Chapter Thirteen
What I learned about rats from the situation I was in was that I would never want to have a rat infestation in my home. Because here’s the thing—these guys are champion reproducers. Cupcake gave birth to thirteen baby rats, and they grew at an astonishing rate. One day they were wriggly pink blobs, and a few days later they were growing peach fuzz, and in the blink of an eye they were the size of full-grown mice, covered in fur with their little eyes open.
And it turned out that a rat pregnancy only lasts about four weeks, and the babies can get pregnant when they’re five or six weeks old. The math on rat reproduction was staggering.
So many rats in such a short period of time.
So. Many. Rats.
That said, the babies proved to be a pretty decent draw for the café. I figured since I was already in the business of adopting out cats, it wouldn’t be hard for me to find homes for the rats. I drew up my own application and, in a stroke of brilliance, made it a policy that adopters had to take a minimum of two rats. That meant I only needed to find six adopters, provided one person opted to take three.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten a single application. Plenty of people wanted to see them at the café, but not one person, upon seeing the chaotic mass of rats in the cage, said to themselves, “Wow. I want this in my own house.”
One Friday, a little over a week before Andi’s party, I had a group from a local elementary school come through. The kids were enthralled with both the cats and the rats, and one particularly bright kid immediately set about trying to figureout what the babies’ father looked like based on the colors and patterns of the babies.
Meanwhile, the rest of the kids offered their input on potential baby names on the clipboard I’d set out to collect ideas.
After they left, I scanned the list.
“Ratty McRatface,” I read aloud. “Turdbucket. Oh—here’s a possibility if we ever decide to change your name, Jojo: Fart.”
Jojo plunked his butt down beside my feet and looked up at me, clearly unimpressed.
I bent down to rub him behind the ears. “I guess this is why no one lets kids name things.”
The sound of the café’s phone ringing made me straighten up. I hurried through the doors to the café area and grabbed for the phone by the register. “Hello?”
There was a long, breathy silence, and for a moment I thought I was the recipient of an old-fashioned obscene phone call. Then a distorted voice asked, “Did the Pied Piper like his gift?”
“Who is this?” I asked.
A click was the only response as whoever it was on the other end hung up.
I stared at the receiver, then set it back down. I shivered, that creepy voice looping over and over in my head. It shouldn’t have unsettled me quite so much. I mean, the person sending Horst a message had obviously been to the café when he dropped off the rat. A phone call wasn’t nearly as threatening.
But there was something so awful about that deep, slow voice, something that made my stomach twist.
The scrape of a shoe coming from my kitchen made me jump. I whirled around, wondering how effective it would be to pelt an intruder with baked goods, but it was only Horst who stepped out from the kitchen. His warm amber gaze took in what Iimagined was my very pale face, one hand clutched to my chest and the other hand launching my first cupcake bomb.
He dodged the frosted missile easily, following its trajectory with his eyes until it landed with a yellow and white splat on the floor by the door.
Then he looked back at me. “That one didn’t live up to your expectations?”
“Sorry. I thought you were someone else,” I said.
“Someone you greet with hurled cupcakes?”
“No. The person who just called. They asked if you liked their gift.”
His jaw tightened as he glanced toward the door of the café. Then he slid closer and captured my cupcake-throwing hand, rubbing his thumb over my palm. “Well, of course I liked it. Who doesn’t like a present?”
“Do you know who it was that called?”
