The sunlight glances off her tanned skin in the most captivating ways, glaring so bright that I have to squint to not be struck blind. I set down the last cardboard box with a soft thud, and dust my hands off on my loose skirt. Today is a bright day, a good day. Today I move up a single floor. It is not a great change, but it is a significant one.

“I think that’s the last of ‘em,” Thalia says, looking around the tight space with a kind of tired pride.

“I believe so,” I agree, wanting nothing more than to return to the realm of Dream.

“Y’know what that means?” she asks with a growing smirk on her face.

I nod severely. “We’re roommates.”

“We’re roommates,” she repeats firmly. “Do you realize the potential here?”

“We get to annoy the devil out of each other with all those little tics we hadn’t realized bothered the other person before?” I shrug my shoulders.

“Yeah,” Thalia concedes, “but also we get to make jokes about just being roommates now.”

A small smile makes its way into my expression. That would be funny. Not, of course, that it’s entirely inaccurate. Thalia and I aren’t exactly a couple: as it turns out, I’m one too many things that begin with A to either be or have a girlfriend. Thalia has introduced the term “queerplatonic relationship” to me. It’s new and unfamiliar, but the more I taste it, the more it agrees with me.

“It should also make work easier,” I offer. Work being not in the traditional sense. I’ve been entirely unsuccessful in finding a day job—a predictable event after the incident with Jared, which has no doubt gone on my employee record. But that just means I have more time for the kind of work Alice offers. 

Thalia murmurs agreement, already unpacking one of my boxes to start setting up the wardrobe. I always envisioned my apartment as barren and minimalist, but having to actually pack everything up has made me realize it was anything but. I’ve been hoarding little mementos and memories across all my decades of life, and slowly they’ve built up in volume. Like a magpie, I held onto the scraps of value I could find. I merely wasn’t given to fancy displays, and so they lined the walls of my old apartment, sitting on top of one another and eventually on the floor. Now, most of them would remain in cardboard boxes under the bed. I won’t display my childhood pictures, despite my oft-proclaimed sentimentality. But a choice few mementos find space on a small shelf I’ve procured. A medal from third grade for getting first place in an artistry contest. The employee uniform I never returned, folded as neatly as I did for a decade of my life. The cap Thalia gave me. My first bottles of pills. And…

I wipe the dust off the covers and heave them from their cardboard holding cell, careful not to dirty my blouse. While I haven’t touched their pages in years, I never forgot them either. Gibson is here, and Howard Philip too. Le Guin, Ligotti, and Gaiman… but there’s Zandra, and Val, and Felicie, and all the rest. No longer did they have to hide. I carefully gather up my treasures and set them up on the shelf.

A rhythmic noise gets my attention as I turn around to see Thalia bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“Nervous?” I smile. Tonight is a big night, after all. A real heist, our first job as a team. 

“Of course! I mean, what if we get caught?”

My smile turns into a smirk. “Then we’ll die with hands intertwined, blood pooling together into brilliant scarlet.”

Thalia glares at me. “Don’t joke about that! What if it happens?”

“Sorry!” I put my palms up in a show of peace. “But, honestly? It probably won’t. I mean, your casing hasn’t gotten anyone else killed so far, right?”

“...That we know of,” she grumbles. I only laugh, appreciating the noise as it exudes from my body. Voice training is difficult, but I live for those moments when I can speak and everything that tumbles out is me, and me alone.

I return to sorting out one of the boxes, finding that it contains my papers. I gently brush the surface, feeling every line of printer ink. Germund does good work, that he does. I would kiss him, if he hadn’t gone into hiding right after dropping my papers off in Thalia’s mailbox. An imminent assassination attempt, as the rumors had it. At least he was prepared.

“In any case, the servants change shifts in ten hours,” Thalia said, “so you’ve got some time to kill. Uh, not kill—something else. Stupid brain—”

And I laugh again, unable to help myself. I think I love Thalia. It is not a romantic love, the kind that sets empires alight and causes feuds over dynasty, it is a much more bespoke sort. But I think that rarity just makes it more beautiful, and Thalia agrees.

“Sure, I’ll get some sleep. Just make sure to water Chloe II, okay?” I gesture at the potted plant sitting on the floor by the window. I rescued her from the lobby, as surely as she rescued me several months ago. Thalia clicks her tongue in response, making her way over to the sink to prepare a glass of water. I flop onto the bed and let out the sigh of exhaustion I’ve been holding back for far too long.

And when I lay my head down to rest, I dream in dulcet tones of pink and blue.