NEPTUNE HAD BEEN WALKING through the city for what felt like hours. The venerable guinea pig had been right: There were no cats anywhere. It was most odd. Despite this, no one was very happy to see Neptune. He was shooed away from the back of the Esoteric Emporium, where he was trying to persuade a rat to speak to him, rather than just run away as usual.

“Please,” Neptune had said. “I promise not to eat you. I just need to know where to find the cat called Malvasia.”

But the rat had not believed him, and had refused to say anything. And then the man with the large broom had come. The same thing happened at the back of the Mountain Vegetable, a Japanese restaurant that specialized in mushrooms and seaweed. Neptune had finally found something he felt like eating. He didn’t much fancy meat after his encounter with the venerable guinea pig, but he had always liked seaweed—which so far he had only ever eaten when he had licked the remains of Coach Bruce’s lunchtime instant miso soup out of his Old Town Rugby Club supporters’ mug. Tonight the Mountain Vegetable had thoughtfully put a whole plateful of the stuff—covered in miso and garlic sauce—on the wall by the back door. Neptune had been slurping it greedily when a chef had come out and shouted, “Oi, that’s my dinner, you fleabag!”

Fleabag! Did he not know who Neptune was?

Neptune had been in photo shoots. He was the uncontested star of the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange. And—not that it was anyone’s business—he was defleaed on the first Tuesday of each month by the school nurse. The absolute nerve of it.

On he went, searching, searching, until, tired and lost, he fell asleep by a still-warm stove under one of the stalls at the Winter Fair Market.

When he woke up, it was almost midnight. He was cold on one side, and warm on the other. It was a strange sensation. He had also changed color—or, at least, half of him had. What had happened to him? Then he realized. There was another cat curled up with him. A large, fluffy, glamorous Persian cat. Could it be . . . ?

“I am Malvasia,” she said without opening her eyes. “I hear you’ve been searching for me? And you know my sister, Mirabelle.”

“Yes,” said Neptune, eagerly.

“Excellent,” said Malvasia. “I hear you’re intelligent, and controlled. I, and all the cats in this city, need your help. You must come with me now. It isn’t far.”

“What isn’t far?”

“The cats’ home, of course. Where everyone is.”

Lexy sat in her room, wondering what to do. She could pretend to be asleep. She could—

“I’m ready!” came JP’s voice.