I stepped out of the cab, slung the small duffel bag I traveled with over my shoulder, and handed the nervous driver some money. I duked him an extra-large tip for bravery. He grabbed the money, didn’t count it, and drove off as fast as he dared. I smirked after the fast-disappearing cab before I turned to look at Gran’s diner. It was a small place and nothing all that special to look it. One story with white siding that had faded to gray beneath the urban onslaught of dust and road grime. It was the kind of place that specialized in food that makes your doctor angry and your waistline bulge. If not for my very active lifestyle, I’d probably have had to stop eating there entirely. The diner is located in a sizeable city. You’d recognize the name and, no, I won’t tell you which one. We’re in a neighborhood that doesn’t treat tourists kindly. In fact, it doesn’t treat anyone kindly, except me and Gran. It treats Gran kindly because she’s an institution. As for me, it used to treat me well because of Gran. Now, it treats me with respect because it knows my name. I glanced around out of long-ingrained habit.

Everything was normal. People were walking with their eyes fixed ahead of them, not noticing things. It was a cosmopolitan sort of neighborhood. Poverty doesn’t discriminate. I stopped short as I saw something I didn’t like. There was a young woman walking down the street in a school uniform. She was dark, probably of Hispanic extraction, with long curly hair that she let hang over her face. She looked like she had to be verging on graduation, but she was doing things all wrong. Her body language was afraid, huddled, and it screamed prey. There were a pair of knee breakers in training hassling her and I felt a surge of territorial anger. There was no reasonable way to stop all the crime in a neighborhood like this, but the rules had been established long ago that Gran’s block was off-limits. That rule was enforced without fail and without pity. Those two must be new. It was time to greet the neighbors.

I walked toward them with the kind of casualness that makes people dismiss you out of hand. I waited until the girl and her two shadows passed me before I turned and debated what to do. At this point, I could probably beat them both to death with my bare hands and no one would say a word. Not their gang, if there was a gang, and certainly not the cops. This was Gran’s block. Then again, if they were new, they might not be up to speed on how things worked. I sighed.

“Hey, leave her alone,” I said.

I didn’t bellow, scream, or even raise my voice. That’s for people who aren’t sure about what they can do. I was quite sure of myself. The punks turned to look at me. They were around my age, early to mid-twenties, and they both had a feral quality about them, as though civilization never really took root. They stared at me in incomprehension, unaccustomed to being challenged.

“Mind your own business,” said the one on the right, a whip-thin white guy trying to look gangsta.

“Yeah,” said the other, an overweight guy who could have come from any number of places.

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“I am minding my own business. You obviously don’t know where you are.”

“Where’s that?” Asked the fat one.

“You’re on Gran’s block, boys.”

The thin one gave me a nasty grin, “So what? I ain’t scared of no old woman. What’s she gonna do?”

I cocked my head at him. “Her? She isn’t going to do anything. That’s what I’m for.”

The fat one blinked a couple of times. “Who you supposed to be?”

“I’m Jericho Lott.”

The fat one didn’t recognize the name, but the thin white guy did. He went very pale, and I saw his hand tremble a little. There were stories about me in the neighborhood, both ridiculous and disturbing stories, most of them untrue. Then again, if anyone knew the real stories, they’d be even more scared. Not so much because I did scary things, but because the people and creatures I did them to were so utterly terrifying. Still, I wasn’t sorry to have the reputation I did. The white guy shook his head back and forth. He looked like he was trying to deny me out of existence. Good luck with that, buddy, I thought.

“You ain’t Jericho Lott. Dude’s nothing but a story.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him and then looked around. I spotted old man Weathers sweeping some steps in front of his building. I raised a hand to him and shouted.

“Fine afternoon isn’t it, Mr. Weathers?”

The old man looked up and waved to me. “Certainly is Jericho. Certainly is.”

I looked back at the two punks and took two steps toward them. “There you go, not an urban myth. Apparently, nobody explained to you that there is no violence, no theft, no harassment, basically, there is no crime on Gran’s block. Not now. Not ever. This is your friendly warning. Now get the fuck out of here.”

The fat one sneered at me, still not on the same page as everyone else. “Or what?”

I looked him in the eyes. Eyes are special things. As the windows to the soul, they let information out. Sadly for the dim bulb in front of me, they also let information get in. So, I opened my third eye and let the fat one see something. It was something I’d chained a few years back for moments just like this one. I only gave him a glimpse, a few seconds at most, but the fat one screamed. He fell to the pavement and curled into the fetal position, crying and shaking, while the thin one stared at me in utter horror.

“Take your friend and get off this block. Don’t come back and don’t you ever go near another school kid again. If you do, it would make me very,” I paused for melodramatic effect, “unhappy.”

I stood there and waited while the thin one got his buddy, still shaking and crying, onto his feet and moving down the block. The fat one looked at me for one fleeting second and I was pretty sure I heard him say, “Diablo,” but I wasn’t sure. After they were gone, I turned to head back to the diner, but the girl was still standing there, just staring at me like some kind of awestruck teen who’s just met her favorite rock star through sheer happenstance. Dammit, I thought. I was going to have to talk to her. I put on my least threatening smile and walked over to her.

“You alright?” I asked.

She nodded, staring up at me shyly through her mane of dark hair. I waited for her to speak, but she didn’t.

“You have a name,” I prompted.

“Gabriella,” she whispered, almost beneath the threshold of audibility.

“Come on,” I said after another awkward pause. “I think you need a slice of Gran’s pecan pie.”

She trailed along after me for a few steps before she said, timid and unsure, “I don’t like pecan pie.”

I snorted. “Don’t worry. Everyone likes Gran’s pecan pie. It’s pure magic.”