Caro, once considered the most beautiful woman in the world, had a daughter with a relatively ugly magician. Caro’s daughter, unfortunately, inherited her father’s looks—and his magic. She uses that magic to help protect her beautiful mother, and famous women like her, from the snarkmeisters on red carpets everywhere.
But the snarkmeisters pale in comparison to the darker magic driving them—a magic that thrives on human failings. A magic that might prove too great to overcome.
“Fashion and the Snarkmeisters,” by New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch is free on this website for one week only. The story’s also available as an ebook through various online retailers here.
Fashion and the Snarkmeisters
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
You saw it, everyone did—1 billion people if the Nielsens are right (and they so rarely are)—that moment when the statue of a gigantic, naked, golden man toppled onto a scrum of snarky, microphone-wielding “reporters.”
Oh, the dithering. Oh, the slow-motion replays. Oh, the terrified faces—right out of a Hollywood disaster movie.
No one was injured, at least not in the Hollywood-disaster-movie way. Expensive clothing was wrinkled and stained beyond repair. Reputations were ruined with little more than a few high-pitched squeals. And way too many people celebrated on social media.
I admit, had I been sitting at home watching the so-called debacle, I might have Tweeted something inappropriate and regretted it enough to delete my Twitter feed the next day.
But I wasn’t at home. I was standing about fifty feet to the left, behind the emergency curtain at the edge of the red carpet, some special safety pins clamped in my teeth, a stronger-than-surgical-steel needle in my right hand, and a spool of special glittery metallic thread in my left.
I might have growled a cheer, but I knew better than to open my mouth and take a deep breath before shouting my huzzahs. After all, if I had swallowed those pins and lost my concentration…
Well, I get ahead of myself.
***
The Real Beginning
I have no idea if the snark started on May 16, 1929, in the Blossom Room at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (make that May 17, the day after the Big Event) or if it started back at dawn of time when clothing stopped being optional.
What I do know is this: The word “award” came into common use in the Middle Ages, and if you look at mainstream dictionaries (the ones that don’t accept magic), you’ll see that award meant “decision after careful observation.” Okay, fine. That sounds right—especially considering how much time we all spend watching the nominated films every year.
For the magical, though, the word “award” holds a deeper meaning. The word has the word “ward” in it, and wards, as we magical know, mean “to protect, guard.”
You think you know where I’m going—especially since that gigantic golden man fell on those snarky faux-celebrities—but hang on. You have no real idea.
Because once upon a time, awards carried no bling. The bling that you were awarded, back in the day (Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Medieval Europe) came in the form of trophies.
And the word “trophy” comes from the French trophée which means “a spoil or prize of war.”
Once trophies got associated with awards—and when all of that moved to Hollywood—the war metaphor becomes apt. Epic battles, gauntlets, victories, and defeats occur throughout award season. Someone’s always on top, someone’s always losing, someone doesn’t fight hard enough, and someone always does something memorable, although not necessarily in a heroic way.
My earliest experiences with awards season came courtesy of my mother, whom you all know as Caro—so famous that all you need is the nickname.
Yeah, that Caro, whose real name had become unwieldy over the decades: Carolyn Sarah Brown Lodge Young Blondell Reynolds Taylor Mellon Torres.
As most of you probably know, Mother was the most nominated actress in the history of film awards—until Meryl Streep took the title a few years ago.
Mother: Beautiful, powerful, award-nominated, always at the top of her game—at least in public. And a mess in private.
The husbands saw that and fled, leaving me alone with her. Me, the only daughter of the most beautiful woman in the world.
I had three reactions to awards season.
I hated what they did to my mother.
I loooooooved the clothes.
I really really really loved the clothes.
I was ten when I realized those things could be melded together.
***
The Bad Guys…
…are not the snarkmeisters who got crushed. Honestly, really, as much as we all love to hate them, these so-called “fashion experts” and/or “fashion bloggers” and/or “fashion critics” are really human beings with no real talent themselves (except wit, which, we can argue, is a talent which can be used for good or for harm).
Somehow these slimeballs manage to fill airtime in a way that draws viewers. People like Mother, who have only glamor (actually “glamour”—they’re dusted with fairy magic that makes them shine even more than the rest of us), can’t see the actual magic that fuels this stuff.
