Midnight Crossroad

  “I am saying we’d have a much better chance of getting her back unharmed.”

  “Okay, point taken,” Bobo said. “But what now?”

  The Rev looked almost approving. “Good. The right spirit will lead you into the paths of righteousness,” he said. “We must find where he has taken her, and we must rescue her, because the police will not be able to do this.”

  “But won’t we have to take measures as drastic as the ones you’re condemning?”

  The Rev said very patiently, “Now is the time to take measures. Her welfare is at stake. It’s not the answer to every problem. It is the answer to this problem.”

  “If you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” Manfred said suddenly. He’d just caught on.

  “Exactly. And Lemuel and Olivia are hammers.” The Rev nodded, glad now that he felt they were all on the same page.

  “Lem will be up soon,” Bobo said, glancing at a clock.

  “It’s too bad you’re not a tracking creature,” the Rev said. “But Lemuel will do his best.”

  “Olivia’s not here?” Manfred was looking all around him in furtive glances, worried that Lemuel would pop up out of nowhere and scare the shit out of him.

  “No, she’s gone.” The Rev looked sad, whether because he missed Olivia, thought she would be useful if she were here, or regretted whatever cause had taken her away, Manfred could not decide.

  “Should we get Chuy and Joe?” Manfred said.

  “No, they need to stay here,” the Rev said, without any hesitation.

  “Teacher?”

  “No, he would not come,” the Rev said. “Better not to ask him.”

  Manfred wondered how the Rev knew all this, and how the oldest resident of Midnight had been tacitly acknowledged leader of the Fiji rescue expedition—but since Manfred himself was not qualified to take control, he was not about to ask out loud.

  “What are we going to do?” Bobo asked impatiently.

  “We’re going to find Fiji and get her back.”

  “Great. How?” Bobo snapped.

  The Rev looked up at Bobo, but Bobo didn’t relent.

  “As soon as Lem is up, we’ll go. We’ll take the cat.”

  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.

  From the rear seat, Manfred, who’d been tapping on his phone, said, “Price Eggleston has a home address on Rolling Hills Road. Someone named Bart Eggleston, I’m assuming that’s his dad, has a phone listing on the same road. From the addresses, they’re next door to each other.”

  “Your computer told you all that?” the Rev said.

  “My telephone told me all that. You really should try it sometime.”

  “I have a telephone,” the Rev said. He was bent forward to peer out the windshield. “It stays on the wall in my house and takes messages if I don’t want to answer it. That’s all I need.”

  Manfred could tell from the limpness of the warm bundle under his poncho that Mr. Snuggly had gone to sleep again. So far, he was not a fan of the cat. But he would rather think about the cat than Lemuel, who was sitting beside him and behind Bobo. The vampire seemed more stone than flesh. Manfred could not imagine what Lemuel was thinking. The vampire could be lamenting the absence of his lover, he could be angry at the Rev, he could be planning revenge on Fiji’s abductors, or he could be trying to remember if he’d flossed that night. He could even be considering the scolding the Rev had given him.

  The Rev drove as fast as he could, considering the age and size of the vehicle and the terrible weather, but there was no way they were going to catch up with the pickup truck. When they’d gotten close to Marthasville, the old man said, “Manfred, wake the cat.”

  Manfred said, “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.” He gave the cat a gentle shake and lifted up the flap of yellow plastic that had covered him.

  “I’m awake,” said a peevish voice. Mr. Snuggly looked up at Manfred through slitted eyes. “I will know when she is close,” the cat said.

  “You’d better,” said the Rev, very quietly.

  “No threatening the cat!” Mr. Snuggly said.

  No one spoke after that. They all concentrated on finding Fiji.

  33

  Fiji was scared, and she was angry. It was impossible to say which emotion was stronger. Just after they’d left Midnight, a moment of hydroplaning on the slick road had left her down on the floorboard, since she had no way to catch herself. Fortunately, Eggleston steadied the truck and calmed down. Fiji was glad the road west was mostly straight and the hills were gentle. She had so many thoughts running through her head that she couldn’t seize any one of them to develop. She had wept a little (out of sheer anger, she told herself), and her nose was stopped up in consequence. Since her mouth was sealed shut, she had to concentrate on her breathing. Finally her nasal passages cleared, and she was getting oxygen in a regular amount in the normal way. It was amazing how much that helped to clear her mind.

