34 #2
Garrett’s attention moved over the flash and framed work. “Your specialty’s realism?” I asked.
“Photorealism mostly,” he said. “Portraits. Animal work. Memorial pieces. Anything where people want skin to look like it’s holdin’ a photograph instead of ink.”
His portfolio backed it up. The man could do faces well enough to make you forget you were looking at skin.
Vise leaned against the wall and took a drink. “Which means when somebody comes in wantin’ their dead grandmother lookin’ exactly like the picture from 1987, he’s your problem now.”
Garrett laughed. “That happen often?”
“Often enough,” Rory muttered from the front.
“That,” I added, “and every man in a fifty-mile radius wants a lion, a clock, or his kid’s face lookin’ heroic.”
Garrett gave me a knowing look. “And they all say they want somethin’ original.”
Ronan answered from behind us. “All of ’em,” he said.
Garrett laughed again, easier this time, and the shop absorbed him into its rhythm faster than I expected. He fit into the banter fast. That should have made hiring him feel settled. Instead, the faint scrape between my shoulders stayed.
We took him upstairs to the rooms over the shop. He’d already dropped his bag in the one we gave him, but sleeping over a Saints business came with expectations beyond paying rent.
I leaned against the doorframe while Garrett looked around. “Better than some apartments I’ve had,” he said.
Ink barely glanced inside. “That says more about your apartments than the room,” he said.
Garrett turned to him. “You always this friendly?”
Ink’s face didn’t move. “Only with strangers.”
“Good,” Garrett said, grin returning. “I’d hate to peak too early.”
Rory had followed far enough to hear that and made a sound from the hall that could have been disgust or amusement.
I folded my arms. “Bookings start light your first week. We’ll feed you enough to settle in and let people start askin’ for you. You pull your weight, respect the shop, and don’t create bullshit where there doesn’t need to be any, you’ll be fine.”
I gave him a steady look. “Good,” I said. “That’s what matters.”
Garrett looked between Ink and me. “And before either of you start worryin’, I’m an equal-opportunity flirt. Men, women, doesn’t matter much to me. But I know how to work without makin’ the place weird.”
Rory snorted from the hall. “Bold claim from a man who’s been here less than a day.”
Garrett looked past me toward her. “You think I can’t do both?”
Rory crossed her arms. “I think if you try it with the wrong person in this building, you’ll lose a hand.”
Ronan’s dry voice floated up the stairs. “If you’re lucky.”
Garrett laughed without a trace of embarrassment. Ink watched him for a beat longer than necessary before looking away. That caught my attention more than Garrett’s flirting did.
I let enough silence settle to pull the focus back where it belonged. “Flirt all you want out there. In here, you work. That clear?”
Garrett’s eyes came back to me. “Clear.”
“Good.”
He glanced at his duffel, then around the room. “So what’s the real rule?”
I waited.
“The one nobody puts in the speech,” he said. “Every shop’s got one.”
Vise had come to the bottom of the stairs. He answered before I could. “Don’t make trouble for the people under this roof,” he said.
Garrett looked down toward him.
Vise took another drink of water. “You need the rest explained, you’re probably not smart enough to work here.”
That caught Garrett enough that his laugh sounded less polished. “Noted.”
Vise wasn’t wrong. Respect the people under the roof and most of the rest handled itself.
Garrett sat on the edge of the bed. “Alright then. Work hard. No bullshit. Don’t start trouble I can’t finish.”
Rory crossed her arms. “You say that like startin’ trouble you can finish is still on the table.”
Garrett tipped his head toward her. “Depends how boring the week gets.”
Rory gave him a cold, assessing look. Garrett could figure that one out on his own.
I pushed away from the frame. “Settle in. Tomorrow we run you through the rest.”
He looked up. “Appreciate it.”
I nodded and headed downstairs with Ink beside me. We made it halfway down before I said, “You don’t like him.”
Ink’s mouth tightened. “Didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He shot me a look. “You always this invested in my face?”
“When your face gets that flat, yeah.”
Back on the shop floor, Rory had returned to the counter and Ronan to his bay. Vise stood near the supply cabinet like he’d never moved. Ink looked toward the stairs once. “I don’t know him.”
“That usually doesn’t bother you.”
“No,” he said after a beat. “It doesn’t.”
Something about Garrett had caught under his skin anyway. Maybe instinct. Maybe old history Ink wasn’t interested in naming.
I clapped his shoulder once as I passed. “Then we watch him.”
Ink nodded, and that was enough.
Vise muttered from near the cabinet, “This should go well.”
I almost smiled.
Garrett had walked into Last Rites with a good portfolio and nothing Ghost had found yet that gave us a reason to worry. That should have been enough. Ink’s silence told me it wasn’t.