15. Zeir #2
“You’re wearing concealer. You never wear concealer unless you haven’t slept and you’re trying to hide it from someone.
Since you called me instead of showing up at the studio—” Mika sat cross-legged in the chair opposite.
Rogue jumped from the table to her lap with the grace of a bowling ball. “Spill.”
Lumi spilled.
The late-night session. The villain’s face—too honest, too close to her own exhaustion.
His hand on her wrist. Don’t. That’s the best thing either of us has made.
The kiss that shattered three weeks of tension in thirty seconds.
His growl against her mouth. Her hands in his hair. The cleaning crew. The retreat.
Mika listened. Scratched Rogue behind the ears. Let the silence hold after Lumi ran out of words.
“What did he do? After you said you couldn’t.”
“He stepped back. Said ‘I understand.’ Two words. Then he let me go.”
“He didn’t argue.”
“No.”
“Didn’t chase you. Didn’t push.”
“No.”
Mika tilted her head. “And that’s worse, isn’t it? If he’d pushed, you could be angry. He gave you exactly what you asked for and now you’re sitting on my couch looking like you haven’t slept because a man respected your boundaries and you hate it.”
“I hate that you’re right.”
“It’s my curse. Being right.” Rogue purred. Mika let another beat pass. “Lu.”
“What.”
“Is this about him? Or is this about Harlan?”
The question punched through her.
“Because if every man you work with is contaminated by what Harlan did, he wins forever.” Mika’s voice was steady.
No humor. No deflection. The real Mika beneath the punchlines—the woman who had held Lumi’s hand through the worst year of her life and earned the right to ask the hard questions.
“You let him take Nightbloom’s origin story.
You let him take your trust in collaboration.
Are you going to let him take this too?”
Lumi pressed her palms over her eyes. Rogue stared at her from Mika’s lap with the blank judgment only cats achieve.
“I don’t know.”
“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 hated that 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.”
Mika was already moving. Phone out. “Call your brother. Right now.”
“If anyone digs into Sable’s influences—” The suffocating parallel crashed over her.
Sable carried traces of Zeir’s approach to darkness in her DNA.
Lumi knew it. She’d built Sable from what his characters made her understand about darkness and loneliness and the terrible beauty of choosing power over love.
Not stolen. Inspired. But Harlan was accusing her of stealing from HIM, and the line between inspired and stolen was exactly the kind of ambiguity that destroyed careers.
She stood. The plantains sat in her stomach like stones.
“I’ve got to talk to Keanu.” She grabbed her jacket. Stopped. Turned back.
“Mika.”
“Yeah.”
“What you said. About letting Harlan take this too.” She swallowed hard. “I heard you.”
“I know you did.”
Lumi left. The Bed-Stuy morning hit her face—cool November air, the neighborhood waking up around her, coffee shops and bodegas and Brooklyn in motion. She called Keanu. First ring. Because Keanu never let it go to a second.
Her phone buzzed again while she talked. Another text. Same six words from a different lifetime—hours ago, a man standing alone in a studio that smelled like her paint.
She hadn’t replied. She didn’t reply now.
But she didn’t delete it either.