Page 101 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

“I trusted you had more sense than that,” Akane added.

“We lost you for a while there,” Tojin said. “Did you go to the carnivalspecificallyto lose us?”

“Tojin…” Akane said, squinting in the dim light. “Tojin, look at her. She’sterrified. Yumi, did you see another one?”

Yumi could only nod.

Tojin sighed. “This iswhywe said to not go out again. This is a duty for a painter.”

Painter.

The bell.

Yumi knew, even after one experience with the nightmare, that Akane and Tojin alone wouldn’t be enough to defeat it. They needed every painter in the region—hundreds, if she could find them.

And Painter,herPainter, was in danger.

“Bring your ink!” she said, then tore out of Tojin’s grip and went scrambling back down the alleyway. She didn’t see his bemused expression, nor the roll of Akane’s eyes. Because of course they didn’t recognize the danger. They’d done this hundreds of times. A nightmare, to them, was nothing terrifying.

Yumi reached the mouth of the alley and looked out at the torn-up playground—ghostly in the hion light. Still and empty. Several lights turned on around nearby buildings, then quickly shut off. This was painter business. Thank you for your service.

Suddenly apprehensive, Yumi crossed the playground onto the sports court, where her bag had fallen. She searched in it and found it sliced apart by claws, the bell broken and covered in ink. As she was struggling to comprehend this, something dark emerged from within a piece of fallen playground equipment. It grew to eleven feet tall, stalking up to her from behind.

Painter had eluded it. But this thing wassmart. Dangerously crafty. Beyond that, there was a deeper problem. An issue Yumi and Painter couldn’t have anticipated. This thing couldfeelYumi’s presence.

It knew where she was. Always.

This was why it hadn’t rampaged. Yumi didn’t know it yet, but this was what the creature had been doing all those weeks. It had been drawn to her. Had been watching her. Waiting for a chance to attack.

She felt it before she heard it. She spun and—too frightened evento scream—gasped as it rammed a clawed paw into her chest. The claws pierced her straight through, though they fuzzed right before they struck.

It would have killed almost any person, but Yumi had something this beast wanted. Power, Investiture,soul. Where it had needed to lap at others, here it couldguzzle. Instead of spearing her physically, it let its blade-claws become incorporeal as they touched her—and this allowed it to draw out her essence.

Yumi felt an icy cold expanding from her core, as if her heart had been frozen—like the ice in drinks Design served—and was pumping frost through her body. Her gasp wilted, and she slumped to the ground, breathing out a cold mist.

Shefeltherself dying. Going to a place where there was no warmth, and could neverbewarmth. And…

And…

And she wouldnotgo without a fight.

Her emotions—the primal nerves that had been sending her into a panic all night—backed up against the wall of death. And from within her welled, like the fierce anger of a geyser, arefusalto be taken like this.

With a trembling hand—shaking like that of a woman a hundred years her senior—she reached to the side. She picked up a chunk of concrete torn up by the beast’s passing.

Then she stacked it on top of the one beside it.

The beast hesitated. The flow of power out of her slowed.

Yumi somehow found another chunk, though she was fading now, her burst of strength giving out. It is not a light thing to have a piece of your soul forcibly consumed—trust me.

With numb fingers, she placed the stone.

The monster didn’t appear frightened, but it leaned forward, no longer feeding. It stared at the stones with bone-white pits for eyes. Something in it seemed to…remember.

A second later a scream made it spin. Tojin had finally ambled out of the alleyway and—horrified by the sight of a fully stable nightmare—he fell backward to the ground. Akane screamed from behind him. Yes, they’d seen nightmares before, but never anything likethis. It had an air about it, a debilitating sense of primeval danger.

The nightmare ripped away from Yumi, leaving her slumped against the ground, trembling. Her vision began to darken at the edges, her body going frigid as if she’d been left for a day in a blizzard.

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