A few weeks after my romp with Peter, I managed to ignore my Cinder app, and I almost deleted it a couple of times. It hadn’t been a bad time with Peter. It hadn’t even been an awful time with the vampire, but my own life was starting to feel boring. After meeting a real live vampire and a werewolf, my own life working at the front desk of a hotel and going out with friends seemed lackluster. Peter and the vampire had somehow been more real, more intense than anything going on in my humdrum day to day slog through life.

I found myself looking around as I walked the streets and sat in bars, searching for anyone there touched by magic. Since Cinder also alerted you when someone who was a match for you came into close proximity, I wasn’t totally shocked when it finally happened. My phone vibrated to alert me that there was a man who was looking to meet normal human women nearby.

I was with a group of women, and we were shoved into the tables at the front of the restaurant. It was loud, and the table was long so everyone had to yell over the music to be heard. I had stopped trying to yell to anyone after the first hour or so, but the music was okay. The tiny plates of food were delicious, and it beat the hell out of drinking alone at home.

When my phone vibrated, I was happy to take it out just to have something to do. I assumed it would just be a message, but it was my Cinder app, and instead of the usual mail icon, it showed someone nearby who was a potential match. To be honest, the match looked a bit of a jerk. He had a narrow beard that outlined the edge of his face and ended in a small pointy beard. His eyes were dark, and his long black hair was either slicked back or pulled up into a tight ponytail. His username was Xavious, which I found pretentious and unfunny.

It wasn’t like I had a lot else going on, so I sent him a Cin to let him know I was interested in meeting him and put my phone down on the table. Since I didn’t have the sexiest profile picture, I wasn’t sure if he would bother to come meet me or not.

We were sitting at a front table by a big window. It was a dark bar. The lights were dim, the furniture black and the walls a dark blue. One side of the long room was dominated by a long black bar edged in silver LED lights that ran along one wall of the narrow rectangular space. On the other side was a staircase. I watched a pair of legs move strangely down the stairs. In the weak light I couldn’t make out what was so off about them but I wasn’t entirely surprised when Xavious came down the steps. He stopped about halfway down, which was the first time he would have had a clear view of the bar, and looked around. His face looked even more angular in the strange lighting of the bar. The overhead lights hollowed out his cheeks, and his eyes were two black pools. I raised my glass to him. He saw me, nodded once in acknowledgment and walked over to our table.

He stood at the end and waited. The conversation died as all the heads swiveled toward him. “Hello, ladies, having a nice night?”

Everyone giggled. I spoke up. “Hi, I’m Cora. How are you?”

“Better now that I’m surrounded by such loveliness. What do you ladies say? Do you want to do a shot with me?” Without waiting for a reply, he summoned the waitress and ordered the entire table a round of lemon drops.

The waitress was a tired-looking woman in a too short skirt she kept pulling down, but it probably helped the tips. She was working alone, and we hadn’t been able to get her attention that fast all night. It was a bit of shock that Xavious was able to get her to take his order and to bring the drinks as quick as she did, her small round tray filled with tiny glasses. We clinked our cups together, raising our glasses to Xavious, who accepted a table full of women drinking in his honor as something due him. When we had all tossed back the burning liquid and set our glasses down, he reached a hand out to me. “Cora, if you would care to join me upstairs, I would be honored by your company.”

I threw a wad of bills, mostly fives and ones, on the table, pushed back my seat, and squeezed by the window to stand by him.

Laila looked concerned and asked, “Are you going to be okay?”

Her concern made me feel both cared about and annoyed. I waved it off, saying, “Yeah, it’ll be fine.”

“Text me when you leave, okay?” she said, and she was looking at Xavious like she didn’t trust him.

“Sure, no problem.”

“Your friend will be totally safe with me,” Xavious said with a smile and, turning to me, he said, “Come, this way.”

I waved at the group, a few women waved back. My friend just frowned after me. The rest of the table had gone back to screaming their conversation over the din of the bar.

As I followed Xavious—which turned out to be his username and his real name—I watched his rolling walking and his tiny misshapen feet. It took a few moments, but it eventually dawned on me what I was seeing. His profile had said he was a satyr. I knew what that meant, but I was seeing it, actually seeing it right there in front of me in the form of a man with the loping walk of a deer or a gazelle and tiny hooves—or rather large hooves which looked like small feet. I couldn't see his furry legs under his black dress pants. It was a totally different sensation to see him instead of just reading about him.

He wore a suit with the sleeve cuffed and rolled to his elbows. The suit jacket and pants were black, and he wore a purple shirt under the jacket with top buttons undone showing off a bit of black chest hair. He also wore a thick gold chain with a gold Italian horn charm on it, although his looked less stylized and more like an actual horn, than the charms I usually saw.

He walked up the stairs. I followed, wondering if he was hot with pants over his furry legs.

When he opened the door at the top of the stairs, I was surprised to find another bar. The upstairs bar was better lit and quieter than the one downstairs. It was unusually bright for a bar. There was a red felt pool table in the back, a wooden bar in the middle and a few tables in the front by the large windows overlooking the street.

There weren’t that many people compared to the crush downstairs, with a few at the pool table, another set at the bar, and a large group of the tables pushed together in the front. The men at the front tables were all dressed in business clothes, although a few had taken off their jackets and loosened their ties. There were no women in the group, only a few at the bar and with the men by the pool table.

“She was downstairs.” Xavious announced to the group, and they all turned to inspect me. I forced a smile and a small wave. “Her name is Cora.”

He pulled out a chair and gestured for me to sit down. He sat next to me and casually draped his arm over the back of my chair. I was leaned a bit forward so he didn’t touch me but the signal was clear. The bartender hurried over, and I ordered a glass of cider.

