“You said cheekbones. Nobody describes a man’s cheekbones unless they’ve been staring at them.”
“I was observing from a professional distance.”
“From across a panel room.”
“It was a large room.”
“And you still clocked his cheekbones. That’s not professional distance, babe. That’s a satellite lock.”
And ink stains on his fingers. You noticed that too. You noticed his hands before his face, which says things about you that you’re choosing not to examine.
Mika let the silence stretch. She was good at that—the tactical pause. The space she created for Lumi’s bravado to run out of air and collapse under its own weight.
“You’ve been running this studio on fumes and spite for three years.” Mika’s voice dropped the humor. No edge, no banter. The voice she used when the conversation mattered too much for jokes. “Your talent is not the problem, Lumi. Your distribution is. You sell at conventions and through indie shops. AxanDark has mainstream reach. This isn’t selling out. It’s putting Nightbloom in front of people who deserve to read it.”
Lumi’s gaze drifted to the misprinted stacks on her drafting table. Three hundred copies she’d paid for. Three hundred copies that were useless because a printer couldn’t manage page order. Three hundred copies of a book that should be on shelves in every comic shop in the country and instead was sitting in a Bushwick loft with a dying fern and a pothos that had ambitions.
“Can we go back to the part where I’m mad about the printer? I was winning that conversation.”
“No. We’re in this conversation now. Strap in.” Mika turned to face her fully, one knee pulled up on the couch. Battle stance. “It’s one meeting.” Her hand covered Lumi’s on the couch cushion. Warm. Steady. “If he’s terrible, you walk. If they try to change Nightbloom, you walk. But at least walk in the door first.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Mika’s mouth twitched. She recognized “I’ll think about it” for what it was: the last barricade before surrender.
“Think fast. Your agent says the window closes Friday.”
She stood. Brushed pastelito flakes off her overalls like someone who’d just closed a deal. Then she paused. Turned back.
“For the record? You described a man you’ve seen exactly once as a weather system with cheekbones. You remembered his hands from across a crowded panel room. And your first instinct when I said his name was blind panic disguised as a rant about corporate sellouts.” She picked up the empty cafecito cup and pointed it at Lumi. “That’s not indifference, Lu. That’s a situation.”
“It’s a professional opportunity I’m conflicted about.”
“Right. And Moriarty is a low-maintenance houseplant.” Mika glanced at the pothos, which had crept halfway acrossthe windowsill and was reaching for a jar of scarlet ink with visible ambition. “Call your agent. Before Friday. Before you talk yourself out of the best thing that’s landed in your lap in three years.”
“You’re very bossy for someone who showed up uninvited.”
“I have a key. That’s an open invitation.” She pulled the calligraphy pen from her topknot, let her curls tumble, and tucked the pen behind her ear. “Also, eat lunch. A real one. If I come back tomorrow and find another Maruchan wrapper, I’m staging an intervention. With PowerPoint slides.”
“You don’t know how to use PowerPoint.”
“I’ll learn out of spite. Don’t test me.”
The door shut behind her. The loft went quiet.
THREE
LUMI
Coltrane had run out. She didn’t restart the record.
The silence was its own kind of company—the scratch of her brush on paper, street noise filtering through old windows, the radiator’s arrhythmic clank.
She worked. That was what she did when the world pressed too close—she picked up a brush and disappeared into the lines. Sable’s world was controllable. Sable’s world made sense. In Sable’s world, the villain was powerful and selective and operated on an ideology so watertight that readers nodded along even when she did terrible things.
Unlike the real world, where the person you trusted most took what you made and put his name on it and you couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
She inked the final line on the repaired panel. Held it at arm’s length. Sable stared back at her—a woman becoming a monster, or a monster remembering she was a woman. The ambiguity was the point. The industry wanted villains who were clearly evil or clearly redeemable. Lumi drew villains who were clearly human. The darkness was the appeal, not the obstacle.
