Chapters (46)
Fiji frowned at Mr. Snuggly. For the first time, she realized that in her thoughts she’d been putting Aubrey in the past tense. Bobo might be grieving because she’d left him, but Fiji could tell he also lived in anticipation of the day when Aubrey would return to her senses and come back to Midnight, to Bobo.
Fiji didn’t believe that was going to happen. She didn’t think she’d ever see Aubrey again.
As it turned out, she was wrong.
5
Manfred’s cell phone rang early Saturday morning. “Manfred,” said Fiji’s voice. There was a whoosh in the background, and Manfred peered out his front blinds with his phone to his ear, to see her standing in her yard with her own cell phone, a truck running between them and making her hair even more tousled by the wind of its passing. “The Rev needs a witness. You want to come over to the chapel?”
“Right now?” Manfred looked at the “reading” he was typing onto the screen. I sense you are involved in great turmoil right now. The way will be made clear. You will get a sign in the next three days pointing the way to the solution to your problems. In the meantime, be careful whom you trust with your secrets. Someone close to you does not wish you well. Since he’d had no clue about Chris Stybr (sometimes he had a genuine impression about the seeker, but this Chris could be a man or a woman or a hermaphrodite for all Manfred knew), he’d had to resort to the tried and the very likely true.
“Well, they want to get married now, so yeah,” Fiji said, with more than a touch of impatience. “If you can come?”
“On my way,” Manfred said. Typing swiftly and accurately, he created another sentence of bullshit (You will be interrupted in a task unexpectedly) and sent it off. Then he was out the door, locking it behind him as he always did. He looked both ways, just in case, but as usual there was not a car in sight on Witch Light Road. Even Fiji had vanished. He’d pulled on a hoodie; it was just cool enough that another layer didn’t seem ridiculous. Manfred craved the hint of fall. He had no idea what the Rev needed, but he was so curious about the older man and his chapel that he found himself a little excited by the summons.