The Sisters Eight Book 9 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Photos

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Our First Epilogue Ever

  A Letter to Readers

  Text copyright © 2012 by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Lisa K. Weber

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Sandpiper, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  SANDPIPER and the SANDPIPER logo are trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The text of this book is set in Youbee.

  Book design by Carol Chu.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Baratz-Logsted, Lauren.

  The final battle . . . for now / by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  with Greg Logsted and Jackie Logsted.

  p. cm. — (The sisters eight ; bk. 9)

  Summary: The Huit octuplets, each of whom has now discovered her power and received her gift, finally learn where their parents are, but before they can attempt a rescue they must face the Other Eights and a very scary aunt.

  [1. Abandoned children—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Cousins—Fiction. 4. Magic—Fiction. 5. Humorous stories.]

  I. Logsted, Greg. II. Logsted, Jackie. III. Title.

  PZ7.B22966Fin 2012

  [Fic]—dc22

  2011003711

  ISBN: 978-0-547-55441-9 paperback

  ISBN: 978-0-547-55440-2 paper over board

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  4500364906

  For Julia Richardson, one last time.

  Prologue

  If you don’t know what’s going on by now, I can’t help you.

  Oh, very well. I’ll do it just one more time. Here is the Complete and Updated List:

  Annie: power—can think like an adult when necessary; gift—purple ring.

  Durinda: power—can freeze people, except Zinnia; gift—green earrings.

  Georgia: power—can become invisible; gift—gold compact.

  Jackie: power—faster than a speeding train; gift—red cape.

  Marcia: power—x-ray vision; gift—purple cloak.

  Petal: power—can read people’s minds; gift— silver charm bracelet.

  Rebecca: power—can shoot fire from her fingertips and is really strong; gift—a locket.

  Zinnia: power—can talk to cats and all other animals as well (seriously); gift—a Christmas ornament in the shape of a snow globe.

  And that’s it! That’s all you’ll get, so don’t even bother trying to beg, borrow, or steal more information from me.

  See you around, or in the funny pages, whichever comes first. It’s been nice knowing you.

  One

  “Daddy?” Zinnia said.

  It was August 8, 2008, the day of our official eighth birthday, and we were all still gathered outside our front door, the eight of us plus the Petes, the McGs, Will, and Mandy. A unicorn, the last in the world, according to Zinnia, had just brought Zinnia her gift, a Christmas ornament in the shape of a snow globe. Inside the snow globe was a sort of mansion that looked remarkably like our own sort of mansion, and out of the tower of the snow globe sort of mansion, our father was leaning, waving his arms wildly at us.

  “Silly Daddy,” Georgia said. “Now, how did he get himself inside a snow globe?”

  Silly Georgia, we all thought. Did Daddy look as if he’d done this on purpose? Did Daddy look as if he was having fun in there? Not with all that wild arm- waving, he didn’t.

  “Daddy!” We all began shouting and wildly waving our own arms back at him so he could see we were standing right there. “Daddy!”

  But no matter how loudly we shouted, no matter how wildly we waved, he kept looking all around as though he couldn’t see or hear us. It occurred to us then that while we could see in, he couldn’t see out.

  We were puzzled.

  “Let’s go inside and try to figure out what to do next,” Annie directed. “It’s tough to concentrate out here with that lion growling every five seconds.”

  Yes, it’s true; there was a lion—more than one, actually—as well as tigers and bears and giraffes and kangaroos and pandas and strange animals we didn’t even have names for filling our front lawn, plus an amazing variety of birds beating their wings overhead. The large menagerie was there because Zinnia had summoned them, having decided once and for all to prove to the rest of us that she really could talk to the animals.

  We followed Annie through the front door, and so did the Petes and the McGs and Will and Mandy too, Zinnia bringing up the rear as she carefully cradled the snow globe in her hands.

  Annie looked barely patient as she stood beside the open door.

  “Zinnia?” Annie finally prompted.

  “Hmm?” Zinnia answered vaguely without raising her head because she was too busy staring at the tiny Daddy on the other side of the glass.

  “Can you do something about this?” Annie said.

  “Hmm?” Zinnia said again. “How’s that?”

  “All these animals!” Annie said, exasperated.

  “What?” Zinnia said, raising her head at last.

  “All these feathered things and beasts outside,” Annie said. “Do you think you could ask your friends to leave before I shut the door? I’m worried what the neighbors will say.”

  Once Zinnia had sent away the feathered things and beasts, and the door had been safely shut behind us, we gathered around the dining-room table and stared at the snow globe, trying to come up with a plan of what to do next.

  “This is like something out of a fairy tale,” Petal said with a shudder. “It’s all so terrifying.”

  “Why?” Rebecca sneered. “It’s just Daddy in there. It’s not like it’s an ogre.”

