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Flying down Van Ness, surrounded by people also moving as fast as they could, Mason took to the street. Down the center, dodging cops and firemen running in the other direction, searching for Claudia. There. Pulled to one side, engine running, passenger door already open and slightly ajar.

“Hit it.” She dropped into the passenger seat, and then lifted her ass to remove the phone she’d just sat on.

Claudia pulled away, moving slowly through the crowd, dodging around emergency services, getting to Melrose and turning right. It was chaos.

“What happened?” Claudia was tight as a drum. Mason could feel her tension filling the car.

“Someone started shooting, but honestly, I think they were just shooting into the air. No one seemed to get hit. The sound was…” Mason shook her head. “I think it was to cause a distraction, to make everyone panic.” She looked at Claudia. “How do you know Julia’s on the move?”

Claudia tipped her head. “Snap Maps. I started doing it when she picked up booze again, just to make sure I could find her if she got too drunk to remember I existed.”

Mason looked at the phone. “You have Snapchat?”

Claudia overtook on the wrong side of the street and narrowly avoided a bus. “Sure. I can add you if you like. I have all the rest of the team, too. See?”

Three police cars and another fire engine passed them as Claudia pulled over impatiently.

Mason frowned. “Julia’s heading home. Why? Who is she with?” She noticed Archie, Will and Ben were also all on the move, though they weren’t as close behind them as she would have liked. “How is she so far ahead of us? And why is her Bitmoji so incredibly accurate?”

Claudia shook her head. “She started moving as soon as the shooting began. That wasn’t the plan, obviously, so I called her, she didn’t answer, and then suddenly there were sirens and panic and I stopped calling and got as close as I could.” She sped up, nipping in and out of traffic, steady but fast. “I perfected her Bitmoji one day when I was bored. Thanks for noticing. Where is she now?”

Mason looked at the Snap Map, at the tiny, well-dressed, cross-looking Julia. “She’s just below Sunset…She’s definitely heading home.” She felt nauseous, worried. “We were all there. How did we lose her?”

Claudia shrugged. “If Julia wants to get lost, there’s nothing you can do. Maybe she just had enough and left.” But there was a tremble in her voice. “But why wouldn’t she call me to drive her home? We had a plan.”

A cop car sped past heading back toward the cemetery. Mason went online and checked social media. Live reports said the shooting was ongoing, warned people to stay away. But nothing else.

“What the actual fuck is going on?” Mason was confused. “Did you try calling her again?”

Claudia nodded. “Several times, but go ahead.”

They’d reached Crescent Heights, and Claudia turned right, heading up toward the canyon. Traffic was heavy: Saturday night at nine, warm summer night, the city was alive and on the move.

“Straight to voicemail.” Mason hung up. “Should I call the cops?”

“Why? Because she Ubered home?”

“Claudia…she didn’t Uber home. Something’s wrong.”

Claudia said nothing, but her face tightened.

Mason texted Archie, although she could see his Bitmoji and Will’s were together, and presumably they had Ben with them.

When did you lose sight of Julia?

They’d finally reached the top of Crescent Heights, the long north-heading road that winds up through Hollywood and ends at Laurel Canyon. Waiting at the light, Claudia held the car with the clutch, balanced and ready to go. As the light changed, she hit the gas, and by the time they’d crossed Sunset, she was doing eighty.

“She’s home,” said Mason, watching the little Bitmoji. “Maybe she’s alone.”

“Maybe,” replied Claudia, watching the road.

Mason’s phone pinged. Will had replied. Archie’s driving. He says she waved at the crowd, she hugged Jason and Jade, then she stepped off the stage and he didn’t see her again. He’s sorry. Sad-face emoji.

Mason typed, She’s home now, but I don’t like it. See you there.

Right behind you.

Mason held on to the door handle as Claudia shot up and around the curves of the canyon. She hit the drive to the house at nearly a hundred, passing the gateposts in a cloud of dust that sparkled in the headlights. It seemed like the sun was still setting up here, the darkness not complete, orange and yellow in the sky.

“What…” Mason sat up in her seat as they got closer. “What’s that?”

“Fuck,” said Claudia. “Call 911, Mason, call now.”

The house was on fire.

Mason hit the front door at a full run, discovering as she did so that the fucking thing was locked. Picking herself up, she turned and found Claudia fumbling in her pocket for the keys.

No dice.

