper voice that couldn’t be ignored,

  “Gabriella, hi! I hear you’re interested in the Morganna movie, is that right?”

  Gabriella Zahn lifted her impressive chin and in one smooth gesture turned to give Sophie and up-and-down look that did not come to a positive conclusion.

  “Meredith, did Poppy Ryan send a PA?” It was clear that she’d gotten the assistant’s name wrong on purpose, and Sophie resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

  Madison, seated at the desk, looked back and forth between the two women.

  “I only ask because Morganna’s been cast and they aren’t looking for any stunt doubles,” Sophie continued with a crooked, if ingratiating, grin. “Then again, I’m not the casting director, so—”

  “Then who are you?” Gabriella’s accent was as strong as Tristan’s and Prasad’s, but somehow even more arch.

  “Sophie,” said Sophie breezily. “Sophie Markes. I write the Morganna comics.”

  Gabriella Zahn went into motion again, this time angling her shoulders and waist toward Sophie, a trick Sophie caught as mirroring her to create a sense of shared energy.

  “I haven’t read them yet, but they must be very interesting, coming from someone with your life experience,” she said, assessing Sophie’s ballet flats from Target and the jeans she’d gotten at the outlet mall two years ago that needed hemming and were in a constant state of being slightly rolled up.

  “Prasad seems to think so,” Sophie began.

  “Oh, you’ve been working with the screenwriter. Interesting.” It sounded anything but, in Gabriella’s voice.

  “They brought me on as a script consultant, which sure makes me think they like my story,” said Sophie with a laugh.

  It was hard to tell, but the slightest indentation appeared between Gabriella’s eyebrows, betraying an intrigued frown.

  “Working with Tristan too, I bet,” Gabriella murmured.

  “Yeah he’s been great too,” said Sophie with a quick hand gesture, hoping to avoid any resi
dual drama. She steered them back on topic. “And we have spent so much time on this project—reworking it, retooling the characters, trying to bring an essence to the movie that’s both true to the comics and fresh enough to surprise the audience.”

  Gabriella hmmed and tilted her head, scrutinizing the woman in front of her.

  “He always said fixing things was his favorite part of script writing,” she replied, her eyes never straying from Sophie’s.

  “Well, he’s an excellent writer, and a very kind and sweet collaborator in the whole process—I mean, I must drive him crazy, texting at all hours, hanging out at diners at 2AM talking rewrites… Honestly, it’s just nice to work with someone who gets what I’m going for,” said Sophie. “I guess that’s weird to dump on someone like you that I hardly know, but—” Sophie smiled and gestured toward the actress, whose eyebrows had risen ever so slightly. “I’m so curious to know why you’re interested in this film. Being who you are and all.”

  Gabriella Zahn took her time answering, and gave Sophie a long, hard look while she did it.

  “I wanted to see it all for myself,” she said, and if Card One had allowed smoking inside their buildings, it felt as though she might have taken a slow drag on a cigarette inside a holder as long as her arm, “Colin’s been making noise about a cameo.”

  “Oh?”

  Sophie’s bright voice hung in the air for several moments.

  “Mmm,” said Gabriella. “But you know, talking with you, it sounds like you two have already put so much work into the project as it is, and I am so busy these days…”

  “Really,” said Sophie. “I don’t want to take anything away from you—”

  “Oh, no, of course not,” said Gabriella with a perfect smile. “Don’t worry about me; I’ve always got something on the burner. Besides, I’d hate to get in the way of such a good story.”