Page 8 of What We Burn

I get out of the shower and shave. Then I’m standing in the bedroom in a towel. I look at the dresser. It’s only half full. The rest of my things are at Holden’s. Where we were all staying with Fury. To keep her safe . . .

I pull out a clean shirt, identical to the outfit I just dropped in the hamper. Black T-shirts. Jeans. The same uniform I’ve worn for years because clothes are a thing other people care about and I’ve never had the energy to.

I dress.

I take my keys off the kitchen counter.

I leave.

Margery’s studio is in a converted barbershop on the south end of the strip. There’s no sign. No website. The front window has the old cut-and-shave lettering still ghosted into the glass. The door has a faded card in it that says CLOSED if you read it one way and OPEN if you read it the other. It’s been turned to OPEN since Margery moved in eleven years ago.

She’s at the counter when I come in. She’s in her sixties with gray hair that today is pulled in a braid down her back. Her half-glasses sit on a chain around her neck. She looks up but doesn’t smile. I’ve never once seen her smile in all the years I’ve come here.

“Knox,” she greets, arching an eyebrow.

“Margery.”

“Walk-in?”

“Can you fit me?”

She gestures at the chair in the back room. As always, she doesn’t ask questions. Just readies herself to put ink in skin.

I sit.

She sets up without speaking. The light in the back room is yellow and steady. The walls are bare except for a calendar from a tackle shop and a framed photograph of a dog that died peacefully long ago.

“Where?” she says.

I pull my shirt off. “Chest. Over the heart.”

She looks at me but doesn’t comment. Pulls the chair stool around so she’s at my left side and picks up a sketch pad.

“What do you want?”

“Sage.”

“The plant?”

“Yeah. And five bees.”

Her hand pauses for a fraction of a second. She nods slowly. “In flight?”

I think about it. “You decide.”

She nods again and begins drawing. Under her hand a sprig of sage with small purple flowers springs to life. She adjusts, adding five bees around it. Two midair, wings angled. Three on the leaves or flowers. The composition is good. She turns the sketch around so I can see.

I study it.

Five bees. Coming to the plant. Sustaining it. Sustained by it.

“Do it.”

I stare at the ceiling while she gets everything ready, and when she peels the stencil back, the purple lines sit over my heart. The plant is rooted near my sternum. The bees fan out across my pectoral.

“Lie back,” she says, starting the gun.

The first line goes in over the rib. Sharp. Bright. The pain is specific and clean and entirely my own. It is not the pain of watching Fury almost die. It is not the pain of being powerless except to grip her hand and promise the universe I’d never let go. It isn’t survivor’s guilt.