Chapter 2
Ruby
I'm sitting at my station with a mug of gas-station coffee, a pencil that's been in my mouth more than on the paper, and the design that kept me up half the night is finally starting to behave.
Amaranth belongs to Frankie, every square inch.
From the vintage record player in the corner, the flash designs papering the walls, to the faint permanent smell of sage and green soap that lives in the air even when no one's burning anything.
But Frankie's still asleep in her loft, and the shop doesn't open until noon.
In the hours before the bell starts jingling and the walk-ins start pointing at butterflies on the flash wall, this place is mine.
The design has been living in my head for three days.
A half-sleeve that wraps a shattered compass rose into a tangle of wisteria vines, the petals falling apart at the edges in a way that looks accidental but took me twenty minutes to get right, and the negative space between the broken pieces forms a shape I didn't plan.
I tilt the sketchpad. Turn it forty-five degrees. The shape holds from every angle.
That's the good shit.
Frankie told me two weeks ago, leaning over my shoulder with a coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other, that a piece I'd done for practice was real work.
"You could be really good at this." I said, "Hell yeah I could.
" Then she bumped my shoulder with hers.
"I'm serious, Ruby. I'm telling you what I see. "
Which, coming from Frankie, who would rather set herself on fire than hand out a compliment she didn't mean, is basically a standing ovation. So I took it, bought us both coffee, and didn't think about it for the rest of the day.
Except I've been thinking about it every day since, and now I'm sitting in the dark at six a.m. because my brain wouldn't shut up about wisteria vines.
I pick up the pencil. My thumb smudges the edge of a wisteria petal, and the shadow deepens.
Better. I drag the pencil tip along the curve where the vine meets the compass edge, tightening the wrap, letting the line thin out to almost nothing before it reconnects.
The negative space opens wider. I shade the gap with the side of the lead, light, barely there, just enough to make the shape underneath breathe.
The center candle on Frankie's altar shelf lights itself.
I glance up. The other two follow, one after the other, three flames burning tall for a second before they settle.
My current working theory is that Frankie's shop is haunted by a very dedicated interior decorator who died before finishing their shift and is refusing to clock out until the vibe is right.
Either that or the building itself has opinions and is trying to set a mood, in which case the building and I are going to have to have a conversation because I work better with overhead fluorescents and a morally corrupt amount of caffeine.
Both are equally plausible. Both are equally none of my business.
I take a long drink of terrible coffee and go back to the compass rose.
The stairs creak as Frankie descends from her loft, barefoot, dark hair loose, her work apron already tied over a tank top. An unlit cigarette sits between her fingers. She pauses on the bottom step, her head tilted the way it does when she's listening to something I can't hear.
"Hm," she says.
"Good morning to you too. Your candles did a thing."
She crosses to the altar shelf. Touches the base of the center candle with her fingertip and holds it there. The flame steadies. She drops her hand and turns to me.
"You're here early," she says.
"Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd make it productive." I wave the pencil at the sketchpad. "Flash concepts for the wall."
She comes to my station, looks over my shoulder. Her hand lands on the back of my chair. She studies the compass rose without speaking for long enough that I almost fill the silence, but I don't, which is a miracle of self-restraint that nobody is here to appreciate.
"It's just flash concepts," I say. "For the wall."
"No, it's not."
"It's mostly flash concepts."
"It's a half-sleeve framework." She taps the negative space. "You see the shape in the gap?"
"I didn't plan that."
"I know. That's why it works." She straightens, then lights her cigarette with a match from the box in her apron pocket. The smoke curls upward. "Don't add anything else to it."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were going to bury it in detail until it looked like everything else on the flash wall."
I open my mouth. Close it. She's right, and she knows she's right. That's the whole reason I'm here in the first place.
Frankie saw a sketch I'd done on a cocktail napkin at the clubhouse, looked at it for maybe four seconds, turned to Malachi, and said, "Ruby works at my shop now.
" Malachi said okay. I said, "Don't I get a say in this?
" Frankie said, "No." That was the end of my career in whatever the hell I was doing before, which was mostly bartending and being devastatingly charming for tips.