  She had a few thousand things to say to Price Eggleston, but by necessity they were bottled up inside her. That doesn’t mean I’m powerless, she told herself sternly. I can still work magic without a voice. Or hands. Or the cat. Great-Aunt Mildred had told her that
spoken spells and hand gestures were only tools to the witch, that what mattered most was intent. “Focus and intent,” she’d said.

  So this is like a test, Fiji told herself. I can do this. She could see Eggleston’s foot very clearly, in its cowboy boot. She concentrated on the boot. She imagined it getting hot. Suddenly she realized the left foot was the one that needed to get hot; if the right one caught on fire, the truck might crash with her helpless inside it. Idiot, she scolded herself, and rubbed her cheek against her shoulder to wipe off a tear. Shoshanna Whitlock had been easy; she hadn’t been expecting any resistance and she’d been standing still.

  This separates the witches from the wannabes, Fiji thought, and she focused on the heel of the boot. She made it hot. She thought of heat, of fire, and she sent it all into the boot. She didn’t let herself blink, and she held herself still, and she was glad that the big man at the wheel did not seem to want to talk to her. In the movies, villains always wanted to explain themselves. It was her luck to have been captured by a villain who wasn’t of the chatty variety.

  His left foot stirred. He rubbed it across the floor mat. “What bit me?” he muttered. Instantly changing her tactic, Fiji imagined a big snake, though she wasn’t educated enough about snakes to make it a particular pattern. She figured with the gathering darkness that Eggleston couldn’t see down by his boot very clearly, and in this she was right. He could see the coiled shape and feel the intense heat she generated in his heel, and that was enough to make him yelp, swerve violently onto the shoulder of the road, throw the truck into park, and leap out.

  Here she had a choice—if the snake flowed out after him, would he run? Or should she “keep” it in the truck with her? When he drew a gun, Fiji’s choice was made for her. She didn’t want him firing into the truck. So out the snake went, slithering right for her abductor. The man made a sound that combined fear and incredulity, and he shot at the imaginary snake.

  Fiji congratulated herself and began thinking of ways to keep him out of the truck, but she wasn’t able to come up with anything good while her abductor was frantically searching the ground to find the corpse of the illusory serpent. This was made nearly impossible by the pouring rain and the dark sky. Lemuel will be rising soon, she thought, and though some of the feelings she’d had for Lemuel lately had not been kindly, she looked forward to seeing him now with a passionate longing.

  She tried to build an illusory wall between the man and the truck while he was still searching for the snake, but she was too uncomfortable with her wrists strained behind her, and too upset, to concentrate properly. I should have made the snake bite him, she thought. Perhaps he would have been upset enough to manifest the symptoms of snakebite. Perhaps the “venom” would have killed him.

  Fiji’s wall did not manifest successfully. All too soon, her abductor became convinced that he’d either wounded the snake or frightened it off. He holstered the gun, and after a few more seconds of looking around—during which she prayed someone was making progress in tracking her—he pulled her up onto the seat and buckled her in. He went around to his side and climbed in, and the truck lurched back onto the road.

  “You’re lucky that ole snake didn’t bite you,” he told her. “I got no idea how the damn thing got in here.”

  I don’t feel too lucky right now, she thought, leaning forward as far as the seat belt would permit to relieve the pressure on her arms. She began to focus on his boot again. She thought of heat. She wanted him to become convinced he’d been bitten, somehow, and was just now feeling the full effect. She doubted his cowboy boots would even permit fangs to penetrate, but maybe he wouldn’t believe that. In a second, he moved his left foot restlessly.

  “Ole snake,” he said, trying not to sound anxious. “Don’t worry, lady, you’re going to be okay.”

  She didn’t answer. She was too busy staring at his foot.

  “Goddamn,” he muttered. “That hurts.”

  Yay! She was doing the right thing. Mildred would be proud of her.

  And then his heel began smoking and burst into tiny flames.

  He yelled and the truck left the road. This was maybe more success than she’d planned on, because they careened down into a slight ditch and jolted up the rise on the other side, smacking into a barbed-wire fence. She did not let the accident break her focus this time, and the flames grew hotter. He threw the pickup into park and ejected himself from the cab of the truck again. Out in the downpour, he began stamping around on his foot. Because he’d panicked, he didn’t rip off the boot but stomped down into a puddle to extinguish the flame. It worked just as well, and she almost shrieked in frustration when her work again came to nothing but a delaying tactic.