A crack between worlds opened when fashion became important (and much as I love it, I’m not giving you that history), and then the crack widened with each incursion of critics. The International Best Dressed List? Started in 1940, not coincidentally as the world marched to war.
The rise of television, the march of fashion magazines, the plummeting self-esteem of young girls—all a plot that came from the deepest, darkest magics.
Women hold the most innate power, as you all know (or maybe you don’t), which is why forces always emerge to hold us down. As each victory occurs, another battle springs up elsewhere.
How do I know all this stuff? Because I inherited almost everything from my father. And no, you have no idea who my father is. In fact, in our house, he’s called He Who Shall Remain Nameless, mostly because the press has not yet figured out that he exists. He was a one-night stand between the first Mellon marriage and the second Mellon marriage (Caro and Rafe Mellon divorced, then realized they couldn’t live without each other—until they did).
Sadly, I look just like my father—short, squat, big ears, pointy chin. The press, the fashion bloggers, hell everyone on social media mentions this all the time—how sad it is that the daughter of the most beautiful woman in the world (okay, now they call her “one of” the most beautiful women in the world, but still) is an ugly duckling who never turned into a swan.
And no one, not even my mother, thinks that odd.
But I know why I’m here. Because He Who Shall Remain Nameless gifted me with magic—the one that makes things happen. (You don’t think it was an accident that a guy as ugly as him slept with the most beautiful woman in the world, do you?)
Part of that magic I inherited is the ability to see other magic. Imagine my fear one night as I watched the clips of Events coverage and saw black shapes glowing behind the snarkmeisters. This was early 1990s, when the awards shows were still in their fashion infancy. In fact, most of the attendees chose their own clothes and the phrase “Red Carpet Fashion” didn’t even exist.
The arrivals got shown in a clip montage as the Big Event started—and that’s when I saw those shapes, hovering.
I was at home, where every good ten-year-old should be, eating popcorn with my nanny. Events nights were scary nights in the house, because they devastated Mother.
She always had the best I’m so pleased you won instead of me face, but after the cameras shut off, she didn’t go to the after-parties. She came home and sobbed. By the next day—at least back then—she was all right, ready to return to whatever soundstage they had pried her out of to attend the Event, but the night of the ceremony, my mother was a hurt little girl, who couldn’t understand why no one liked her, really really liked her.
The snarkmeisters had little power then. Usually they wrote for newspapers or fashion magazines, weeks after the Event, and their words had little impact. They didn’t even hold microphones in those ancient days. Yet the black shadows stood behind them, sparkling with orange glimmers of evil intent.
And I couldn’t help myself. I screamed.
Popcorn everywhere, a panicked nanny, a terrified child. Lots and lots of tears, which had to be quelled before Mother came home to indulge in hers.
I wasn’t crying because I was sad, but because I was frightened.
That night marked the first time I voluntarily called He Who Shall Remain Nameless.
He chuckled, a raspy unpleasant sound that always reminds me of fingernails on a blackboard, and said, “Kid, the world’s rich right now. So the darkness comes to feed. It’ll get worse before it gets better. You can do two things. You can let it consume those delicate flowers like your mother, or you can figure out how to protect her.”
And then he hung up.
By then, I had stopped crying and started thinking.
I couldn’t convince Mother to drag me to the Events. She said They Weren’t Appropriate For Children (while thinking that Children Weren’t Appropriate For Events).
It took a confluence of things to lead me to my calling.
***
Thing The First
I turned thirteen. In Hollywood terms, there’s nothing worse than hitting puberty as the ugly daughter of the most beautiful woman in the world. (In real world terms, there’s a lot worse, but let’s go with my reality, shall we?)
I mean, puberty is tough enough for girls. Parts bud, other parts spontaneously bleed, zits appear, and lifelong friends (going through the same hormonal nightmares) sometimes turn into mean girls.
Mother actually helped.
She said, “My darling, you look the way you look. None of us can take credit for our genetics. However, you can control the way that you present yourself. Think of your clothing as your armor. Every day is a battle to be beautiful, and if your face can’t achieve it for you, then you make absolutely certain that your clothing will.”
She taught me hair, makeup, asset management (not the financial kind) and how to make the most of the best parts and minimize the bad parts.
