“That’s honest.”
“He texted me at three this morning.” She pulled out her phone. Showed Mika the screen.
Mika read it. Read it again. Looked up.
“Oh, babe.”
“Yeah.”
“So are you. He said ‘so are you.’ That’s—” She pressed her lips together. “That man is not Harlan. Harlan never once told you that YOU were the extraordinary thing. Harlan told you your work was impressive so he could get closer to it. This man is telling you that you matter separate from what you make.” She handed the phone back. “That’s a different animal entirely.”
That’s a different animal entirely.The phrase echoed. Lumi thought of growls and impossible reflexes and the way he’d caught her elbow at Chelsea Market—a man whose body moved faster than human reaction time allowed.
“I pulled his hair, Mika.”
“Good.”
“He growled. Into my mouth. While kissing me.”
“Good.”
“That’s not a normal response.”
“Nothing about this situation is normal. You’re collaborating with a man whose work you’ve been obsessed with for years, you made the best page of your career with him at ten at night on a Wednesday, and you kissed him against a work surface while a cleaning crew waited in the hallway. Normal left the building weeks ago.” She nudged Rogue off her lap—he hit the floor with an offended thud—and crossed to the kitchen. “You haven’t eaten.” She pulled containers from the fridge. Rice. Beans. Leftover plantains from the Dominican spot on Fulton.
Lumi ate. The plantains were perfect—sweet, crispy at the edges, the alchemy of Mika’s neighborhood bakery. She hatedthat they were perfect because it meant Mika had anticipated this visit, which meant Mika had known before Lumi did that the call was coming.
“Also—” Lumi stabbed a plantain with her fork. “His shirt had my handprint on it. Watercolor. Right across the front. He looked like a crime scene.”
Mika set down her fork. Picked it up. Set it down again. “Lu. That man is going to keep a shirt with your paint handprint on it. That is so sweet, and I need you to understand that I am not being sarcastic right now.”
“It’s weird.”
“You called it WEIRD. It’s sweet. There’s a difference.” She picked up the fork. “Reply to his text.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You won’t. Those are different verbs and your English degree knows it.”
Lumi’s phone buzzed.
Not Mika. Not Zeir. An email notification from an address she didn’t recognize.
She opened it.
The blood drained from her face in a single beat. She read the message twice—her hands going rigid around the phone, her breath locking mid-inhale.
“Lu?” Mika’s voice sharpened. “What’s wrong?”
Lumi turned the phone around.
High-resolution scans filled the screen. Character sketches—Sable’s original design, the distinctive silhouette, the flowing lines of the cape and the angles of the mask. Rendered in Harlan Cray’s style. Dated two years before Lumi created the character.
Fabricated. Sophisticated. Timed for maximum damage—during the biggest project of her career, the morning after she’d kissed her collaborator, at the exact moment when her defenses were shredded and her judgment was compromised.
Someone had manufactured evidence that Sable wasn’t hers.
“Someone fabricated evidence that I stole my own character.” Her voice was flat. Distant. The shock compressing her vocal cords into a register she didn’t recognize. “During the biggest project of my career.”
