2. Lumi
TWO
LUMI
The door opened without a knock.
Mika Torres entered carrying a paper bag from their Dominican bakery and two cafecitos in a cardboard tray.
She wore paint-splattered overalls over a vintage hip-hop tee, her curls piled in a topknot secured with what appeared to be a calligraphy pen.
She kicked the door shut with her heel, assessed the studio in one sweep—the stacked misprints, the re-inked panel drying on the desk, Lumi on the couch looking like a woman who’d been awake since a time that started with the number four—and set the food down on the coffee table with the decisive thud of a woman who did not negotiate about breakfast.
“Eat. Then we fix it. In that order.”
“I was eating.”
Mika looked at the two empty coffee mugs on the drafting table. Looked at Lumi. Raised one eyebrow in a way that could have ended diplomatic careers.
“Coffee is not food.”
“It has beans in it. Beans are food.”
“That’s not how nutrition works and you have a degree.” Mika pushed a cafecito and a pastry into Lumi’s hands. Pastelitos de guayaba, still warm, the glaze catching the morning light. “Eat the actual food. Drink the cafecito. Then show me the damage.”
“The damage is three hundred copies of Volume 3 with the climax printed before the inciting incident.” Lumi bit into the pastelito.
The guava filled her mouth with sweetness so sudden, her empty stomach cramped in gratitude.
She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until the food hit, and then she was ravenous.
“Sable’s big betrayal scene shows up on page forty-seven instead of sixty-two.
The emotional payoff arrives before the setup.
It’s like reading a breakup text before the first date. ”
“So a Tuesday for you.”
“Wow.”
“I’m kidding. Mostly.” Mika dropped onto the couch beside her, pulling Moriarty’s vine off her shoulder where it had crept. “Six hours without eating. You’re going to be one of those artists they find preserved under a pile of their own pages. They’ll call it ‘method.’”
“At least my pages will be in the right order. Unlike certain printing companies I could name.”
Mika was already on her phone. Two calls. The first to a freelance binder in Greenpoint who could hand-correct the page order on the existing copies for a fraction of the reprint cost. The second to negotiate a rate that made Lumi’s eyebrows climb.
“Done. Eight days. He’ll pick up the copies Thursday.”
Lumi blinked at her. “How do you know a freelance binder in Greenpoint?”
“I know everyone.” Mika sipped her cafecito with the serenity of a woman who had an entire borough on speed dial. “It’s my superpower. Yours is drawing murder women. Mine is knowing a guy.”
“Villain women.”
“Murder women with impeccable fashion sense and tragic backstories. Tomato, tomah-to.”
“Sable doesn’t murder people. She makes morally complex decisions in a framework of—”
“Babe, she decapitated a man in Volume 2.”
“He deserved it.”
“I’m not arguing that. I lettered the scene. The sound effect alone took me three drafts.” Mika set her cup down. The cafecito click against the table had a different weight to it. Heavier. The sound of a conversation about to change direction. “So. Your agent called me this morning.”
Lumi’s hand froze on her third pastelito. “My agent called you?”
“Because she knew you’d dodge her call.”
Fair. She’d been dodging her agent’s calls for two days.
“You’ve been shortlisted for a collaboration.” Mika said it the way a doctor delivered scan results—direct, no cushion, watching the patient’s face. “A major one. Axan Dark Publishing.”
The pastelito turned to chalk in Lumi’s mouth.
Axan Dark. The name hit like a door swinging open she’d been leaning against.
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the—”
“I don’t collaborate.” She set the pastelito down. Her appetite vanished as quickly as it had arrived. “The last time I did, it cost me everything.”
“Lumi—”
“And Axan Dark is corporate. They’re the biggest villain publisher in the industry. They’ll want to sand the edges off Nightbloom, make Sable more ‘accessible,’ give her a redemption arc—”
“Axan Dark built their entire brand on villains who don’t get redeemed.
” Mika’s voice was calm. The calm of a woman who had anticipated every one of these objections and was swatting them down like flies at a barbecue.
“Their catalog is literally ‘love the villain because of the darkness, not despite it.’ That’s your whole philosophy. ”
I know. Believe me, I know. I’ve read every word they’ve published.
Out loud, she went somewhere safer. “Zeir Axan. The industry’s Dark Lord.
Wears black like it’s a religion and reportedly hasn’t smiled since 2019.
” She picked at a fleck of dried paint on her knee.
“I saw him at a panel once—he made a room full of grown adults nervous by standing still. That’s not a man, Mika. That’s a weather system.”
Mika snorted. “A weather system.”
“A cold front. With cheekbones.”
“So he’s hot.”
“I said he was a weather system.”
“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. Axan Dark 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 across the 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.