Free Indigo Springs by A.M. Dellamonica Page A

strange?”
    “She’d have been happy to have anyone to talk to. She was lonely, you know? I remember Sahara saying, later, she thrived on attention.”
    “What about you? What were you doing?”
    “After Jacks had finished up his mural negotiations, he cajoled me into sitting up on the bar. We were telling stories about Olive and Albert’s hand fasting. Everyone was laughing. I wasn’t drinking, but I felt drunk, almost. Not sleepy—overstimulated, hyperaware. Edgy. Wired, y’know?”
    I lean back. “You were in the spotlight.”
    “Nothing wrong with wanting that once in a while.” Her eyes roam over the card.
    “You usually avoid attention.”
    “It was a special night. And sitting there with Jacks, telling stories…it felt normal. Comfortable. Almost like being a couple.”
    “Did Sahara mind that it was you in the limelight?”
    A stony glare. “She wasn’t like that.”
    “Wasn’t then? Or isn’t now?”
    “Wasn’t then. Magic amplifies your flaws, Will.”
    “Is that what you call what’s happening to your mother? Her flaws have been amplified?”
    She rubs her eyes. “You want me to say Sahara was a saint before everything happened? She wasn’t. But magic is a curse.”
    “Would you say you and Sahara are still friends?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “Do you think she cares now whether you live or die? Is she grateful you’re taking responsibility for her crimes? That is what’s happening here, isn’t it?”
    “Grateful, Sahara?” She presses her palms into the couch, chuckling bitterly. “You’ll have to ask her.”
    “Astrid, do you want me to believe you’re clairvoyant?”
    “It’d help matters.”
    “Tell me where Sahara is.”
    She exhales, lips tight and bloodless, and my skin crawls as she flips over a card. It shows a familiar traffic exchange, darkened by a distinctive winged shadow. “On her way here.”
    I blink. It has to be a lie, a joke. There has never been any hint that she would consider ratting out her friend.
    “Oh, it’s true.” Blue liquid rolls through her eyes.
    I pick up the card and carry it to the nearest camera. “I’m looking at the interchange where the I-5 meets Helensville Junction. Sahara appears to be heading northwest. If this isn’t clear, send someone in for the card. I can make out one of the Alchemite Primas in a car in the lower left corner of the image.”
    We wait, listening for the clank of the suite’s steel door, but there is no response. At last I return to the couch. “Thank you, Astrid.”
    Smiling oddly, she lays her hands overtop of mine.
    Suddenly I am sitting on a hump of soil the color of slate. Around me stretches a box canyon—azure walls hundreds of feet high, with rock formations of robin’s-egg blue that look more like clumped wet snow than like stone.
    “How’s this for a parlor trick?” Astrid tilts her face up to a sky filled with azure clouds. “Welcome to the unreal, Will Forest.”
    Fuzzy dirt roils around me as I spring to my feet.
    “Roach is checking my tip about Sahara,” she says. “He won’t notice if we flicker off his screens for a frame or two. Time’s funny here.”
    “Time…is…funny,” I repeat, and when she steps away I catch her arm. “Where are we?”
    “You want me to trust you, right? So trust me. Come look around.” She doesn’t pull free, just starts walking. Curiosity gets the better of me; I fall in beside her.
    We stroll off the dune and around a pillowy crag. Floating tumbleweeds the size of sparrows drift past, bobbing out of our way. The air tastes cool, almost minty, and there is a dripping sound.
    We round the outcropping and I see a cord of blue fluid, blood-thick, twisting like a beheaded snake in an otherwise dry riverbed. Droplets splash off its flying ends, striking the rocks. They roll, slow and blood-heavy, to rejoin the writhing fluid.
    “I’ve seen that flowing through your eyes.” My heart is hammering, and my eyes strain against the perfectly adequate