“Good to see you, too, Sally,” I said, a big grin on my face. I waved to her rather than hugged. Sirens weren’t really the huggy type.
“Welcome back, stranger,” another voice said, this time from right in front of me. I turned my head to look at her - my angel, the love of my bar life. Mei Wong.
She was a dragon. Well, sort of. Apparently, dragons can take on human form whenever they want, much like other shapeshifters, so at the moment she looked and sounded strikingly female, but when she wanted to, she could fly and roar with the best of them. I’d seen it myself a time or two, though not in ages. Humans tended to fear anything twenty times their size, which made it hard to get any work done around them in dragon form.
Right now, she had emerald green eyes and long, flowing hair of a matching color. It wasn’t her natural color, but I had no idea what was, or if there even was a “natural” for dragons. They could change that sort of thing at will, you know. Underneath those adoring eyes was a pair of glittering, rose-red lips, slightly puckered, curled into a neat-looking smile.
In any other world, I would have been head over heels for a girl with that kind of smile, but Mei and I were just friends, and I was in no hurry to change that dynamic. Not that she’d go for me anyway, I figured. Dragon clans had pesky rules about fraternizing with lowly humans. Plus she already had a boyfriend.
I still gave her a hug anyway. I reached my hands over the bar and gave her a couple pats on the back while she did the same for me, then we separated. I could smell just a hint of her perfume on her. It smelled like cucumber melon. My favorite scent.
“Hey, look everyone, Damian is back!” Mei shouted.
The rest of the heads that hadn’t been paying me attention all turned and grinned at me while I ate up the attention. I was somewhat of a legend at Mei’s bar. Well, maybe not a legend, but certainly a regular.
“Damian!” a chorus of voices chanted. “Welcome back!”
“Bonjour!” another voice said a moment later. It was Sevin.
I walked over to Sevin and put my arms around him, too. I was a pretty physical guy, really, at least where my friends were concerned.
“Hello to you, too,” I said, a big grin on my face. “How’s my favorite Frenchman?”
“Fraunchman,” Sevin corrected in a thick, haughty French accent.
I burst out laughing and slapped him on the back. “That’s why we Americans aren’t fond of you fraunchy-types,” I said, echoing his rather snooty French accent the best I could and undoubtedly failing badly. “You’re always correcting our pronunciation.”
“Oui oui,” he said, his eyes gleaming as he returned my smile. “Zat is our job, no?”
I just shook my head. “Do you even know any other French words?”
His cheeks flushed and he lowered his head for a second to hide his embarrassment.
Sevin was technically French, but his parents had moved him to the states when he was about six months old, and he’d lived in some part of the Pacific Northwest ever since. Even so, he insisted on “living up his heritage” and saying everything in as French a way as possible. I just found the whole thing to be hysterical.
“But of course, mon ami,” Sevin replied a second later, looking back up at me with a wide grin.
“You sure pulled that out of your ass real quick,” I chided him.
I nudged him in the ribs, and he let out a slight chuckle. We both knew he really didn’t speak French, even though he attempted it on a regular basis.
“What’s your magic talent again?” I asked.
The other guys and girls in Mei’s bar I always understood, but Sevin never appeared to do anything magical of any substance. At least not that I could tell. And Mei had rules about her place. No regular humans allowed. Only us magicy types. So he must have had something up his sleeve.
“I’m clairvoyant, remember,” he told me.
“Oh yeah,” I said.
I felt like we’d had this conversation several times before and I’d just never paid attention. Which was probably accurate. I rarely actually sought out people with magical gifts unless I needed them.
“Well, Mr. Future, why don’t you surprise us all? Tell me something that’s going to happen in the next few minutes.”
Sevin furrowed his brow and rubbed the slight goatee at his chin. “Ah, I have just ze thing,” he said a moment later. “I shall tell you ze next song that will play on ze radio.”
I bobbed my head. “Okay, genius, I’m game.” I glanced over at Mei. “Mei, darling, would you mind turning the radio up just a little?”
She nodded and fidgeted with a small device behind her, turning a round dial on the object’s surface. The battered old machine looked more like an old boombox than a radio player, but soon enough, music filtered through it, filling the room with its dulcet tones.
“Oh yeah,” I said, recognizing the tune immediately. “Rick Astley. One of my all-time faves.”
Hey, I liked him before he became a meme, okay? Don’t judge.
“All right, Sevin,” I said, facing him. “What’s going to be on next?”
Frenchie stroked his goatee a few more times and looked lost in thought, then he stared straight at me with blank eyes that had gone milky white. I took a half step backward in shock, almost knocking into a nearby stool and losing my balance.
Then it was over, and his normal brown irises were back.
“Wild Wild West,” he said with an air of confidence.
I grimaced. “Ooh, not a good choice. There’s no way they’ll play Escape Club immediately following our idol Rick Astley. But we’ll see if you’re right.”
A moment later, Rick’s song came to its glorious end and there was radio silence. No one