"Leave it," she says.
I leave it.
I close the sketchpad and slide it into my bag.
"I'm dropping those flash binders at the clubhouse.
Malachi's got two prospects patching in next month, and they'll need their club ink.
East and Darla want to look at designs for the twins after they're born.
" I grab my bag. "Maggie packed Nash extras too. He didn't touch the first plate."
Frankie exhales smoke. "When?"
"Now. I'll be back before we open."
I could walk to the clubhouse. It's three blocks. But Maggie's plate and the flash binders aren't carrying themselves. So I drive with the windows down, flannel hanging open over my tank top, music loud enough to feel in my sternum.
The lot is almost empty when I pull in. Malachi's bike and Candace's car are pulled up close to the building. Nash's Harley is parked at the far end of the row.
I grab the plate Maggie wrapped in foil and the flash binders from my back seat, balance the plate on top, then hip the car door shut.
The main door gives when I push it. Last night's cookout still lives in the air, charcoal and grease layered under fresh coffee.
To the right, the pool table sits in the open area, balls racked and untouched.
Bar to the left. The half wall separates it all.
The building hums with the kind of silence that means everyone's still asleep.
The coffee machine is on, though, and a mug sits beside it, still warm when I brush my knuckles against it. Nash's relationship with that coffee machine is the most consistent evidence of human life in this entire building.
I set Maggie's plate on the counter and carry the flash binders toward the table near the far wall. It's Nash's usual post, the one with a clear sightline to every entrance.
Nash is already there.
He's sliding papers into a folder, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, his movements quick and deliberate. Wearing yesterday's clothes. His cut is draped over the chair back. The dark circles under his eyes look like bruises.
I catch the top page for a half-second before it disappears into the folder. A government seal. Formal typography I recognize from a lifetime of watching official mail arrive at the house in oversized envelopes. Then the folder closes and his hand flattens on top of it.
He doesn't look up when I set the binders on the edge of the table, which means he heard me the second the door opened and decided I wasn't a threat. That's either flattering or insulting, and I haven't determined which.
"Maggie sent a plate. I put it on the counter. You should eat it. You look like you haven't slept since the Clinton administration, and the dark circles are doing a whole haunted-Victorian-portrait thing that I'm sure intimidates your enemies but is genuinely concerning to the people who feed you."
His pen stops. He doesn't look up.
I should leave. I should walk back to my car, drive to the shop, and let the man work in peace. But his sleeves are pushed back, and the headband is right there, and I've never been this close to it.
From two feet away, the details sharpen. Red worn to rust. Thin from years against skin. A few strands of dark hair caught in the weave. Darker than his. Longer.
I've wondered. Never asked. He touches it the way other people touch a wedding ring: automatic, unconscious, the gesture of a man thinking about someone who isn't in the room.
My sternum tightens. I step back from the table.
His phone buzzes on the table. He flips it face-down before I can see the screen, glances at the clock on the wall, and something in his jaw resets.
"Club business," he says. Low. Flat. He still hasn't looked at me.
"Must be exciting club business. Monday morning, government seals. Light reading."
His jaw tightens. The muscle near his ear jumps.
"Drop it, Ruby."
Three words, and his voice drops a register, low enough to press against the base of my skull. A reasonable person would drop it. The word reasonable has never once appeared on any performance review of my entire existence, but there's a first time for everything.
"Fine." I hold up both hands. "Classified. Got it. Forget I was here." I pick up my bag from the counter and head for the door. My hand hits the frame and I turn back. "For what it's worth, you might want to pack up faster next time."
His grip shifts on the folder. His thumb finds the headband on his wrist. Presses.
"Ruby." I stop. "Where are you headed?"
"Back to the shop. Why, you need me to run errands for you too?"
"Straight there." His eyes hold mine. "Not the bakery, not the grocery. The shop."
His answer doesn't match the question I asked. He's mapping my route. My stomach tightens.
"Okay, Sergeant-at-Arms. Straight to the shop."
His jaw eases, barely. Tiredness cracks through for a second.
