23. Lumi
TWENTY-THREE
LUMI
The headline landed that morning.
Moriarty’s vine had migrated to the kitchen-side sill. Untouched. Of course, Moriarty was untouched—the pothos had survived everything Lumi had ever subjected it to, and three intruders with an agenda were apparently no different. The plant had simply waited it out.
“Nightbloom’s Origins: Did Lumi Stone Steal From Her Mentor?”
She found it the way everyone found bad news—phone in hand, coffee half-poured, the morning still holding its shape before the detonation.
An industry blog she’d never contributed to, never been interviewed by.
The byline belonged to a freelancer who covered comic drama with the enthusiasm of a tabloid reporter and the research skills of a goldfish.
The article was thin. Insinuation over evidence.
Anonymous sources. Phrases like “questions have been raised” and “multiple industry insiders suggest.” But thin didn’t matter on the internet.
Thin spread faster than substance. By seven-fifteen, the quote tweets started.
By seven-thirty, the hot takes. People who’d never read a single page of Nightbloom suddenly had opinions about its originality, its influences, its right to exist.
Lumi sat on her couch in the loft—the undamaged side, the living side her grandmother’s furniture still anchored—and watched her phone light up. She didn’t answer. Didn’t respond. Didn’t move.
This is how it starts. This is exactly how it started last time.
The paralysis was the same. The ice in her sternum, the locked muscles, the way the room telescoped until the screen was the only thing that existed.
Three years ago, she’d sat on this same couch while Harlan dismantled her career from the inside.
She’d frozen then too. Watched it happen like a bystander to her own ruin.
This time the stakes were larger. This time there was the collaboration, Zeir’s company, the biggest opportunity of her professional life. This time the accusation would splash onto more than indie forums.
Her phone buzzed. Mika.
On my way. Don’t move.
She didn’t.
Mika didn’t knock. The door opened—new, not yet painted, the frame still raw where Nyx’s crew had replaced it before dawn—and Mika stepped inside and stopped.
Clocked the boarded window, two-by-fours and heavy sheeting, triage not renovation.
The scorched patch of floor where the ink had pooled and been scrubbed.
The missing strip of baseboard trim. Said nothing about any of it.
Sat beside Lumi on the couch in under three seconds.
No pastries. No cafécito. This wasn’t a food visit.
She pulled Lumi against her shoulder.
Minutes passed. Neither spoke. Outside, a garbage truck downshifted on the street below. Rain from last night still dripped from the fire escape. The loft smelled like fresh-cut lumber and the lingering chemical edge of fixative spray from the break-in cleanup.
Then Mika straightened. Pulled her phone out. Started making calls.
One after another. Industry contacts, editors, colorists, writers she’d met at conventions and kept warm with texts and birthday cards and the casual maintenance of a woman who understood that networks weren’t about transactions—they were about showing up.
She called a Portland letterer who’d worked with both Lumi and Harlan.
She called a Chicago inker whose mentorship story paralleled Lumi’s.
She called a New York editor who owed her a favor from 2019 and would remember it.
Lumi listened to her best friend mobilize an army and the ice in her sternum cracked.
Keanu called at eight fifteen. His voice was the clipped, controlled cadence of a lawyer who’d been awake since six and was already three moves ahead.
“Don’t say a word publicly. Not a tweet. Not a statement. Not a text to anyone outside our circle.” A breath. “I handle the legal. You handle the evidence. Are your archives intact?”
The archives. The dated sketchbooks. The digital files with timestamps. The meticulous paranoia she’d built after Harlan—the documentation of every stroke, every iteration, every dated photograph of every stage.
“They survived the break-in. I sorted them.”
“Good. We fight this time. Every inch.”
He hung up. Mika was still on the phone. Lumi’s gaze fixed on the wall where Nightbloom pages had been pinned before three men tore through her window and scattered them like confetti.
You survived Harlan. You survived three intruders with a gargoyle and a can of fixative. You are not going to be destroyed by a freelance blogger with anonymous sources.
She stood up.
Kael’s text arrived at nine forty-two: Zeir held a press conference thirty minutes ago. Full Axan Dark backing behind your originality. His personal credibility on the line. Thought you should hear it from me before you see it online.
She read it twice. Three times. The ice in her sternum—the one that had thawed when Mika started making calls—refroze into a different shape. Hotter. Sharper.
She grabbed her jacket.
The subway from Bushwick to Chelsea took thirty-four minutes. She used every one of them to build a full head of steam.