The Sisters Eight Book 9 Read online

  Andrew and George picked up their plates, so, against our natures, we all pitched in as well.

  “Oh, look,” Zinnia said when we were back in the kitchen, “the rack of lamb’s still here.”

  “And Drew is still frozen,” Marcia said.

  “I can’t do anything about Drew,” Zinnia said, “but this rack of lamb shouldn’t go to waste. Even if it’s not something I’d ever eat, it’s already been cooked, so someone should eat it. I know—I’ll feed it to the dogs!”

  Antibiotic, Dishwater, Gewgaw, Jingle, Mysterioso, Peculiar, Riptide, and Zanzibar looked happy to get it. They even tried to eat the little paper booties before realizing those parts were not food.

  “Dogs are such silly creatures,” Zinnia said, giving each dog a cheery scratch under the chin. “I do love them, as I love all animals, but they’re really not as bright as, say, cats.”

  The dogs, possibly offended by this, went back to their post guarding the stairs.

  “Hey!” Zinnia called after them. “Don’t go away mad!”

  “Can you blame them?” Andrew said. “You just insulted their sensibilities. And what did you mean by that, anyway, that dogs aren’t as bright as cats?”

  “Well, they’re simply not.” Zinnia shrugged. “If we leave our cats alone at home for any length of time—a day, say, or even a whole week—they’ll observe how much water and kibble we’ve left for them and then they’ll ration their own food and water accordingly. No matter how long we’re gone, when we return they still have something left in their bowls. It’s like they know on some level, We need to make this last until our humans come back through that door again. Now tell me: If you tried that same thing with your dogs—leaving them alone for a week with enough food and water to last them the entire time—what do you think they’d do?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Andrew said, “because I’ve never tried that. But I suspect they’d eat all the food right away, get sick, and then starve the rest of the time.”

  “I rest my case,” Zinnia said with a sage nod of the head. But not content to let her case rest for very long, she added, “And I’ll bet you have to take them for walks regularly, so that they can—you know. Am I right?”

  “Of course!” Andrew said, outraged. “They’re dogs!”

  “I rest my case again,” Zinnia said with another sage nod. “Our cats just use the litter box, so as you can see, our cats really are superior to—”

  “Fascinating as all this may be,” Georgia interrupted, “it just occurred to me: Durinda was able to freeze Drew, and Marcia started to say that thing about maybe all our powers being back, but then we got distracted by Andrew joining us and all the rest of it. But maybe if I . . .”

  As she let her sentence trail off, she twitched her nose twice and disappeared.

  A second later, George twitched his nose twice and disappeared too.

  Six

  We couldn’t see Georgia anymore but we could certainly hear her shouting. The voice was coming from a direction we hadn’t been in before, what we assumed to be the very front of the house.

  “Quick!” invisible Georgia shouted. “I’ve got the front door open! And I’ve got an idea!”

  We raced toward the sound of her voice, and Andrew raced along too, but he wisely didn’t try to stop us, there being seven of us and one of him. And the dogs didn’t bother following us, probably because none of their masters thought to call them, plus, we figured, maybe they didn’t speak English.

  We did wonder where George was. Had he tried to stop Georgia? Or maybe, even though he could make himself invisible, he couldn’t actually see anyone else who was invisible?

  We shrugged that off as we exited the house, finding ourselves surrounded by snow on the ground in August. This caused us to wonder if back home, the Petes or any of the others were looking inside the snow globe, and if they were, could they see us here, as we had been able to see Daddy in the tower even though he couldn’t see us back?

  But then we stopped wondering as some invisible force slammed the door shut behind us and Georgia popped back into view, soon followed by George. A moment later, the kitchen window opened, and Drew’s head appeared. Apparently, he’d come unfrozen.

  Uh-oh.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “What do you think you’re doing out there?”

  “Shh,” George shushed him. “It appears Georgia has a plan. And I for one am curious to hear what it is.”

  “But—” Drew began his protest.

  “No buts, Drew,” Andrew said. “Now, in or out? You know Mummy won’t like it if you let the house get too cold.”

  “Out, I suppose,” Drew grumbled, swinging one leg over the sill, then the other, and then leaping down into the snow.

  “I am curious,” Durinda said, turning to Drew. “You’re supposed to be my counterpart but you do seem grumpy all the time. Why are you like that?”

  “Because I’m responsible for cooking and making sure everyone else gets fed, and yet they still sometimes complain about what I serve them,” Drew said. “Mine is a thankless job. If you had my life, you’d be grumpy too.”

  “I do,” Durinda said, then admitted, “and sometimes I am.”

  “Hello!” an incredibly cheery voice called from the kitchen window. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Who are you?” Jackie called to the boy.

  “Why, I’m Jack, of course,” he said. Then, not waiting for anyone to say he could join us, he vaulted neatly over the windowsill, leaping up afterward to close the window behind him.