“Dead bolt,” said Claudia, heading around to the side at a sprint. She had her phone in her hand, and Mason could hear the emergency services operator asking for the address. Claudia started shouting it as she and Mason got to the back door and found that locked and bolted, too.

“Mason, look!”

Phil the cat was outside in the garden, blown up to twice his size and not happy about any of this bullshit, no sir. Claudia went to grab him, but he took off.

“Leave him,” said Mason. “He’s a tough cookie. He’ll find a place to wait it out.”

Lorre was the next to appear, barking hysterically and running back and forth. This new place wasn’t working out as well as he had hoped, not at all .

They ran around to the front again, the dog at their heels, and Mason started to hear sirens in the distance. She also saw Will’s car coming down the drive. The fire was in the living room wing, and when Mason picked up the biggest rock she could find and went to throw it through the window, Claudia stopped her. “No…you’ll just feed the fire. We can get in through the utility room.”

“The what?”

“Under the house…” Claudia scrambled down the hill by the pool deck and Mason followed. “Look…”

Under the cantilevered part of the house was a basement Mason hadn’t even known existed. No door, but a window, and a rock and desperation got it broken. Mason smashed away all the glass. She took off her jacket and laid it over the frame, lifting herself up and in. “Go back to the front door. I’ll come open it.”

Claudia looked up at her. “Mason. Just find Julia. The fire service will be here any minute. They’ll take care of the door.”

Mason nodded and dropped to the floor. She looked around quickly, washing machine, dryer, the boiler…and a door to stairs leading up to the kitchen.

The kitchen was eerily quiet, and when Mason flicked the light switch nothing happened. No power.

There wasn’t much smoke in the kitchen, but when she opened the door to the hallway it hit her like a fist. She turned back, closing the door, and wet a couple of dish towels, putting one over her mouth and nose. Back into the hallway, everything dark as hell, the smoke building, the heat from the fire palpable. Every minute, every second counted.

Mason started calling Julia, keeping as low as she could as she reached the door to the living room. Putting her hand on it, feeling the heat, knowing she should turn back, but unable to. Taking a deep a breath, she opened the door.

Everything in the room was on fire. The egg chair. The sofa. The coffee table. All blazing. As Mason opened the door, the change of air pressure caused everything to flare up, and she could only stand in the doorway for a few seconds before the heat pushed her back. But it was enough time to know Julia wasn’t there.

As she started to close the door, there was a terrifying cracking sound and the glass wall at the front of the house shattered into a million pieces. The fire exulted and doubled as the oxygen poured in. The whole room became a flame, and Mason slammed the door and started running blindly to the office.

She could hear sirens now, getting closer, could hear pounding on the front door.

She touched the office door. Cool. No fire here. She opened the door and stepped inside.

Two steps in, she stopped dead and slowly raised her hands, dropping the wet towel.

Julia, unconscious on the sofa. Jade, the same, on the floor. Helen Eckenridge, standing in the middle of the room, pointing a gun at Julia’s head.

“She won’t feel it,” said Helen. “But if you take another step, I’m going to shoot your boss, then you, then the little idiot. Totally your call.”

Mason felt her blood run cold as she read the remorseless madness on Helen’s face. Sirens so close now. On the driveway, if not actually in front of the house. Would they get here in time?

“There are going to be firemen here any minute, Helen. Whatever this is, you kind of screwed it up.”

Helen laughed. “It’s so typical. Every fucking time. I get so close and then it all goes to shit.” The gun wavered in her hand, and for a second she pointed it at her own head, the muzzle tight against her temple. “I had so much to offer, so many ideas, so much talent, and it was all pointless.”

The smoke was filtering under the door in cloudy billows as Mason started moving, and the gun immediately moved, too, back to pointing at Julia’s head, then Jade’s, then back to Julia. Mason grew still. She hadn’t had a boss or a sponsee shot out from under her yet, and today was not going to be that day.

Helen kept talking. “From the minute I met Tony, he told me he was going to help me, going to build my career. But instead we would just talk and talk, and he would take my ideas and use them, and even after the Oscar, he never wanted me to compete with him. I wanted it so much, and he kept promising. The next feature. The next one.”

Mason nodded. “Frustrating. Let’s go outside, Helen. I want to hear it, but let’s talk outside. It’s going to get very hot in here.”

