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I was running along Harbor Blvd at 3:00 ah the files and needed so a va with loneliness

I was dressed in full jogging gear, sweats and sweatshirt No reflective shoes I had been pulled over once too often by cops who had advised against a woive the same advice to a va the cops and everyone else

I kept up a healthy pace In fact, odly pace that I could keep up for hours on end, and so me to soak in my hot tub But I love the speed

Harbor Blvd sped past me I breathed easily The air was suffused withbalance to s Harbor was eht down Chape Streets swept past ed sies that had sohts I think Anyway, there seeies

I didn&039;t need water and I didn&039;t need to pause for air It was an unusual sense of freedom To run without exhaustion The city was quiet and silent The wind passed rapidly over my ears

I was a physical anomaly Enhanced beyond all reason My husband once called th andin the sky I thought of Kingsley and his obsession with moons It stood to reason that a ould be obsessed with ht donut shop The young Asian donut maker looked up, startled, but just

A olf?

I shook my head and chuckled at the absurdity of it But there it was, staring me in the face Or, rather, he had staredaround here? Since as Orange County a haven for the undead? I wondered what else was out there Surely if there olves and vaht be other creatures that went buhoul or two? Goblins perhaps? Maybe my trainer Jacky was really an old, cantankerous leprechaun

I ssley warmed my heart This concerned me I was a married woman A married woman should not feel such warmth toward another man, even if the other man was a olf

That is, not if she wanted to stay married And I really, really wanted to stay sley, bonded by our supernatural circumstances We had ht, in one way or another

A car was co a row of old hoht vision, I deftly avoided irregularities in the sidewalk�Dcracks and upheavals�Dplaces where tree roots had pushed up against the concrete To ht was co silver particles These silver particles illulow, touching everything

I turned down another street, then another Wind howled overa residential street called Bear Bear opens up to a bigger street called Leh Bear Street was

Yet another side benefit: unli first as a low buzz inis always followed by an increase in heart rhyth well enough to trust it by now, and I i for trouble And as I rounded another corner, there it was

Three men stepped out of the shadows in front of me I slowed, then finally stopped As I did so, four more men stepped out from behind a low-rider truck parked on the street Next to the house was an e their collective nostication oftheir iththe future isn&039;t written in stone

I smiled at them "Hello, boys"

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Four of the seven were Latinos, with the re Caucasian, Asian and African-A violence I studied each face Most were day Details stood out to hostly silver light One was terrified, jerking his head this way and that, like a chicken on crack All of thee�Dperhaps thirty�Dsave for one as as old as fifty A few had bed-head, as if they had been recently roused from a drunken stupor

I could smell alcohol on their breaths and sweat on their skin The sas pungent and laced with everything from fear and excitement, to hostility and sexual frustration None of it sood If mean had a scent, this would be it

A s open at his side, locked into place For leam off its polished surface He was perhaps thirty-five and wore long denily handso to hurt you" His accent was thick

"Gee, what a ro to say," I said

"Shut up, bitch"

I kept my eyes on him I didn&039;t need to look at the others I could feel them, sense them, smell them I said, "Noould your le woht Tsk, tsk Really, I think you should all be ashamed"