For the first time in a while I was grateful Dotty had forced me out of my hoodie and into something nice. It was comfortable and it was simple, but getting to the bar I realised that Jodie hadn’t just invited me for a drink, we were on a date.

The weeks prior had been blissfully uneventful; Addie and Sid worked on their project, I made up for missed shiftfs, there were no jobs, and we were safe. I spent time with Katrine, tinkering with new spell ideas and creations. She never ran out of ideas, and I was eating for three to keep producing all the magic she needed.

“And then program that one with the line from Lucille’s about memory.” She had said, trying to parse whatever was on her laptop amid the reams of notes that surrounded her. “And… you’re done? Shit, no you aren’t, that square needs to be rejigged. Old notes.” I had done as she said, and at the end of it, we had a mess of paperclips and wiring that changed the colour of whatever we put in it.

“It’s not about what it does-”

“It’s about that fact that we can do it, you’ve said that three times.” I’d interrupted, examining Sid’s newly lime-green coffee cup.

“Exactly. And if we can make components as complex as this, more complex than just storing and shooting energy, it opens the door for a lot of useful shit.”

Dotty knew it was a date before I did, but like usual I didn’t believe her.

“For fuck’s sake you idiot, she’s inviting you for a drink! You know what that means, don’t you?” she made air quotes when she said ‘a drink’

“It means we’re friends and she wants to get a drink.”

“You know what getting a drink means, everyone knows what getting a drink means. Alan Bennet knows what getting a drink means.” She was intent, so I conceded to another of her blouses and a different pair of jeans; artfully thinned out and torn for effect. “Do you think I should dye my hair again?” i asked, looking at myself in the mirror. The purple had finally faded out entirely, leaving the ends of my hair bleached a tired light blue.

“Not now, but yes. Now go.” she hugged me.

I got to the bar five minutes before we agreed to meet, it was much nicer than anything we’d ever met at before, but those were just planning sessions and one very misguided trip into the fae realm. I reached for my provisional license and pulled down my mask, but the bouncer waved me in without looking at it. The place was nice, more restaurant than bar, walls filled with signed records and symbols of famous visits. People were sitting down in booths and there was a family with young kids having dinner in the corner. I eyed Jodie at one of the tables, sipping at a pink cocktail. Even with her back turned she noticed me and turned in her seat. This was probably the first time I’d seen her dress for anything other than defence or comfort, with a puffy jumper and a dark green skirt, . She wasn’t wearing any rings, the gold band she usually wore was on a chain around her neck. I caught myself before I looked long enough for it to count as staring, and sat opposite her.

“Dotty?” she raised her eyebrows slightly, and I nodded.

“Addie?” She nodded as well, trying to hold back a smile.

“You look nice.”

“Thank you. You look nice too.” It seemed insincere, but she really did. I’d seen Jodie practically every way someone could, and this was the first time I noticed how pretty she was.

“What do you wanna drink?” She asked.

“What have you got?” I tried to focus myself reading the drinks list, but my eyes went glassy whenever I tried reading the ingredients.

“Clover club, it’s the third one from the bottom. Want some?” I leaned over the table to try it. It was very sweet. Too much grenadine. I ordered one for myself.

I ran through first date topics, trying to find one that wasn’t obviously stolen from a blog post. Asking her about her favourite anything seemed flippant, we’d known each other months, she’d saved my life more times than I could count.

“So,” she interrupted the silence that had been weighing down on me, “What movies are you into?” I couldn't help laughing under my breath. “What? It’s a conversation starter!” she protested.

“It’s…” endearing. Obvious. Cute. Any worked. “Star Wars.”

“Huh, weird.” she said, twiddling the straw in her glass

“Weird?”

“You seemed like a Lord of the Rings type of girl.”

“Hell no. Lasers and spaceships over hobbits and tree people any day.”

“They’re called Ents. What about Orlando Bloom? Liv Tyler?” Dotty had trained me for this, the invisible question.

“I prefer Carrie Fisher.”

She hummed in agreement, “Metal bikini.”

“Metal bikini.” I agreed. “So what about you?”

“What about me?”

“What movies do you like?”

Jodie twirled her straw around her drink and thought. There was a drop of her drink on her lower lip, invisible to anyone that wasn’t spending an unhealthy amount of time staring at them.

“I dunno. I guess I read a lot.” she said, looking at the coaster

“I saw. Your bookshelf has a lot of stuff on it.”

“Mhm. I spend a lot of nights at the hideout, it’s easier than carting them back and forth.”

“How long have you been there?”

“I dunno” she pursed her lips, “A while.” I studied her. Her eyes scanned the grain of the table, she scratched at a bump in the wood with her right hand. She’d done her nails. Not professionally, but they’d been cut and filed into order.

“I was pretty young, Sid took me in when she realised I was like her, and I’ve been with her since.” Jodie stopped talking a moment and swilled the last of her drink around. “She’s good.” How young did pretty young mean? I tried thinking of Jodie as a thirteen-year-old, twelve even. No wonder she was so good at everything, she’d been trained for it since she was a kid. She was a child soldier.

I tried to hide the look on my face, but Jodie noticed anyway. “It’s not… not like that. She’s a good person, just has a lot going on.” I didn’t see the point in arguing. Not now, at least.

“How did you learn about magic, and all that?”