Helen shook her head. “No. Listen. I did a feature for another studio, and he was so angry…he got involved and it went badly and everyone blamed me. I didn’t get another chance for a very long time.” She frowned, waving the gun. “Do you know if a male director messes up they just chalk it up as experience and he gets another chance?…When a female director messes up she goes into movie jail for-fucking-ever.”

“That’s what this is about? Your career?” Mason couldn’t help sounding incredulous. “You killed Tony over movies?” She could feel her throat tightening.

“You don’t get it.” Helen coughed. On the sofa, Julia stirred and started to turn over. “I had so many ideas. Wrote so many scripts. Tried so fucking hard. And he was all promises, you can do the next one , all the meetings where everyone smiled and said great, fantastic, incredible…then nothing. Or where some studio executive suggested a little more personal treatment might get the project rolling…” She waved the gun again. Mason risked another glance at Julia; she was still so very quiet.

“I get nowhere, while male directors younger than me and dumb as bricks get projects and opportunities I should have had…then Me Too happened and suddenly everyone wants female directors but not me because I’m too old…not relevant…not current.” She laughed. “Then, finally, finally Tony agrees to remake Codex , my movie, the movie I wrote when he was too busy getting high, when I was young enough but still, sadly, too fucking female”—Helen laughed—“and then we have lunch and he tells me Jason Reed wants another writer. Someone more…” She choked up, unable to finish her sentence. The smoke was getting thicker. Mason could hear axes on the front door.

But the gun never wavered. Julia wasn’t moving.

Mason frowned. “He wasn’t leaving you the rights?”

“No. Because it was better for the studio. He looks at me over his damn Waldorf salad and says he’s going to leave the studio to Christine and the kid and the rights to Codex with it. Easier, he says, simpler. The studio will control it all. Then he has the balls to smile at me and remind me the more successful the movie is, the better it is for me. Money wise. Like I give a shit about the money. He said he was going to meet with his lawyer soon, change his will.”

Mason could hear the hiss and rush of water under pressure. The sound of glass contracting and breaking.

Helen was oblivious. “Do you know what it’s like to have a dream and get it stepped on, over and over and over again? Executives wanting to touch my tits, openly asking for blow jobs because no one ever said no to them…” She stopped and tried to take a breath. “The things I did. The things they did to me. They promised and never delivered. And then Tony took away the one thing I thought was certain. And I was done with broken promises.”

She shrugged. “I had to stop him and it had to be quick. I went to the shelter and got fentanyl. I was going to poison him…but then I saw him leaving his house, and I followed him here and I suddenly had this brilliant idea—the curse.” She looked, wide-eyed, at Mason. “Good directors control, great directors improvise , they make the most of serendipity, a change in the light, an unexpected opportunity. Once I saw him and Julia together, I realized I could stir up the curse, make publicity for the film, nothing better than free advertising…he taught me that. I had some of his props in the car, taking them to the museum, including the rifle. I learned to shoot when I was a stuntwoman. I got him on the first try.

“I used another for tonight’s little party, set up a nice little rig, with a timer, shots in the air. No one gets hurt, but oh, so much press…But then Julia said it was all going to Cody, to the fucking sandwich delivery boy, and I lost it. I pulled a gun on Julia once the movie started and was going to kill her then and there, but Jade, of all people, stepped up to protect her and I had to take them both. What better ending to the whole thing than both stars dying at once, in a highly cinematic house fire? People will be watching this place burn from everywhere in the city. You can see it from Downtown to Hollywood…” She started to laugh and cry at the same time, the gun veering from Julia, to Jade, to her own head. “The footage is going to be incredible.”

Mason suddenly noticed Julia was moving. Her head still down, but her hand inching toward…the remote.

“Helen,” she said, keeping the woman’s attention on her, the gun still pointing at Julia, “men suck. The movie business sucks. They both suck much harder if you’re a woman, I get that. But right now we should put down the gun and go out…”

In one fluid movement, Julia sat up, took aim and threw the remote. As it hit Helen precisely in the nose, Mason leapt forward and tackled the woman to the ground, the gun skittering across the floor. As she lay there, she wondered for the twentieth time how much practice Julia had had throwing the remote, and then was just grateful for it.

The doors flew open and two firemen burst in.

“Hello, boys,” said Julia, standing up in her leather catsuit, weaving a little and holding her head. “I don’t suppose either of you brought any scotch, did you? I could really use a fucking drink.”