It's the version of him I catch maybe once a month, the one that looks like it costs him something to carry around.
The one that makes my chest ache, my skin warm, and my stupid, reckless brain start building rooms in a house I don't have a lease on.
This. This is the problem. These moments. These tiny fractures in the wall where I can see the man on the other side, and every single time it happens, it makes it harder to stop looking.
My teeth find the inside of my cheek.
"Drive safe, Trouble."
My hands go still on the bag strap. He said it at the cookout yesterday for the first time, low and quiet, and I thought I'd imagined it. Hearing it twice means I didn't. Hearing it twice means he chose it, and my ribs do something I'm going to need a minute to recover from.
"Always do."
My voice comes out steadier than it has any right to.
I leave.
For a full minute, I sit in my car with my hands on the wheel and the engine off. Then I start the car. Three blocks back to Amaranth. My hands stay tight on the wheel the whole way.
Amaranth is warm when I get back. Frankie has the record player going, something low and bluesy, the sage burning in its dish on the altar shelf. She glances up when I walk in, reads my face, and goes back to her station without a word.
I'm at mine, staring at the compass rose that Frankie told me to leave alone, when I hear the engine.
Nash's Harley. I'd know the sound anywhere.
The specific rumble of that particular engine goes straight into the vault; do not pass go, do not collect self-awareness.
He pulls up in front of the shop and kills the engine.
The bell jingles and he's through the front door, eyes sweeping left to right, corners, windows, back hall, then me.
His eyes hold on me a beat longer than they held on the corners.
He's carrying a photograph in one hand.
"I need the back door," he says to Frankie.
Frankie nods toward the hall without looking up.
Nash moves through the shop, past my chair close enough that I catch sandalwood and leather, then pushes through the back door into the alley.
The compass rose stares up at me. Broken pieces gaping open, the wisteria falling apart at the edges. I give it thirty seconds. Then I go to the window by the back hall, the one with the cracked slat in the blinds.
Arden is leaning against the fence post, half in the shadow of the tree line, dressed in black the way Arden is always dressed in black. Nash hands him the photograph. Arden takes it between two fingers, then brings it close to his face. His nostrils flare.
"Old blood," Arden says. His voice carries through the cracked window, flat and smooth. "They're already inside the perimeter."
Nash's shoulders tighten. I can see it from inside the shop, the way his whole frame compresses an inch, and my fingers curl against the windowsill. Arden hands the photograph back. Nash slides it inside his cut.
I ease back from the window. My pulse thuds behind my jaw.
Okay. Let's catalog. Nash rolls up hot on a Monday morning like he's serving a warrant, hands Arden a photograph, and Arden smells it.
Like a bloodhound. Then issues a forensic report based on the scent, in the tone of a weather forecaster.
The phrase he used was old blood, which is not a phrase that occurs in nature.
That is a phrase from a paperback you buy at an airport.
It implies there is also new blood, and apparently there is a man whose job it is to tell the difference by smell.
I have questions. None of them are the kind you ask out loud without sounding like you need a nap and possibly a priest.
Nash comes back inside a few minutes later, phone pressed to his ear, voice too low to make out. He ends the call and crosses to my station.
"You're staying here today." His voice is quiet, controlled. "Arden's outside. I'll be back in a few hours."
"Nash."
"I know you have questions. I'll answer them when I can. Right now I need you to stay inside this shop until I come back."
His eyes hold mine. The tiredness is gone. Whatever he just saw in that alley, it burned through him on the way back in.
"Okay," I say.
His jaw works once. He touches the headband on his wrist but doesn't press it. Then he looks past me and locks on to Frankie. She's already looking at him. They hold for a beat, and whatever passes between them doesn't need words, because Frankie nods once and Nash nods back.
"I'll be back," he says to me.
"I heard you the first time."
The corner of his mouth moves. Almost. Then he's gone. The bell jingles. The door shuts. Through the window, I watch him throw a leg over the Harley and ride toward the clubhouse.
I look at Frankie. Frankie looks at me.
The candles on the altar shelf flicker once, twice, and go out.