11
Crazy Dog Lady Denial
A guy got out of the SUV.
Just a guy.
I didn’t sense any magic, and no, I wouldn’t necessarily, because I could be as magic-blind as any human, but usually I felt something.
Not magic, but a sense of…otherness.
I’d been working on it, and my radar had learned to ping a generalized alert of “other.”
This guy didn’t ping. He was just a guy.
Five foot eight or nine, slightly receding hairline, a teeny tiny paunch. He looked like the kind of guy who ate healthy five out of seven days of the week and maybe had a few beers on the weekend. He talked about going to the gym, but he rarely made it happen.
How could I know all of that? Because everyone knew a guy (or gal) like that, and he was that guy.
He approached with a used-car salesman smile—polite, but he tot