  “Yes, I know,” Petal said, “but up until a moment ago there was a lion on our lawn, roaring its head off, plus all those other animals. There was even that unicorn, which some might have thought was a great thing to see, but I didn’t. I’m terrified of the idea of things that are supposed to be imaginary turning out to be real. Why, if there’s a unicorn in the world, even if it is the last one, and there’s something live that’s living inside a snow globe, then maybe the monster I’ve always heard could live under my bed is real. And if the imaginary monster under my bed is real, then where in the world will I go to hide when I get really scared?”

  “So you’ll just have to give up hiding,” Rebecca said. “And anyway, as I believe I’ve already pointed out, it’s just Daddy inside the snow globe. It’s not like it’s an ogre.”

  “Yes, but—”

  We ignored Petal. We ignored Rebecca.

  “I think this can only be seen as a good thing,” Jackie said.

  “How’s that?” Georgia said in an unpleasant tone of voice. “Our daddy’s tiny, he’s trapped inside some glass thing, and we can’t even reassure him that we know where he is because he can’t see us.”

  “Yes, I know all that,” Jackie said. “But for seven months and eight days, ever since we found that first note in the drawing room telling us we ea
ch needed to find our own powers and gifts before we could discover what happened to Mommy and Daddy, we’ve been waiting for all those things to happen. But now we have eight powers, we have eight gifts—and look! There’s Daddy!”

  “But he looks so skinny,” Durinda said, her brow furrowed in worry, “even if he is a model. Do you think he’s been eating properly?”

  “It doesn’t matter how skinny he is,” Jackie said, for once sounding impatient. “What matters is that we can actually see him.”

  “It’s true,” Petal said, sounding cheerier at once. “Now that we can see him, Rebecca can stop saying that maybe Mommy and Daddy died—yippee!”

  “After all this time,” Jackie went on, “we’ve found him. Mommy can’t be far behind.”

  “Well, we don’t know that, do we?” Marcia said, gently taking the snow globe out of Zinnia’s hands and proceeding to look carefully around the whole thing as though trying to locate a needle in a haystack. “We can only see him, not her, so there’s no observable proof that she’s in there too.”

  “But it stands to reason, doesn’t it?” Jackie said. “After all, they did both disappear on the same night.”

  “Yes,” Marcia said, “but they disappeared from different places. He disappeared when he went outside to get firewood. She disappeared when she went to the kitchen to get eggnog.”

  “I do know all that,” Jackie said. “But the note said once we discovered our powers and gifts, we’d learn what happened to Mommy and Daddy.”

  “Yes,” Marcia said, “I know all that. But the note didn’t specifically say we’d learn what happened to both of them at the same time or even that the same thing did happen to both of them. The note was only ever a note. It’s not like it was some sort of official legal document with special clauses and the like.”

  We didn’t know for sure what she was talking about. But we were sure we didn’t like it.

  “Oh, this is just great,” Rebecca said darkly. “We now know that Daddy is . . . somewhere.” She waved a disgusted hand in the general direction of the snow globe. “But it’s still entirely possible that Mommy is—”

  “Don’t say it!” seven Eights shouted at Rebecca. We couldn’t have said why, and the universe knows we’d heard her say it enough times before, but on this day—our official birthday, which was also the first time we’d seen Daddy’s face live in seven months and eight days—we couldn’t bear to hear her say that Mommy might be—

  “I’ve got it!” Annie shouted gleefully. “I know where Daddy really is!”

  ???????

  Seven Eights blinked.

  “What are you talking about?” Rebecca said. “We can all see him. He’s right there in that snow globe.”

  “No, he’s not,” Annie said, excited. “It only looks like he’s in there. In reality, that snow globe is merely a visual representation of our house. It’s like we’re looking at ourselves somehow. So Daddy’s not in the tower room inside the snow globe. He’s actually in—”

  “The tower!” Zinnia cried, clapping her hands together. But then her face fell. “But wait. How is that possible?”

  “It’s possible just like I just explained it is,” Annie said, exasperated in spite of her excitement. “Come on, let’s go get him.”

  “But wait,” Durinda said. “Do you mean he’s been in the tower for seven months and eight days and we just never noticed him all the times we went in there?”

  “No, of course I don’t mean that,” Annie said. “But we were just away on vacation for a week or some length of time similar to that. Perhaps whoever took him in the first place deposited him in the tower while we were away and now he’s locked up there, like a captive in his own home or something.”

  “Oh, I don’t like the sound of that,” Petal said.

  We ignored her.

  “Come on,” Annie said again, “let’s go free Daddy from the tower.”

  “But wait,” Georgia said. “If Daddy was really in the real tower here, wouldn’t we have noticed him waving his arms out the window to get our attention when we were all outside earlier?”

  “I don’t see why.” Annie shrugged her shoulders. “The only time we looked upward was when we looked at the sky during the arrival of Zinnia’s feathered friends, and that was from the other direction. The rest of the time we were looking at pretty much eye level or lower, so we never would have seen him waving wildly. Plus, with all the roaring of the lions, it’s not like we could have heard him screaming. If he had been screaming, that is. So you see . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  We wanted to see, we really did, because we wanted to believe she was right. Still, it seemed like there might be a few holes in her theory.

