The warehouse became our weekend ritual. A place where music and men, and sometimes women, left their prints all over us. At the warehouse concerts, Indigo acted as if shewere performing penance, and to her that’s what it was, a mortal debasing. She kissed with enthusiasm, though she always shuddered in disgust afterward.
“It’ll be over soon,” she would say, as if comforting me.
I never responded when she said that. The music made me vast, but perhaps it made me weak too. Because every night we spent dancing under those lights didn’t feel like penance to me. It felt like a kind of prayer.
And I didn’t know what I was praying for exactly.
One day that summer, we decided to swim in the stream beside the Otherworld. It was cold, and my body ached from the previous night’s party, my lips puffy and bruised. One of the boys I’d kissed—this one dark as night with gold threaded in his braids—had dropped his full mouth to my neck and sucked. I’d almost forgotten until morning, when Indigo rolled over in bed and I saw the circle of broken skin above her collarbone.
I was reluctant to get out of the water. The moment I did, I would have to go home to Jupiter’s. I usually went once a week or else my mother would call angrily. Each time I visited, I’d sit through a congealed dinner in the kitchenette, then I would pretend to sleep, but really I’d climb out the window and race back to the House.
Indigo always thought of my return as a game. Every time I snuck past the ogre, I proved to her that I was a fairy-tale princess. She said it was like the tale of Catskins, where the father lusted after his own daughter and tried to trap her in bed.
“He’s not my dad,” I’d told her.
“That’s not what he thinks,” laughed Indigo. Jupiter was nothing but a distant shadow to her, something to be outwitted.
“My brave and fearless Azure,” Indigo would say.
But she never asked if I wanted to be those things.
That day when we climbed out of the stream, our clothes were nowhere to be found. Picked up by the wind, perhaps. Or else scurried away by the long-fingered fae who loved us.
“Just take something of mine,” said Indigo, shivering.
“You know my mom won’t like that.”
“You can change when you get there,” said Indigo. “She may not even be home. Come on, Catskins, let’s go inside or I’ll turn to ice and become a snow maiden.”
I shivered, too, not from the chill in the air but from that nickname. The sound of it sent tendrils of ice through my veins. Inside, Indigo put me in one of her dresses. I’d never seen her wear it. It was low-necked with long, blue silk sleeves. Even unzipped it hugged my body.
“It looks good on you,” said Indigo approvingly. “It doesn’t look like that on me.”
I glanced into the tall, gilded mirror against her wall and understood what she meant. Although our faces had become similar in the way of a song and its echo, different hands had sculpted our bodies. The years had whittled and stretched Indigo. With me, they had smoothed and rounded. We could wear almost all the same clothes, but the ones we couldn’t were distinct.
Indigo moved behind me and reached for the zipper.
“I was thinking of what we need to collect next,” she said with a deliberate slowness, as if she had weighed each word on a scale. Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “I think we should have sex.”
My face felt suddenly hot when I looked at her. “What?”
“While we’re mortal, we should do what begets other mortals, don’t you think? It was your idea after all,” she said, her voice socasual I could almost mistake the barb beneath. “Maybe it’ll be a story we can tell everyone else in the Otherworld when we’re done here.”
“But with who?”
“With boys,” said Indigo with a faint distaste. “Or girls. Whichever you want.”
“I’m not sure Iwantto have sex.”
“Really?” asked Indigo, zipping up the dress. “I thought you liked kissing.”
“Kissing is different.”
Indigo sighed. “No, it isn’t. It’s just more parts touching. Don’t worry, I have a plan.”
She dusted something invisible from the sleeves before resting her chin on my shoulder. With her hair dripping onto the wood and her bra and panties sheered by the water, she looked like a newly hatched nymph, the love child of an autumn breeze and a rushing stream. Whatever panic had bubbled into my chest melted away, replaced with a truth I’d never doubted: I would always be safe with Indigo.
“I trust you,” I said.
