Page 25 of The Enemy to the Living
She’s extended her hours for me plenty of times before, but I don’t like the idea of her being in the studio alone so late. Then again, maybe it’s as safe as anywhere else. How would I know?
She lets me in when I arrive and locks the door behind me. Her visible eye is quick, flaying me bare.
“Tough night?”
I grunt.
She grins. “I haven’t slept yet, either. Get in the chair.”
I don’t ask, and she doesn’t offer. We don’t even speak as she chooses a design; she just opens her sketchbook to a page with three different images—fangs dripping with blood, a stylised fairy with roots for feet, and two hands gripping each other as though unable to let go. One is dark, with clawed fingers. I glance down at my tattooed hands.
Iris smiles when I point at it but says nothing. She cleans where I want it, the inside of my right forearm, and only when she turns the needle on do I breathe easily again.
It’s a bigger tattoo than the last one I got, but Iris is efficient, and her work is good. She speaks only when she’s halfway through, the outline done and stark against my skin.
“You want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Ah.”
“There’s…” I make a frustrated sound and Iris tuts when I tense my muscles. I relax again. “There’s this wolf.”
When I don’t follow up with anything else, she smirks. “And this wolf, they’re—”
“He.”
“He’s what to you?”
“No one.”
“Hm.”
I roll my eyes and when she lifts the needle away, I shift slightly on the chair, folding my other arm behind my head. Iris waits for me to settle before she starts again.
“No one, huh?”
“He’s very young.”
“What does that mean?”
“In his twenties, I think.”
“So, like, an adult and everything.”
“That’s not—”
“Does it matter?”
“What?”
She lifts the needle again, and the one eye I can see is piercing. “Does his age matter?”
It shouldn’t, should it? It’s not like I’m trying—I just—
“He’s sad,” I say, and for a second, her eye flares wide. My phone buzzes at my hip. I ignore it. “I don’t know how to fix that.”
Iris doesn’t reply. She shades another part of the tattoo, slightly frowning.