I surpassed her knowledge within a year, and was actually helping her dress—and about that point I discovered—
***
Thing The Second
—my talent for creation. If I made clothing, sewed my own dresses, embroidered my own jeans, I added the kind of glamour that my mother had. A wisp of fairy dust that made the clothes just that much more beautiful.
It would take years of study, both magical and nonmagical, to actually learn true fashion—but I get ahead of myself.
Because I hadn’t realized that I wanted to become one of the best fashion designers in the world until I discovered—
***
Thing The Third
—photos of a short, not-beautiful woman who died the year I was born. She had everything my mother never had—including eight Academy Awards (and more nominations than anyone except Walt Disney). She was a woman named Edith Head, the best costume designer the movies have ever known.
Not fair. She didn’t design costumes. She created fashion. The kind that defined eras. Era after era after era.
If she could dress everyone from Mae West to Audrey Hepburn, finding the perfect clothes for those completely different bodies, then she truly was a magician—and one I aspired to be.
And that, my friends, was the true beginning of Warrior Woman Design.
***
At First…
I just wanted the rest of us—y’know, those of us with few assets to manage—to have equal footing in the workplace. Study after study after study has shown that beautiful people get higher pay, better jobs, and more press coverage than folks whose faces (and bodies) aren’t symmetrical.
A little glamour on a business dress, and suddenly a plain woman becomes powerful. Or maybe she just thinks she does. Or maybe her inner beauty shines out.
Back then, I had no idea what made it work, but now I know. You feel beautiful, then you are beautiful. It’s that simple, that profound.
I learned design at several fashion institutes and donated the clothes to needy women who didn’t have the right outfit for a job interview. (We still have a branch that does that.)
And as I grew more confident, the world kept changing. Fashion became relevant. Places like E! Entertainment Television began four-hour shows live from the red carpet of every damn award ceremony ever held, and the snarkmeisters gained power. Or, in truth, the shadows that had started to fill the snarkmeisters’ eyes and govern their dumpy, jealous, non-creative little bodies gained power.
The last year my mother dressed herself for the award-show gauntlet was the first year I got to accompany her on the red carpet, and now it’s time to dump the cutesy little half-screenplay way I’ve been writing this thing.
Because that night was hell.
***
Through the magic of television, the red carpet looks big and beautiful and in our collective imaginations, everything around it is big and beautiful too.
But really—No.
Most neighborhoods in Los Angeles are not beautiful, sorry to say. They’re flat retail markets with scuzzy 1960s or 1980s or 1990s buildings that look dated in that magic sunlight. The sidewalks are wide, the traffic backs up even on a good day, and the tourists gawk everywhere, expecting a star.
The red carpet is protected space—covered in awnings, guarded by security, usually for days before an Event. Most Events have risers set up on either side of the carpet for “fans” who aren’t really fans, more like paparazzi who staked out the turf. (Every Event tries to weed out the paparazzi, but can’t, now that everyone wears baggy, low-slung, ripped jeans and some rude T-shirt.)
TV trucks park as close as allowed. A wall covered with the Event’s logo goes up beside the red carpet so that the Truly Famous can be photographed properly for the fashionistas and post-game (I mean—Event) shows, and the week-long orgy that is post-Event entertainment television.
We little people, and by that I mean those of us who are not nominated Actors or presenter Actors, get shoved aside by the array of camera-toting assholes who shout, “Caro! Show that fine tush of yours!” “Caro, let’s see some leg!” “Caro, lean in for a cleavage shot!”
At that Event, it took me ten minutes to catch up to Mother after the photo gauntlet swept her in and pushed her out, straight into the clown-like mask-face of one of the most famous snarkmeisters, a woman who should have known better, having suffered a lot of snark herself back in the day.
She was, I believe, the first one to ask a question that came from the shadows, a question that in English makes no sense, even though these days it has become common:
“Who are you wearing?”
Never good live and scriptless, Mother blinked in surprise, thinking she had misheard the question. She frowned, and through a camera (as we saw through hundreds of playbacks, usually accompanied by Mother’s sobs), she suddenly looked old and befuddled.
Then the tide swept her away. Her moment in the sun—as a presenter that year—wasn’t to her advantage either. She had chosen a dress from her closet that dated from before I was born. Yes, it still fit, and without the lights, it looked gorgeous, but someone (a shadowy someone in makeup, perhaps?) hadn’t extended the makeup from her face to her neck and onto her bosom.