  “But—” Georgia started to say, but she never got a chance to finish.

  “No,” Annie said firmly. “I’ll listen to no more but-waits, not from Durinda or Georgia or Marcia or Petal or Rebecca or Zinnia, not even from Jackie, and she usually has only sensible things to say.”

  “I resent—” Georgia and Rebecca started to say in tandem, but Annie was still of a mind to cut people’s speeches off prematurely.

  “Forget it for now,” Annie said. “All right, who’s with me? Shall we go free Daddy?”

  And suddenly we were all with her, all of us having caught the spirit of the thing.

  Marcia carefully placed the snow globe on the dining- room table, and then we raced from the room and headed to the stairs. We were all the way to the foot of the stairs when—

  “Wait for us!” came a shout.

  Who said that?

  We turned in time to see Pete running toward us, with Mrs. Pete, the McGs, Will, and Mandy not far behind him. We realized it was Pete’s voice we’d heard shout after us, and we also realized we’d forgotten there were six other people in the house. Huh. Funny how things like that happened when there was so much going on.

  “You shouldn’t go up there alone,” Pete said, already a bit winded by the time he reached us at the bottom of the stairs. “What if it’s unsafe?”

  “The mechanic is right,” the McG said. “There should always be adult supervision.”

  “The principal is right,” Mandy said with relief. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  She would say that. She probably even thought she’d get extra credit in school somehow for saying it even though we were on summer vacation. Besides, if she hadn’t said it, Petal would have.

  “This is insanely exciting,” Will said. “I can’t believe I’m along for the ride.”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” the Mr. McG said, “but I’m feeling rather excited too.”

  Huh. You couldn’t tell from the look on his face.

  “I don’t think we should do this,” Petal said, suddenly fearful again as she gazed up the long flight of stairs. This was Petal, so that flight of stairs must have looked like Mount Everest, with assured death waiting at the top.

  “It’ll be fine, dear,” Mrs. Pete said, placing an arm around Petal’s shoulders. “I’ll stay right by your side and make sure nothing bad happens to you.”

  “Can you guarantee that in writing?” Petal said, looking skeptical. “Maybe do one of those contract thing- ies like Marcia was talking about earlier?”

  Even Mrs. Pete ignored that.

  “Ready, gang?” Annie said, barely able to contain both her exasperation and her excitement.

  We were.

  Twenty-eight feet pounded up the stairs; sixty, if you include the cats’. When we got to the top floor of the house and the tower room, Annie flung open the door.

  We must say, we were rather surprised at that flinging. We’d convinced ourselves that Daddy was in the tower—or at least Annie had convinced us—and we’d further convinced ourselves that he must be being held captive there, or at least was locked in, because if he was in fact in the house, what else could explain why he didn’t simply come downstairs? And yet that door—it had opened so easily, giving no resistance at all . . .

 
; “Daddy!” we cried. “Daddy!”

  No one answered.

  “Mr. Huit?” Pete tried. “I’ve been taking very good care of your car while you’ve been gone.”

  That too failed to produce Daddy.

  So we proceeded to tear the tower room apart, going over every square inch of space. We even removed everything from our costume trunk, just in case he’d somehow locked himself inside in the moments since we’d seen him waving wildly from inside the snow globe. But there was no Daddy inside the costume trunk. There was only the Daddy disguise that Annie sometimes wore when we needed to fool nosy parkers.

  “He’s not here,” Zinnia said, a tear escaping her right eye.

  “Even though I was scared to come up,” Petal said, a tear escaping her left eye, “I still really wanted him to be here.”

  “I’ve got it!” Rebecca said, imitating Annie’s words from earlier but sneering as she did so. “I know where Daddy really is!” Rebecca folded her arms across her chest and glared at Annie. “Nice work, Einstein.”

  “Nice work, Einstein,” Marcia echoed, puzzled. “Shouldn’t it be Nice work, Sherlock?”

  Back in the dining room, after we’d glumly trudged down there, Rebecca’s patience was entirely gone.

  Not that she’d ever really had any to begin with.

  “Daddy’s not in the house!” she shouted. “He’s in this stupid snow globe and we have to get him out!”

  Then, before anyone could stop her, she lifted the snow globe off the dining-room table and raised it high above her head.

  “No!” pretty much everyone in the room shouted as Rebecca began to move to smash the snow globe on the corner of the table. Even the cats objected strenuously, in their meowing sort of way.

  “Please, Rebecca,” Annie said with a forced tone of calmness, holding a steadying hand out toward Rebecca, “just put the snow globe back on the table.”

  “All right,” Rebecca said grudgingly, “but only long enough for you to explain to me why I shouldn’t do what I want to do.”