Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [7]
“Hunting,” he said tersely.
“Hunting?” I had a vision of rifle-toting guys in bright orange vests tromping through the woods in search of deer. “In Manhattan?”
“What are you doing?” He had evidently taken a good look at me by now. “This is a good neighborhood. We don’t want crack whores turning tricks around here.”
“I’m not a crack whore,” I said without rancor, since his mistake was understandable. “I’m with the TV crew that’s filming on the next block.”
“Filming? Oh. So that’s why that street’s blocked off.”
“Yes.”
“You’re an actress?”
“Yes,” I said again.
“Well, you shouldn’t walk around here alone at night, miss.”
“Why? Do you think I might get attacked by a guy with a sword?”
“There’s dangerous shit around here,” he said seriously.
“I thought you just said this is a good neighborhood.”
“I don’t have time to talk about it.” He sounded impatient now, as if I’d interrupted him in the middle of work. “But you should go back to your people. Right now.”
“My people have gone for the best fried chicken in Harlem,” I said. “That’s where I’m going, too.”
Despite the darkness, I could see that he was shaking his head. “It’s after midnight. Miss Maude’s is closed by now.”
“Is that on One Hundred Twenty- fifth Street?” I asked, feeling my stomach give a disappointed rumble.
“No. But it’s the best fried chicken in Harlem.”
“I see. But that’s not where my friends are headed.”
“Well, you’d better catch up to them,” he said, brushing past me. “And watch your back.”
“Er, what sort of dangerous sh . . .” But the young man’s purposeful strides were already carrying him down the street in the direction from which I had just come. I watched him disappear into the night. “Okay. Never mind.”
The encounter, and particularly his comments, made me a little uneasy. But, after all, he seemed pretty young, and the sword certainly suggested a love of melodrama. In fact, the street that I continued walking down now was much nicer than the street I live on in the West Thirties near Tenth Avenue. However, I kept my eyes open, just in case.
On the next block, getting closer to Mount Morris Park, I walked past beautiful turn-of-the-last-century row houses that displayed crisp, ornate stonework, freshly painted trim, and polished wooden doors in the glowing light of the streetlamps. The sidewalk was free of litter, the street was quiet, and the garbage cans that had been set out for the following morning’s trash collection were arranged in tidy clusters.
My footsteps slowed when I saw a shadowy figure dart across the dark street directly ahead of me. It was much too small to be a man, so I was more curious than concerned when an identical figure followed it a second later. I frowned. A couple of children out after dark, perhaps? Small children, though—too small to be outside this late at night, let alone out here without adult supervision. Still walking, I glanced around the street for an accompanying adult, but I didn’t see one.
Then I heard some growling up ahead of me. I wondered if the two small figures had run across the street in pursuit of a dog. If so, that didn’t seem like a good idea. The growling sounded angry. Dangerous. Vicious, I realized.
“Dangerous shit?” I muttered.
I halted, peering ahead. The street was adequately lit for walking, but not for seeing that far away, and the figures were immersed in shadow.
Then I realized I heard two dogs growling. Was that what I had seen crossing the street—a couple of dogs? I had thought the figures were upright, not running on all fours . . . but the shapes had been only a faint blur in the dark, and they were indeed low to the ground, so I might easily have been mistaken.
The growling seemed to be coming from behind a cluster of garbage cans directly ahead of me. I supposed a strong scent in the garbage had attracted a couple of stray dogs, and now they were fighting over food that someone had thrown away.
Vicious dogs on the loose in this neighborhood explained the young man’s warning to me. It also explained