She looked like an elderly woman wearing a Caro mask whose color didn’t match her sun-wrinkled skin tone.
At the time, Mother was forty years old. Everyone said she looked eighty.
Show after show after show, recap after recap after recap, there was Mother, front and center: Red Carpet Fashion Victim, worthy of the jibes that our culture gives women no longer in their prime.
Men have it easy when it comes to clothing—even on the Red Carpet. They get props for wearing a white tuxedo jacket with black pants or for wearing a scarf instead of a bowtie. Every now and then, some idiot wears shorts or scuffed jeans and gets dinged for being too casual for “the biggest night of the year” (or what passes for a big night that week), but mostly, the men have little choice, so they can do little wrong.
But for women, it’s a nightmare.
Wrong color, wrong shape, wrong hair, wrong jewelry, wrong posture, too much leg, not enough leg, too much cleavage, too see-through, not see-through enough, too daring, too bold, too reserved, too refined, too short, too long, too wide, too narrow, too—
Oh, you get it.
And with each little snarky phrase, the shadows grow. They get bigger and blacker and even more powerful. They absorb glamour like an alcoholic sucks down beer, and they prey on women—in our culture at least (I have no idea what happens in those cultures where the women are robed and covered all day)—because in our culture, women have the plumage, the glory, the most glamour and the most instinctual magic.
He Who Shall Remain Nameless sent me books on shadows and darkness and creeping bad things. I learned that the creeping, shadowy, bad things always, always arrive twenty years before the world turns on itself, and the way they accomplish that turn is to eat all of the world’s innocent beauty.
And bury it under snark.
After that devastating fashion-victim Event, I thought Mother would never leave the house again. So, I slowly rescued her.
First I made her a pair of 1930s movie pajamas—the kind of exquisite silk top and bottom numbers that Ginger Rogers made famous before the Second World War. They were the first project I made for Mother in which I added a little magic—comfort magic, to calm her, and remind her that she was more than a pretty (well, beautiful) face.
The pajamas worked—and they gave me an idea.
Next year, when the shadows asked that stupid question—Who Are You Wearing—she would answer—vaguely, because shadows must always be answered vaguely (there’s too much magic in names) that she was wearing an original—designed by her daughter, the ugly duckling.
Me.
***
The following year, Mother was nominated for her 13th Oscar, and of course, she didn’t win. I had hoped she wouldn’t—thirteen is one of those numbers you should live through, not call attention to.
She wore a flowing, pale lavender gown with piping that made it look vaguely Egyptian, placed in a pattern that warded away bad magic and amplified protective thoughts.
I accompanied her that year, not as her “date” because, by then, she had a new man, but as her dresser.
I followed along, adjusting her train. I primped, I plucked, I made sure no makeup artist screwed up the lovely glow we gave her. (And sure enough, I saw a tiny harassed blonde who, when I viewed her with magical vision, looked like she had been swallowed by a black, shadowy Category 3 tornado.)
I got Mother to her seat, and then hovered at the edges, so I could touch her up if need be.
All went well, through the too-long dance numbers and the lame jokes, (although I did have to touch up her eye makeup after the Dead-Roll, because she had some friends on it). But I wasn’t prepared for the moment Mother’s category got announced.
Mother’s dress flared as it tried to keep her tension down (I put some comfort magic in the thread as well), and then—
She lost.
No surprise there.
But that was the category where the winner—a twenty-something with a plum indie role (right before her big debut as the Heroine Of A Saga) tripped going up the stairs to get her award. And remained sprawled for the longest time.
I couldn’t run to the winner; I didn’t dare. Because I hoped no one else magical was watching. The energy above her, the lavender energy that tripped her—well, that had come from my mother.
Mother had been jealous of the winner throughout the entire awards season. And honestly, I understood it even if I hadn’t encouraged it. A twenty-something, beautiful, witty woman actually making more money per picture than Mother made in her entire career—and already stamped with a trademarked series of award wins.
Well, Little Miss Award-Winner-Above-The-Title managed to pick herself up and go on, giving a good speech if not a great one, and the show continued.
But I had some revamping to do.
The dresses couldn’t just send out magical “protect” energy. The energy had to be addressed at the shadows—the true magical threat, not a talented young woman who just happened snag the role of the season.
