Both the younger men looked at the Rev as if he’d lost his mind, and so did the cat, whose eyes sprang open. Manfred thought they were lucky Mr. Snuggly’s outrage made him speechless.

“Mr. Snuggly, Manfred will hold you. He is a psychic, and that will help you focus.”

“Oh, all right,” the cat said sullenly. “I must get my feeder back.”

Bobo looked a little punchy. “All this time, he’s been able to talk,” he whispered. “And he calls Feej his feeder?”

“You have a vampire living in your basement, and you’re stunned by a talking cat?” the Rev said, with some asperity.

“Good point,” Manfred said. “Catch up, Bobo. Okay, so we take the cat out with us, and because he’s . . . what, her familiar? . . . he’ll be able to tell where Fiji is?”

“Yes,” said the Rev. “He is a lazy cat, but he must do that for her.”

“What’s all the palaver about?” Lemuel said behind them, and Manfred couldn’t help it. He jumped. Everyone except Mr. Snuggly politely ignored that.

Lemuel had come up through the trapdoor. “I could tell there was trouble up here,” he said, moving to stand beside Bobo. Lemuel was wearing starched khakis and a button-down shirt. He made it look like a costume. His pale hair was slicked back, still damp from a shower, Manfred assumed.

“Fiji has been stolen,” the Rev said. “We think the man who took her was Eggleston. If you had not burned down his hunting lodge, we would know where she was, but since you have done that, we must look for her elsewhere. We have the cat.”

Lemuel absorbed all this quickly. He didn’t respond to the Rev’s rebuke, and he didn’t waste time raging against the kidnapper. “We must start now, then. How long have they been gone?”

The Rev looked at his watch. “Less than an hour.”

“We can all get in your station wagon,” Bobo said, and that was another surprise for Manfred. He’d never seen the Rev drive.

“Do you need to change?” Lemuel said to the Rev, and Manfred wondered why the Rev would need different clothes.

“Not now,” the Rev replied, and he left the shop, running faster than Manfred would ever have believed a man his apparent age could move.

In three minutes, he was parked in front of Midnight Pawn in an ancient station wagon. It was dark and rusty and huge, and probably steered like a boat, but in this weather, that was about what they needed. Manfred had not removed his rain poncho, and he scooped up the cat again. They scrambled out of the store and into the station wagon, and without a word the Rev drove west.

32

The rain did not slacken as they drove toward Marthasville. It beat against the road and the station wagon as if it were trying to pound them apart.