The bartender, who was also the waitress, was on her way back from the bar when a nicely dressed, red haired man in the group leaned in and asked me, “Why do you do it? Why do you troll for magic?”

I was taken aback by the question but was buzzed enough to roll with it and answer honestly. “I’m not sure. It was almost an accident the first time. The second time worked out better, and this is only the third time I’ve used the app. I was kind of bored when I got the notification, so I figured it was worth a shot.”

I shrugged. The guy asking the question looked human to me, but if he was friends with Xavious, there was a reasonable chance he wasn’t. In fact, as I glanced around the bar, it became apparent a decent number of the customers weren’t human and were making only the slightest effort to pass.

There was nothing as obvious as say, a dragon in the room, just a tail here, donkey’s ears there and many of the faces looked too perfect. Their angular beauty was missing the mark of attractive by going so far over the line of what one typically saw that they looked false and concocted. Perhaps if I lived in a time before botox, I would have just accepted them, but in an age of artifice, I knew unnatural when I saw it. The bartender brought back my drink, and I thanked her. She was on the short side with very pale skin, and I wondered what she was. I didn’t ask.

This was the first time I had ever been in a bar where I was probably the only normal. Some of them advertised, like the vampire bars, but I had never gone to one. Besides, they were looking for a very different type of clientele, or maybe not so different now that I had been bitten. It was a strange feeling, to be such an outsider at the bar. I wondered how many of the people in there viewed me as food and feared again.

Xavious asked, “Is this your first time in one of the People’s bars?”

“Yes. Perhaps you hear this a lot, but I don’t do this sort of thing.”

The rest of the table had gone back to talking. They were arguing about a football call from last weekend. Go figure, but this was a football town, and it had been a bum call. The guy trying to defend it must have been from out of town.

“You don’t do this sort of thing, hang out in bars, pick up strange men with your phone, or chase after the People?” he asked and looked at me over his drink. His smile softened his words.

“I’ve never messed around with,” I used his term, “the People before, and the picking up strange men with phone thing is new, too, but I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out in bars.” I told him and laughed.

“What made you decide to start living dangerously and picking up men with your phone?”

“Just looking to try something different.” I didn’t feel like getting into a long explanation of how picking up men with my phone was a better use of it than stalking my ex-boyfriend’s future wife’s wedding plans on the internet. I had fallen down that rabbit hole one night and had almost canceled my internet. That was not a healthy life plan for me. Probably anyone. It also wasn’t a very attractive thing to admit to a man I had just met.

“Really? Nothing brought it on? No big break up, perhaps?”

His question was a bit too perceptive to be entirely comfortable. I didn’t feel like explaining it to him. He was very handsome in a way, not really to my taste. In his own right, he was probably out of my league. I didn’t feel connected to him. There wasn’t any spark. Still, I found myself wanting to like him, wanting to fit in at this table full of men, in this bar full of magical beings. I wanted this to be my scene, a place where I would effortlessly feel comfortable and be cool. I wasn’t totally sure why I wanted this to work. I never had before.

Perhaps it was that I was increasingly beginning to feel like my life hadn’t turned out the way I had planned, and I wasn’t okay with it. I had thought I would be married, own my home, and maybe be talking about having kids when I was in my early thirties. I would have some job where I wore heels and pant suits to work every day. Instead, I lived alone, in an increasingly overpriced apartment, and spent my work days asking people how many nights they would be on vacation, when I never went anywhere myself. I wasn’t sure what I wanted anymore, or rather I was sure, but he didn’t want me which amounted to about the same thing.

I needed to get over my break up. It was so obvious that a satyr, who had just met me, guessed what my damage was. Maybe that was what I should focus on now. With that thought in mind, I leaned back and looked up at Xavious

“You want to go to the bar and do a shot?” I asked.

“How can I say no to such an offer from a beautiful lady?”

There was still something about him I didn’t trust, but after a few more shots, leaning against him, listening to him talk about Italy, I couldn’t remember what it was. Perhaps I wanted to travel. Either way, his descriptions of Tuscany and the food made me want to go there. The names of places and wines rolled off his tongue with a musical lilt. He had removed his jacket and was just in his collared shirt and pants. When I touched his leg, his pants had the weird thick texture of fabric over fur, a bit like petting a cat under a blanket.

It was off-putting, and I wasn’t sure I was ready or even willing to push it this hard. I tried to remind myself that Xavious was just like Mr. Tummus, and there wasn’t anything creepy about Mr. Tummus. It didn’t work. I kept my hands off his leg and had another shot to steady my nerves.

I was feeling pretty good. Maybe too good. The room was starting to strobe in and out of focus. I was warm and felt confident, like I was sexy, and people were watching me. Perhaps they were, but probably not in the way I wanted. It was a strange feeling. I knew on some level I was too drunk. My judgment was impaired. I could be slurring my words or otherwise giving away my inebriated state, but on a level closer to the surface I felt great. I was having a good time, and I never wanted it to stop.

Xavious told me some of the same stories about Italy twice. His hand was on my back, reaching around me, and I was leaning against him. I could dimly remember not liking him, but why I hadn't eluded me. He seemed fine now. More importantly, he was right here, not bad looking, and like a real big adventure. I wondered what his penis looked like.

The whole thing was really kind of weird. I didn’t think the way Xavious smelled did anything for me, but somehow morbid curiosity spurred me on, despite my doubts. I felt too embarrassed to back out. Everyone in the bar probably knew what Xavious was. What did they think of me? Did they think I was gross? Or chasing after him? Did they think of me at all?