On the occasions Manfred went to Gas N Go—which Manfred had very precisely calculated could only be every third day, to avoid raising Shawn’s hackles—Manfred had observed that while Creek was usually genuinely busy, Connor was not. Manfred didn’t know if Connor was incompetent, or if Shawn had no faith in his son’s ability, but either Connor was doing his homework or he was employed with some job a monkey could do.

Connor seemed profoundly bored. In Manfred’s not-too-distant experience, a bored teenager was a teenager who got into mischief. And Connor seemed reasonably intelligent and likable, on Manfred’s brief acquaintance. If there was no one in Midnight who was closer to Creek in age than Manfred himself, there was no one who even spoke the same language as the fourteen-year-old.

When Connor arrived at Manfred’s house after school, Manfred led the boy through the room full of computer equipment. He looked back to see that Connor had stopped, transfixed.

“This is so cool,” he said. “What do you do?”

Manfred tried not to sound embarrassed or apologetic when he explained his psychic online business, which was obviously not a hundred percent honest. But Connor didn’t remark on that aspect at all, a little to Manfred’s surprise. Instead, he was enthralled with the computers and Manfred’s ability to make a living from them.

“We just have an old laptop,” Connor said. “And Dad won’t let us go on Facebook or anything.”

Manfred tried not to look as astonished as he felt. He could not imagine two young people being without social media, especially when the Lovells lived in such an out-of-the-way spot. But given Shawn’s aversion to his kids being noticed in any public way, it made sense.

“There are lots of ways to get into trouble with a computer,” Manfred said, trying to hold up the flag for Shawn. He didn’t want to undermine the man; that was not the way to win Shawn’s trust, which was Manfred’s current goal.

“Yeah, that’s what Dad says,” Connor muttered. He clearly didn’t think the better of Manfred for having echoed one of his father’s opinions.

Manfred felt about fifty years old. “Let me show you what I want you to do,” he said, thinking a change of subject was called for. He led Connor out into the fenced backyard, which was overlooked by the pawnshop on the left and a dilapidated and empty cottage on the right. Bobo had told him that the empty cottage, even smaller than the house Manfred was renting, had been left by its previous owner to a distant cousin, and the cousin had never taken possession of the place. It sat in dusty silence with the curtains drawn and the doors locked, and its yard was a straggly mess. Manfred had realized that his own place very nearly matched it.