I didn’t yell at Mother. After all, she had put on her marvelous best I’m so pleased you won instead of me face, and had outwardly done the right things. Never once has she expressed the mean-girl jealousy that appeared via the dress that night.
And believe you me, I did some serious magical cleaning to make sure that the dress hadn’t been infected with shadow energy.
Nope. The dress had done its job. It had protected my fragile mother from the crushing disappointment that accompanied her every loss.
At least, this time, she wasn’t excoriated on the fashion shows. And every single night thereafter, she was listed as one of the best-dressed with only one snarkmeister mentioning that Mother was a Woman Of A Certain Age.
I would have thought victory was mine, if it weren’t for the humiliation the poor twenty-something had inadvertently suffered at my hands on her big night.
I had to make sure that sort of thing would never happen again.
***
I refined the dresses, gave them away for free, test-ran them at minor awards venues such as the Pawtucket Film Festival, and then offered them to starlets for bigger festivals like Sundance. No one fell, no jealous energy attacked another winner, and if the snarkmeisters didn’t mention the dress positively, then they didn’t mention it at all.
Mother married (happily) in one of my dresses, divorced (happily) in one of my dresses, and lost every award she was nominated for in the next five awards seasons, without ever attracting any more snark. Plus, her appearances got her ranked in the top five at least once a season—and she was becoming known for wearing Warrior Woman Designs, which had rehabilitated her.
Snarkmeister 1: Everyone should be so lucky as to have a daughter like Caro’s. The girl never had the looks, so she studied how to make fashion accessible even for the not-so-beautiful. When you apply that fashion to the unbelievably beautiful—well, [my only-for-today-friend Snarkmeister 2], you can see the results.
Snarkmeister 2: You certainly can [Snarkmeister 1, my current-and-future rival, whom I’m only talking to because we’re getting paid a few thousand and we get to wear free clothes]. Who knew that ugly ducklings knew how to swan along a red carpet?
The positive press grew, and soon everyone wanted to wear Warrior Woman. I only have so much staff, however, and only have so much magic, so I had to choose who needed my help.
The women I dressed were too old by Hollywood standards (meaning barely over thirty), too fat by Hollywood standards (at least a size six), or too ugly by Hollywood standards (think Streisand, who [even now] gets referred to as a success despite her lack of looks).
The dresses didn’t make these women younger or thinner or prettier. The dresses made them feel protected, and warded off the snarkmeisters and their increasingly more powerful shadow puppet masters. My women were untouchable and, over time, the dresses let them relax enough that they saw what was going on with their own friends (and rivals).
I like to think the dresses let them see an echo of those shadows that haunted me.
The women talked to me about making dresses for everyone.
I couldn’t do that, but I started developing a plan.
I couldn’t get rid of the snarkmeisters and their all-powerful shadows. Complaining about them only made them stronger.
But I could send the shadows back where they came from—if I could only get my hands on some undelivered little golden men.
***
Here’s something no one tells you about awards shows until it’s too late. The awards themselves are protected better than the gold at Fort Knox. (Is there still gold at Fort Knox? Oh, you get the idea.)
Seriously, I don’t think the president is guarded as well as those little trophies.
So, I had some setbacks. All I wanted to do was ward the trophies—have them repel the snarkmeisters and band together to send the shadows back through that crack in the world from which they slimed forth.
I tried everything. I worked backstage. I even volunteered to be on the trophy committee (which has a different name at each ceremony). Nada.
Finally, I decided to pay for inclusion in the goodie bag. Eighty thousand dollars worth of swag compiled just to give free stuff to already rich people. I gave a little gold man to everyone, with a coupon for a free post-Oscar collectible T-shirt wrapped around his tiny little tush.
Those shirts, which I worked on for months, sent a little bit of positive energy into the world.
But more than that, they allowed me into the dress rehearsals, partly because I extended some of that swag to the hard-working artists who put on the show.
I didn’t get to see any gold trophies, but I did see something rather horrifying.
Where the red carpet met the marble floor inside one of the most famous theaters in the world, a slight crack had formed. Not one that a structural engineer with no magic would see. A crack in the fabric of reality, the kind shadows slip out of.
And there were shadows slipping upward, like smoke from an underground fire.
