Yumi and the Nightmare Painter(95)

The spirits had sent her a hero.

The nightmare began to shrink, twisting in a horrific way, enormous claws shortening, skeleton seeming to pop as it constricted. Its face narrowed as it was forced to conform to Painter’s vision of it, the one he painted on the concrete. Not a monster at all. Something friendly, with four paws and a wagging tail. The thing recognized this vision for it and let out a howl—fully stable enough to actually speak—then turned and loped away, its terrible form restoring as it broke from Painter’s spell.

Defeated, embarrassed—but not destroyed—it vanished into the night.

Painter fell to his knees, overwhelmed, the paintbrush finally burning away in his fingers. Behind him, Akane reached Tojin, helping him sit up. The two of them stared out after the nightmare, baffled as to what had driven it off.

Painter looked with a wan smile toward Yumi. Then at last he seemed to notice that she wasn’t moving.

“Yumi!” he said, but his voice sounded distant, like she was…was deep underwater…

She tried to reply, but her teeth only chattered together. Her body shivered and spasmed, and her vision was fading—darkness at the sides creeping in further.

“Yumi!” Painter’s anxious face above her. “What’s wrong?”

“So…cold…” she whispered, her breath puffing.

He knelt above her, panicked, holding up his hands.

The darkness closed in.

Painter seized her in an embrace.

His essence mingled with hers. His self and her self mashed into one. A shocking, intoxicating, sensual concoction.

Heat detonated within Yumi, a dying fire suddenly given air. It surged through her. His heat. Their heat. She gasped with the force of a drowning woman and went rigid.

Painter pulled back, his face streaked with sweat. She caught herself before falling to the ground again, then kept breathing in deep gasps, no longer frozen. Together they sat there, trembling, until Akane and Tojin arrived to help her stand.

Perhaps now they would believe.





An hour later they sat in the noodle shop again, Painter at his own table nearby, watching the others in their nervous huddle. They constantly asked Yumi if she was all right, as if the answer would change moment to moment.

She did seem all right. At least she wasn’t dying of the cold any longer. The others had tried to take her to the hospital, but she’d insisted she wanted something warm to eat. And a warm place to sit.

So they’d come here, and she was on her second bowl of broth for the night—spiced and heated to boiling. How she could eat that without burning herself baffled him, but then again, people from her planet had an odd relationship with heat.

Painter felt tired. That thing had drawn something from him, and holding Yumi had done the same. Fortunately, it didn’t feel like anything permanent. Hollow fatigue, like he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Never before while in spirit form had he felt drowsy.

He was trying to figure out why the shop was so crowded at this hour, beyond its usual complement of painters. But before he hit on the answer, Tojin arrived and rushed over to the others. They were all there—Masaka and Izzy having been called from their patrols.

“The foreman believed me,” he told them. “Particularly after I showed him what had happened to the playground. The Dreamwatch has been summoned. There is a contingent of them in Jito; they’ll be here within a few hours.”

“That is wonderful,” Akane said (highly). “They’ll deal with it, Yumi. They’ll find it.”

“Sorry,” Tojin said, settling in next to Akane, “for not believing you earlier.”

Yumi met Painter’s eyes. Mission accomplished. The stable nightmare would soon be dealt with. If that was why the spirits had paired them, then their job was done.

“We’re to go three per patrol,” Tojin continued, “until the thing is caught. We’re also not to tell anyone.”

“I hate that part,” Masaka muttered. “The city’s people deserve to know.”

“You just relish the idea of telling them,” Izzy said, poking her in the arm. “Because it’s horrific.”

“I hate horrific things,” Masaka said.

“You think nightmares are cute.”

“They can be,” she said. “They can be anything.”

Akane glanced at Yumi. “You all right, Yumi?”

“Yes,” Yumi said softly. “Better, now that I have something warm in me.”

“That was brave of you,” Akane said, “to go out to try to prove that your brother wasn’t a liar. But it was also exceedingly stupid. You realize that now, don’t you?”

Yumi nodded.

“He ran, didn’t he?” Izzy asked. “When he saw it weeks ago? He ran away to another city. That’s why we haven’t seen him lately; why he went ‘on leave.’?”

“No,” Yumi said, fire in her eyes, her objection vigorous enough to make Painter smile through the fatigue. “I saw him earlier today. You’re all wrong about him. So very wrong.”

He blessed her for that, but also didn’t miss how the others shared looks. She would never persuade them. That didn’t hurt as much as it once had. After all, he still wasn’t certain if she’d persuaded him or not.