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“Ooh, ‘more Ruths in the world.’ Going to use that in my next card,” Wesley says with a chuckle. “There’s something I’ve been hiding from everyone. Months ago, Atlas came with me when I bought this cottage for my family. We had a lot of fun that day. . . .” He trails off. He didn’t know Atlas that long, but they were still tight like brothers. “I bought the place off this celestial we saved, and it’s this safe space where Ruth and I can raise Esther in peace. It’s where Ruth and I have been staying, and she wants to invite you all over when we leave the center.”
I shake my head. “No way. We’re not bringing danger to your home.”
I’m already struggling with living with myself. How many more people have to get hurt before I fly away and live alone on some mountain on the other side of the world?
“Believe me, I’m not excited either, but you’re all family. We’ll take care of you.”
“We suck at taking care of each other. Look at how many lives we’ve lost this week alone,” I say.
Atlas, Gravesend, Dr. Bowes. Maybe Brighton, Ma, and Eva.
“It’s the Heroic Crime,” Wesley says as he pulls into a garage and parks the car.
“The what?”
“Something I coined. It’s what happens when innocent people get caught in the cross fire of war. No matter how careful we’re trying to be when saving the world, there will be casualties. The losses are brutal and real, and a lot of us would time-travel back and undo whatever acts cost us loved ones like Atlas and innocents like Dr. Bowes.”
Maybe Luna was onto something all along with the Reaper’s Blood. There wouldn’t be so much grief in the world if we could all live forever. Dr. Bowes could be home making costumes with her son.
“Darren is going to hate me, right?”
Wesley squeezes my shoulder, which doesn’t hold a candle to Ruth’s hug, but I get it. “I know the feeling. I’ve been able to sit down with some kids and apologize for not being able to save their guardians. Some of them need a minute, but then they share stories and it doesn’t bring them back, obviously, but we all feel better in that moment. Darren looks up to you, and he was clearly proud of his mother. Just go in there, remind him that it’s not his fault, and that his mother was a hero who was creating a better world for him.”
Unlike Dr. Bowes, I can’t confirm if my own mother went down fighting or not. Or if it was quick and painless, or if they made her suffer for so long that she begged for death.
I keep my teary eyes to the ground, which works since we’re trying not to be recognized as we walk down the street.
Wesley throws on his hood, telling me how earlier today when getting Darren and his father to this safe house that he wished he could’ve been wearing sunglasses, but people have been especially suspicious of sunglasses since the Blackout, swearing that they’re for celestials hiding their glowing eyes so they can use their powers undetected. Not our problem this evening, but I think about how easy Ness could blend into a crowd. He didn’t have to tense up like me as I’m passing people on the street, acting like I’m suddenly interested in the awning of a flower shop and the bagel shop on the corner.
We stop outside the tattoo shop, Orb Ink, and the sign on the door has been flipped to Closed and the blinds have been drawn. I realize that we’re standing on a message in graffiti and I step back to get a closer look: YOUR LIGHTS ARE OUT NEXT. I’ve seen this hate speech targeted at celestials ever since the Blackout, and Senator Iron never condemns those behind it.
“Is this shop celestial-owned?” I ask.
“Yup.” Wesley knocks on the door in a rhythm that must be code.
A woman approaches and she has dozens of small silver tattoos, like clocks and bricks and flowers, that seem to sparkle on her brown skin. Her dark eyes take me in before she unlocks the door.
“Hey again, Xyla. This is—”
“Pleasure,” Xyla interrupts as she shifts her gaze back on Wesley. She definitely won’t be dressing up as me for Halloween. “You have ten minutes before Flex arrives to escort the boy and his father. I’ll be in the back finishing some paperwork. In and out, you got it?”
“Copy that,” Wesley says as she lets us in and walks away. “Don’t mind her, E. She might not be on the front lines but her job is risky too. I’m going to go grab Darren and Daniel.”
I look around while Wesley heads into a room that I’m guessing gets used for private tattoo sessions. The shop’s name is illustrated on the ceiling like a constellation. There are pictures of past clients with their tattoos: a star on a woman’s forehead, a stallion galloping along someone’s waistband, two hands shaping the universe on a man’s forearm, a polygonal hydra with seven heads on someone’s back that glows in the dark, and, my favorite, a crowned elder—the beautiful phoenix that is born old—with its storm-gray feathers and amber eyes perfectly drawn onto a woman’s shoulder.
If I ever get a tattoo, I think I’d go for one of Gravesend. Then I could remember her when she was a beautiful newborn phoenix instead of bloodied and dead.
Wesley comes out the back with Darren and Mr. Bowes. Mr. Bowes is bald with a thick beard and Darren has shaggy black hair with his first specks of a mustache coming in. Darren is wearing a plain white T-shirt like me with camo pants and big headphones around his neck. He walks straight to a stool and flips through a binder with template tattoos. Mr. Bowes comes out to me and shakes my hand.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say. I shake my head because I hate how that sounds. That condolence barely did it for me after my dad died. “No, that’s not enough. My brother and I are alive because of your wife. She deserved better.”
“Billie really cared for her patients,” Mr. Bowes says.
It doesn’t feel right for me to say that she cared more about her family. They know that already. “She shouldn’t have died because of us. I’m sorry that we brought danger her way.”
Mr. Bowes nods. He’s not contesting.
I cautiously walk over to Darren and sit opposite him. “Hey, Darren.” He keeps flipping through the binder. Wesley told me that it can be harder to crack the shells of children who have lost their parents, but I’m only four years older than Darren. I don’t get to act like some know-it-all. I connect with him the only way I know how. “I lost my dad a few months ago. I don’t go sharing this secret online, but I have no problem telling you that I’m actually adopted. I just found out a few weeks ago. It was a total surprise because my dad always treated me like a Rey, and I know how lucky I am for that. A day hasn’t gone by where I haven’t missed him asking me about my day or telling me some story that sometimes ran long.”