I backed away, and then I called He Who Shall Remain Nameless, not because I needed his more powerful magic, but because he knew who the magical were among the electricians, contractors, and set designers in our industry.
Together, my father and I found a group with more than glamour, and who were willing to work on short notice.
I needed them to add a layer of glittery, clear paint to the gigantic gold statues that stood near the front door—and I needed them to do it legitimately.
And they did.
***
Now, realize that none of the magical truly knows how magic will work. And none of us truly understands the mechanism that makes magic do what it does. We can predict, but we’re like TV weather anchors. We can get it wrong.
I expected that magical glamour, added to the statues, to suck up the shadowy forms and hold them prisoner inside those gigantic trophy replicas.
Instead, the glittery coating reflected the protective magic from the dresses worn by the actresses who had just completed the red carpet gauntlet and who were feeling a bit—cranky? Weary? Terrified?
Terrified. Because the moment they walked away from the snarkmeisters’ microphones, those women knew the snarkmeisters—under the influence of their dark shadows—would find something to snark about, ruining a night that was supposed to be about the honor of being nominated and making it into a night about whose dress fit best.
I stood just behind the emergency curtain at the edge of the red carpet, armed for a magical emergency. I had some special safety pins clamped in my teeth, a stronger-than-surgical-steel needle in my right hand, and a spool of special glittery metallic thread in my left.
I was going to repair a few dresses, reinforce the magic, and coordinate the removal of the shadows after the glare of the cameras moved inside. Instead, the glowing dresses and their lovely stars queued up, air-kissing before they mounted the stairs for a drink and a little relaxation before an usher found them and settled them in their seats.
I could feel the magic of the dresses—my magic—thrumming. Those dresses were working overtime, like all armor does in battle, protecting those fragile human bodies hidden deep inside.
I just didn’t expect the armor to link up, like protestors facing the police—using magical arms threaded at the metaphorical elbows—to hold off a darkness that was growing increasingly worse.
These women had no magic besides the kind my mother had. Just a little something extra to make them glow before the cameras. Yet, to a person, these women looked toward the snarkmeisters, lined up for a final “interview” as if the shadows had become visible.
Maybe they had.
They had certainly become powerful.
And that coating on the golden statues was doing absolutely nothing.
So I spit the pins into my left hand, took the needle, and was about to lob my magical gold thread at the shadows when the crack in the ground widened.
The statues opened their eyes, and looked—truly looked—at the shadows.
And the shadows blinked.
They started to flee, but one of the statues toppled sideways so fast that no one could move out of its way. It hit the snarkmeisters—yes—but if you look at all those replays, which you see over and over again, you’ll see that it landed on top of the place where the red carpet met the tile.
It blocked the crack into the other world.
The shadows floated around the statue in terror, and that was when the second statue seemed to absorb them. But what I saw wasn’t the absorption. It was the dozens of gold, manicured fingers, which came from the dress magic, that shoved the shadows into that statue, inside the ward that the trophy truly was.
I crouched at the toppled statue’s base, and grabbed my thread, using it and the needle to stitch the edges of the crack closed.
Then I used the last of my magic to spell that thread. It would continue sewing itself after the teamsters got the statue upright again.
The crack would—and did—close.
And our little part of the world was safe again.
***
I wish I could say that snark died that day. Or that the snarkmeisters vanished.
That group did, actually. They were humiliated and/or terrified, some of them coming to their senses.
New snarkmeisters immediately rose in their wake. But honestly, I didn’t see any shadows around them.
Now, I see shadows around cell phones—in the hands of ordinary people who somehow think themselves snarkmeisters. They blog, they post, they Tweet. They have absorbed the culture of critics, and they initiate online battles as harmful as any that go over the airwaves.
I would organize an anti-snark campaign, but I have no ground to stand on, really, as you can tell from my tone.
Snark happens when you don’t respect someone, when you want to control and ridicule them to show your own superiority.
I think I might have absorbed some of the shadows on my own.
Mother tells me I need the shadows for battle. Weapons make us stronger, she says. It simply depends on how they’re used.
But I don’t like the shadows within, and I’m vowing to purge them.
After I watch that instant replay of our miraculous victory—one last time.
Copyright © 2017 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Chicks and Balances, edited by Esther Friesner and John Helfers, Baen Books, 2015
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and layout copyright © 2017 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Subbotina/Depositphotos
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.