  Plus, this time he figured it out. “You did this,” he said, and he wasn’t screaming at her and he didn’t sound angry with her, which somehow made his voice all the more frightening. She thought her brain was going to pop with the effort she was making to shrink back against the seat of the pickup, imagine some way to protect herself, and rub the edge of the duct tape against the seat belt. Since he’d only slapped it on and her face had been wet, she succeeded in removing enough of it to allow her to speak.

  “Why did you take me? I haven’t done a thing to you.”

  “Blame your friend Bobo. He’s got something I want. He killed two of my soldiers. He got two others arrested. He burned down our meeting place. And he murdered a woman who was part of my movement. Lisa tells me you’re real close to him. Maybe you’ve taken Aubrey’s place. So I’ve taken someone of his, until he steps up to answer for his crimes.”

  “Oh, bullshit. None of that is true. He doesn’t have this cache of arms, he didn’t kill your so-called soldiers, and your buddies deserved to be arrested. He thought the sun shone out of Aubrey’s ass. He did not harm any of those people, and he doesn’t have any of that stuff.”

  “But my soldiers disappeared after I sent them to talk to him.”

  “You mean, after you sent them into his own place of business to beat him up. Be man enough to say it.” She could not twist her head enough to see him well, but she hoped she was shaming him. Being diplomatic would be wiser, but she was mightily pissed off.

  “Why not? He’s got what I need, what I want. He’s not part of the cause. He should give up the arms that were so important to his grandfather, a real patriot. Those guns were meant for people willing to fight to sustain our liberty. Don’t you know how close we are to Armageddon here? Don’t you understand how fast we’ll go under? The Mexicans will drown us. The tide will come across the border, and that’ll be all she wrote. Unless we’re armed and ready.”

  “So the answer to everything is to kill people.”

  “We gotta defend ourselves! You’re just being a damn liberal if you don’t see that. Aubrey understood.”

  “Then why did you kill her?”

  He came closer to the open door. He was hopelessly soaked now. She saw that the torrent had abated to a slow but steady pelting of drops. “We did not kill her. He did, your boyfriend Bobo.”

  “He did not,” she said again. “He grieves for her every day. He had no idea when we set out on that picnic that we would find her body. I was there. I know.”

  This time he did slap her, an openhanded smack to the cheek. “You’re wrong, bitch. You are so wrong, and he is so guilty. I liked you better when you weren’t talking. Shut up, now, or I’ll tap you on the head with the gun,” he said, as he climbed into the truck.

  That was an effective threat, because Fiji had recently read an article about how thin the skull could be. It had creeped her out. She was terrified that his “tap” could put her in a wheelchair for life. She had no idea if she had a thick skull or a thin skull, and she didn’t want to bet on it one way or another.

  He managed to get the truck back on the road after some maneuvering. She’d hoped the tires were stuck, but no such luck. They resumed their rain-dr
enched trek to Marthasville . . . or wherever they were going.

  “How’d you set my foot on fire?” he said suddenly.

  Uh-oh. She said immediately, “That’s ridiculous. I got no matches and I’m handcuffed.”

  “Midnight’s got a reputation for funny people,” he said. “I think you’re one of the funny ones.”

  “Funny ha-ha, right?” she said.

  “Funny crazy,” he replied. She shut her mouth. But her curiosity couldn’t let her keep quiet forever.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, after an interval.

  “To a place your buddies will never find. A place behind my parents’ house.” He laughed. “My mom and dad ain’t been in it in ten years.”

  “A bomb shelter?” she asked.

  “Hey, how’d you know?” He was immediately suspicious and indignant.

  I figured it out, idiot. “Not too many basements in Texas, so I figured it was a separate building. Marthasville isn’t on a lake, so it couldn’t be a boathouse.”

  She could almost feel his suspicious eyes dart over her vulnerable skull. She held her breath until the moment had passed when he would have hit her.

  She prayed to the Goddess and her consort to get her through this mess alive, and she prayed her friends were looking for her now . . . if the damn lazy cat had done his job.

  “Did you see my cat?”

  “What?” She’d definitely surprised him with that one.

  “My cat. Did you see my cat in the store? Did you shut the door?”

  Her heart was sinking as she realized that Mr. Snuggly might be stuck in the shop with no way to get out. “No opposable thumbs,” he always said, smug as a cat could be, when she asked him to do something the least bit difficult.