Chapter Four
Three years ago…
J ulie was lounging in the Rebel Roots Salon’s overstuffed, tangerine-colored armchair, a mug of herbal tea on the lime-green coffee table, thumbing through a worn celebrity magazine when a stunningly attractive bald man in a suit burst through the salon’s glass doors, sending the little bell crashing chaotically.
He oriented his fiery red eyes on her and panted, “I need a hair stylist.”
She gaped at him.
“Now!” he snarled.
“Ah, of course.” She blinked at the mesmerizing man, who seemed familiar like a movie star, and closed her magazine, slipping her feet back into her sandals.
She went around the desk and opened the scheduling book.
Paper, because they only had a few stylists working part-time now, so it was easy to pencil things in. “What services do you need?”
“Hair colors.” He gestured at his bald head. “Lots of them. Red, green, purple. Every color you have.”
“Every color…” She pressed the intercom button that would summon the owner, her not-mom, from the break room in the back. “Um, is this service for you? Or…?”
“I’m the one ordering it.”
“You’re in luck because we have an opening…” An all-day opening, really. Julie pivoted as her not-mom came out, brushing crumbs off her punk rock shirt with one hand as she tied on her apron with the other. Her short pixie hair was dyed jet-black this week. “This man wants a color?—”
“And make it fast!”
The tiny salon owner sized up the man shrewdly.
She’d had plenty of experience with odd people as a former singer in a local punk band long before Julie had been born, and their old posters were still pasted on the salon’s brick walls.
Julie’s not-mom had started this salon specializing in wild colors, and Julie’s real mom had been a receptionist until Julie’s freshman year of college, when her real mom had died from uterine cancer.
Julie had spent so much time in the salon anyway that she’d just continued coming by and then taken over the role of receptionist.
Anyway, from that time in the music business, Julie’s not-mom had definitely learned that people who looked like movie stars, even rich-looking, handsome ones with silver piercings, weren’t what they seemed. “How do you intend to pay?”
He curled his lip, twitchy with panic, and glanced behind him as he patted the pockets of his formfitting suit. “Gah, I didn’t bring human currency. Here.” He dumped a fistful of heavy gold coins on Julie’s desk. They clattered and thumped onto the rug.
Julie quickly gathered them up, rising as a commotion started out on the street. The man hurried back to the glass door.
The coin in her hand was stamped with a dragon head.
Ah! Julie suddenly knew why she recognized the bald man. He’d been in the celebrity magazine. She looked at her not-mom in a panic. “Um, I think?—”
“Oh, no,” her not-mom said.
Outside, a huge red dragon landed in the center of the street.
Huge meant she was female. Cars screeched to a stop.
Men in suits landed all around her, holding up their hands, and it was not to protect her, but to protect everyone else from her.
As the red dragon turned toward the salon, she shrank down, her wings sucking in and disappearing and all her scales and claws magically sinking into her skin until she was a gorgeous, normal-size fertility goddess with deep auburn hair and not a stitch of clothing on.
Two of her suited men, who now stood much taller than her, caught up to her and draped her with a diaphanous rainbow fabric, fastening it into a kaftan and trotting to keep up with her because she didn’t break stride.
“I’ve never touched dragon hair,” Julie’s not-mom murmured with dread. “I don’t know the texture, the timing for treatments, nothing.”
“They’re just like us,” Julie murmured back to her. “I read about it in the magazine. If they didn’t shift, they’d be exactly the same.”
The bald dragon-man—who was named Sard Carnelian, she remembered—held open the salon door. He was sweating. “Ruby, you grace us with your luminous presence?—”
“Stand back, male.” Ruby stopped in front of the salon owner. “You’re the one who gave all the colors and sparkles to Evalina?”
Her not-mom blinked rapidly. “Evalina?”
“The human with rainbow hair and glitter on her fingernails, eyelids, and body. I must have these colors for my own.”
Julie quickly flipped through the appointment book and found their last entry for Eva, a fashionable art teacher with a zest for using her own body as a canvas. She showed the booking to her not-mom.
Her not-mom shook herself. “Oh, yes, of course. Eva. Yes, ah, let’s see. Have a seat this way.”
Ruby was seated in a chair and turned to face the mirror, then Julie’s not-mom made small talk as she fell into the familiar task of brushing out the dragon’s beautiful red locks.
She rubbed it between her fingers, testing the texture with her expertise, then she checked the dragon’s fingernails.
“It will take a little bit for one of my girls to come in for your nails, but we’ll have the time because I’m not sure how long it will take the dyes to set. Did you want your toes done as well?”
“Yes.” The dragon preened, her red scales shimmering across her pale skin and then disappearing again. “I don’t care how long it takes. I will have the colors.”
Her not-mom looked significantly at Julie. They were doing this!
Julie made the calls. The other part-timers wove through the crowds, camera crews, and suited dragon men outside. Ruby, despite her initial grandeur, was an ideal client, and soon, Julie’s not-mom and the others were chatting with her easily, even laughing.
Sard Carnelian paced nervously in the waiting area. He pulled something out of his pocket and crunched it, rubbed his belly, then crunched another.
Julie built up her courage and approached him. “Can I offer you some peppermint tea? It’s soothing on the stomach.”
“I have no problem with my stomach.” Sard unwrapped a piece of candy in front of her. “This is brimstone.”
“Well, if you think it would go well with peppermint tea, you’re welcome to have some.”
He looked down on her. “Don’t you know the only liquid worth drinking on your planet is coffee?”
Her mouth dropped open. Heat flared up her arms and across her cheeks. Her awestruck image of him cracked, and in its place, she felt an unfamiliar tingle against her skin. But she still managed to summon her best impassive customer service voice. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“Now, you do.”
She returned to her desk, stacked the gold dragon coins into a mini fortress, and brewed a fresh pot of herbal tea for the others. Ruby said it was delicious. Julie poured the last cup for herself.
Sard approached the desk with a huff. “How long is this full-body coloring going to take?”
“Four hours,” Julie said blithely.
“Four hours!”
“At least.”
“Can’t you go faster?”
“I can’t order the chemicals to dye hair faster, Mr. Carnelian.”
He blinked. “Sard.”
“Mr. Sard.”
“What? No. Just Sard.” He jerked his chin at the cup of tea. “Fine. I’ll take some of that inferior plant water.”
“Sorry, that was the last cup.”
He stared at her.
She held his gaze as she took a long, slow sip.
His nostrils flared.
She set down her mug and then licked her lips. “Mmm.”
He stepped back, his gaze still locked on hers, a strange new fire in his red-orange gemstone eyes. He breathed through gritted teeth.
One of the suited dragons leaned in the door and called softly to him, and he walked away. But even from outside the glass, she felt his gaze on her, hot and electrifying.
She finished the rest of the tea without even tasting it. All she felt was dark waves of heat every time he glanced her way…