Jodie laughed quietly, “It was uh, about a month before she found me. I was on the run, and this guy, Big Pete, married guy, took me in for a few nights in this halfway house thing I’d found on the web. One night I went down for a glass of water and heard him on the phone, talking to someone about prices. I put two and two together and realised what the deal was, and at the time I just didn’t realise that married people could be… like that, you know? Long story short the ring ended up falling off, with his finger still on it.” she raised a hand and rubbed the necklace softly. She didn’t look sad about it, or particularly happy. She talked as if it had happened to a distant relative, and I couldn’t find words suitable to match.

“Another drink?”

The two-hour whirlwind around us followed, washing families and meetups out and into groups of girls waiting for friends, back in for loud, exited get-togethers, before themselves trickling out the door leaving me, her and the table full of brightly stained glass jars. I kept a steady drip of magic in my necklace to keep me slightly sober while we ran our way down every cocktail on the list. I usually liked daiquiris but every sip of the house special raspberry daiquiri (with special exclusive rum, said the menu) tasted like the end of my time with her, and worse, enough sugar to make me want to throw up.

“Those girls from earlier?” I said eventually, glancing over her shoulder.

“They’re back?”

“Mhm, on your six, blue dress just walked in. And she’s… not alone.” Jodie didn’t look, but put her phone on the table and glimpsed them in the reflection. It took less than a second.

“Have we been here that long?” I checked the time, it had been three hours.

“She’s probably just good at it. Shit, very good.” She looked impressed “Either way, we should probably find somewhere else to go, they’ll need the glasses back.”

“Oh, right, yeah,” I said, and flagged down a waiter.

“Hey, do you know any good clubs?” She asked while I looked over the receipt, thankful for Sid’s card. I’d barely used it outside of one or two occasions, I was allowed to splurge a bit on this.

“A few. I don’t usually do clubs, Dotty drags me out every few weeks.” I said. I didn’t like clubs, but I welcomed the chance to spend more time with her. Jodie grinned at me.

“Any of them close?”

The closest club was just under a mile away, but it felt like longer. The weather was starting to turn, on the cusp of crispness, and Jodie gave me her coat to wear. She didn’t seem to get cold, maybe she was regulating her own temperature. Knowing Jodie was a constant guessing game on whether she was using magic or just that tough. She fascinated me. “I’ve uh, never been to a club before.” She said, awash with the light from the sign, “Anything I should expect?”

Dotty’s three rules for clubbing were to take up any offer of a free drink, only accept drinks handed to you from the bartender, and decide what you would do with a boy before you got drunk and stick to it. None of those seemed to apply in this situation, so I made it up.

“It’s loud, expensive, and there’s lots of people.” I placed Sid’s card down on the contactless machine, “But still fun.” I hoped I was convincing her better than I was myself.

For a moment I regretted sobering myself up, the attack of sound and lights was too much without being slightly intoxicated, but Jodie took it all in with wonder. The club seemed bigger on the inside, dark wherever the coloured lights didn’t shine. There were hundreds of people, men lined the bar, shouting for drinks, and women dotted the chairs and tables. They all mixed in the dance floor at the center, into a writhing mass of flesh and fabric.

“This is…” She didn’t finish her thought. A stray laser made her eyes sparkle a dozen colours before returning to their deep, golden brown.

“I’m gonna go get us drinks” I shouted over the music, she nodded.

“ID?” Matthias, by his nametag, asked.

“I showed it to the man at the door.” I said, fishing it back out of my purse as a burly guy in a dungeons and dragons tee muscled past. “Here you go.”

“Standard practice on Friday nights, unfortunately, Chloe” He glanced at my card, then back at me, then at the card again. ”All checks out, sorry about that. What can I do you for?”

“Two desperados. Please.” He went over to the fridge behind him, hesitating a moment to find the beers, and then passed them over with my ID. He seemed young, fresh.

“Are you new?”

“Ah, that obvious?” he chuckled

“Only a bit” I smiled at him.

“that your girlfriend over there?”

“Oh, she’s not my girlfriend. I don’t think she is. That’s Jodie, we’ve known each other a while, this is kind of like our first date.”

Thomas smiled back and worked out the total, I made my way back to Jodie, drinks in hand.

Jodie accepted the drink with a look of relief, then took me by the hand and started towards the largest mass of people. Jodie didn’t know how to dance, and I only knew as much as I’d seen from Dotty, so we just stood, swaying in time to the music and with whatever bumps or pushes came from the crowd.

“You’re terrible at this.” She leaned into me and said, her voice a whisper under the noise.

“And for once you’re just as bad.” I said back. Her face split into a grin, and she pulled me into a twirl. I crashed into someone but I didn’t care. She’d grabbed me, held me, even for a second. I ran back to her, I was euphoric. We kept dancing, closer, shedding our awkwardness and our apprehension. The next time she spoke she didn’t need to lean in, I was practically holding her. “I’m going to kiss you.” She said. “Is that okay?”

The lights went out, the people disappeared, and in that moment we were the only beings left in the universe. She fit every crease and curve of my body, and I hers, for that fraction of infinite time. As reality slowly bled back in she broke away to look at me, her eyes showing a myriad of emotions in the light. Thank you she said without words, without even magic, and I knew what she meant. I wanted to protect her, to make sure she was safe, forever. She pulled me in again, and I whispered into her, “We could leave.” She hesitated a moment, and then pressed her forehead into mine and nodded. She kissed me again, to hide the tears welling in her eyes. I wanted to stay in that moment forever, with her.

It was almost a relief, then, when the world reminded me I wasn’t allowed to be happy by putting a gun to my spine.