Chapter 35
Ruby
I'm cleaning my machine when Frankie comes out of the back room carrying hers.
She's changed the needle cartridge. Sets up her tray on the counter beside my station. Her movements are deliberate, arranged. I've worked beside this woman long enough to know the difference between Frankie setting up for a client and Frankie setting up for a moment.
"Your turn," she says.
"My turn for what?"
She picks up my compass rose sketch from the worktop. The one I've been refining for months with the broken points and the wisteria bleeding at the edges. She holds it up.
"Sit down."
I stare at the design in her hand. My design. The compass rose with the heart in the east point, the star in the south for Sera, the steady north point for home, and the open west point that leads somewhere I haven't decided yet.
"You're tattooing me?"
"I'm tattooing you." She pats the client chair. "Sit."
I sit. My hands are shaking. Nash pulls a chair from the waiting area and sets it beside the tattoo station, his knee touching mine when he sits.
Frankie traces my design onto transfer paper, her hand steady, her lines clean. She positions the transfer on my inner forearm, then peels the paper. The compass rose is in blue on my skin.
"Frankie."
"Mm."
"Why tonight?"
She sets the transfer paper down. She looks at me, and I know that look. The flat, steady gaze that means whatever comes next is going to rearrange my future.
"I'm giving you the shop."
The words land. I hear them. I process them. They don't make sense.
"Amaranth is yours," she says. "The lease, the equipment, the client list, the flash wall. Everything."
My hand grips the armrest. "Frankie."
"I'm leaving Willowridge." Each word placed with the precision of a woman who has been composing this sentence for weeks. "Leo needs more than a basement. Arden is getting restless. I need to find my sister." She picks up the machine. "My time here is done. For now."
I glance at Nash. He's beside me in the chair, his jaw tight. He knew. The way he's sitting, the way he's watching Frankie, he already knew.
"For now." My voice catches on the second word.
"For now." She meets my eyes. "You're ready, Ruby. You've been ready. The art is yours. So is the intention. The shop is just the building where it happens."
"The shop is not just the building, Frankie.
" My eyes fill. My hands grip both armrests.
"The shop is where I found Leo eating a ham sandwich in your basement and kept the secret without being asked.
Where I became witch-adjacent, which is still not a real category.
Where you told me my hands carry power, then I filed a classification complaint and you laughed.
This is where the prank war was born, where we found out Darla was pregnant, where Nash fell in love with me.
The shop is where I fell in love with tattooing, with you, and with the particular smell of sage and green soap mixed together at seven in the morning. "
"Ruby."
"I'm not done. The shop is where you taught me.
Every day. Not by telling me what to do, but by doing it next to me and letting me watch.
You created the conditions. That's what you said.
You created the conditions, and I grew into them.
Now you're handing me the conditions and leaving.
So I am trying very hard not to cry because crying will make my arm move.
If my arm moves during this tattoo, I will have a wobbly compass rose on my body forever and I will blame you. "
"Then hold still." She picks up the machine. "And let me work."
The machine starts. Then stops.
"By the way," Frankie says, "Nash was in love with you the first time you stole a fry from him."
I look at Nash. He looks at me. His jaw works. His eyes are warm.
The machine starts again. Its hum fills the shop the way it always fills the shop, steady, familiar, the sound that has been the background of every day I've spent in this building becoming the person I didn't know I was.
Frankie bends over my arm, and the needle traces the first line of the compass rose, the outer circle, the frame that holds the points.
I watch her hands on my arm. Tears run down my face. I don't wipe them. I hold still.
"When do you leave?"
"Next week. Me, Leo, and Arden." Her needle traces the east point. The heart. "It's time."
"Where will you go?"
"Wherever she is."
Her hands are on my arm. The same hands that light candles without matches, that trace symbols on bar tops, that held mine the first day I picked up a tattoo machine and told her my lines were garbage, then she said your lines are honest, which is harder. Those hands, putting my art into my skin.
"You're going to find her," I say. "Maeve. You're going to find her."
"I always find what I'm looking for." Her needle moves to the south point. The star. "It just takes longer than I'd like."
"When you find her, bring her back. I need peer review on the soup."
Frankie's mouth curves. "I'll bring her back."
"And Leo. Tell Leo I expect regular ham sandwich updates. I want photos. Reviews. A full culinary log of every ham sandwich consumed by a vampire in the continental United States."
"I'll tell him."
"And Arden." My voice catches. "Tell Arden I said the tree line is going to miss him."
Frankie's needle pauses for one beat. She blinks once. The needle resumes.
She works for an hour. The compass rose takes shape on my arm, each point precise. Each line carries the intention she described months ago in this same shop with sage smoke between us. The heart in the east. The star in the south. The open west.
I watch it emerge. My design in her hand. My art made permanent by the woman who taught me what my hands could do. The tears dry on my face and I don't replace them. The crying is done. What's left is the watching.
Nash's hand finds my knee. His thumb traces a slow circle through my jeans while Frankie works on my arm. I meet his gaze. Something passes between us that doesn't need words. I'm okay. I'm here. This is happening.
He nods once.
"Done," Frankie says.
She wipes the tattoo, applies ointment, wraps it in clear film. Then she sets her machine down, takes off her gloves, and pulls me out of the chair.
I grip her shirt with both fists and hold on. Her hand cradles the back of my head. She smells like sage, turpentine, and the faint sharp note of green soap. She smells like every morning I've walked into this shop. She smells like the person who made me.
She pulls back. Holds my face in both hands.
"You're ready," she says.
I nod. I can't speak. Someone has to. The mantra that has run through my head for months, letting me justify every sacrifice, every favor, every time I carried something that wasn't mine.
But this time someone did something for me.
Frankie did something for me. She gave me the shop, the art, and the intention.
Now she's standing in front of me, holding my face telling me I'm ready, and I didn't have to earn it. I just had to show up.
She releases me. Picks up her tray. She stops beside Nash's chair on her way to the back room.
I can't hear what she says to him, but he stands, then his hand comes up and rests on her shoulder for a moment.
Frankie puts her hand over his, squeezes once, and walks through the door.
The click of the latch is quiet and final.
I stand in the middle of the shop. My shop.
The flash wall is half Frankie's designs and half mine, layered and overlapping.
Two artists sharing a wall the way we shared a practice.
The machines sit on their trays, and the client chair holds the indent of everybody that's sat in it.
The altar shelf holds candles burned down to stubs. The whole room holds the ghost of sage.
Nash takes my hand. Leads me to the couch against the back wall, the one clients wait on. The one I've napped on during slow afternoons while he sat beside me and pretended he wasn't watching me sleep.
He sits. Pulls me down beside him. I curl into his side, my head on his chest, my hand resting over the heartbeat tattoo on his forearm. My compass rose points east, toward the heart. His heart rate is in my handwriting on his arm.
We stay.
The shop settles. The machines are clean. There's art on the walls. My art. My walls.
"Nash."
"Yeah."
"Talk to me."
"About what?"
"Anything. Tell me about the first time you saw me."
He presses his mouth to my hair. Closes his eyes.
"You were wearing a yellow dress. At the clubhouse. You walked in and the yard got louder."
I trace the outline of his heartbeat through the clear film on his arm.
"You stole a fry without asking. You looked at me while you ate it. Daring me to say something."
"Did you want to say something?"
"I wanted to say a lot of things."
"What stopped you?"
"I wasn't ready to be the man who said them."
My fingers go still on his arm. I press closer. My body relaxes into his.
"Nash."
"Yeah."
My voice is barely there.
"You chose me," I say. "And I chose you back."
His hand moves through my hair.
"Every time," he says.