  “So, you’re Georgia, I take it?” Jack addressed Georgia in a hearty fashion. “And you’re the one with the idea?”

  “Brace yourself,” Rebecca warned the boys. “When Georgia has an idea, it hardly ever leads to anything good.”

  “How can you say that?” Georgia demanded. “What about the time I had the idea not to go to the St. Patrick’s Day parade at school and then saved the day when Crazy Serena had you all trapped in her dungeonlike basement?”

  We had to admit, Georgia had had a good idea that time.

  “Crazy Serena . . . Crazy Serena . . .” Jack, the newest Ocho to join us, mused. “Now, where have I heard that name before? I wonder: Could your Crazy Serena be our Crazy Serena?”

  “Of course,” Marcia said. “There can’t possibly be two of them.”

  “Georgia,” Annie said, “what was your idea?”

  “Oh, right!” Georgia said, and we could have sworn we actually saw a light bulb go on over her head. “It was this: Since we can’t get past those dogs on the stairs, why don’t we try to get to Daddy in the tower from out here?”

  We had to admit, that was a good idea.

  “Excuse me,” Petal piped up. “Cousin Andrew, Cousin Drew, Cousin George, Cousin Jack, do you have any bouncy boots lying around the house?”

  Oh, Petal.

  “What are bouncy boots?” Jack wanted to know.

  “They’re these amazing things,” Petal said enthusiastically. “Our mother invented them. You put them on your feet and then you can bounce really high. They can be quite dangerous indoors—you know, the threat of cranium and ceiling meeting too violently—but outside, the sky’s the limit, and—”

  “I’m afraid we don’t have any of those,” Andrew said, “although they do sound like quite the thing. And, um, really bouncy.”

  “Well then, how about seasonal rooms?” Petal asked. “Because if you don’t have bouncy boots, I am feeling rather cold in all this snow, so I should like to go spend some time in Summer for a bit.”

  “Um, I’m afraid we don’t have any of those things either,” Andrew said.

  “Drat.” Petal harrumphed with a firm folding of her arms.

  “Without bouncy boots,” Rebecca said to Georgia, “how do you propose we get up there?” She shielded her eyes with her hand, squinting up at the tower. “It is awfully high.”

  “Do you have a little pink car?” Petal asked the boys.

  “What
would you do with a little pink car?” Annie asked Petal.

  “You can’t drive up the wall in one,” Durinda said.

  “Although sometimes at home,” Rebecca said, “when Petal drives her little pink car around the house, it drives me up the wall.”

  “I know I can’t drive up the wall with one,” Petal said, peeved, “but driving one right now would relax me, especially if it had a little horn for me to beep.”

  “That’s too bad, then,” Andrew said. “We don’t have one.”

  “How about wall-walkers?” Petal persisted. “Wall-walkers are very handy. You put them on your feet and you walk up walls. They’re perfectly safe. Why, even I’m not scared to use them, and with a pair of wall-walkers I could walk right up to that tower window.”

  What was with Petal coming up with all these ideas, some of which were actually rather good? It was so unlike her. Had being out in the cold opened up her brain?

  “No,” Andrew said, “sorry. It’s a big N-O on the wall-walkers.”

  “Well, what good is this house anyway?” Petal harrumphed once more. “You don’t have bouncy boots or Seasonal Rooms or little pink cars or wall-walkers.”

  “Still,” Jack said, with a cheery shrug, “we kind of like it.”

  “There’s no trees out here that we can climb to get up to that tower window,” Annie said, returning us to the problem at hand.

  “And while the house is made of stone,” Marcia said, “the stones are too close together to allow a good toehold for climbing.”

  “I wonder how the cats are doing back home,” Zinnia said. “Do you think they miss us when we’re not there?”

  “This is just great,” Rebecca said. “Georgia drags us all into the cold and now we can’t figure out how to achieve the thing we came out here for.”

  “I, for one, am going for a run,” Jackie said. “I always think better when I’m running.”

  Jackie jogged in place for about ten seconds to warm up, and then she was off, disappearing into a tiny dot as we watched her zing around the house.

  “Hey! Wait for me!” Jack yelled.

  And then he jogged in place for about ten seconds before disappearing into a dot as well.

  Jackie’s dot was purple and Jack’s was green, so it was easy enough for us to tell them apart. The first time they came back around the house, Jackie’s dot was way in the lead. Well, she had gotten a nice head start. But as they zinged around a second time, we could see that the green dot was gaining on the purple dot.

  “There’s never any point in playing baseball with Jack,” Andrew said.

  “If he even just bunts the ball,” Drew added, “it’s always an instant home run.”

  “Football, basketball, tennis,” George listed. “It’s useless to compete when Jack’s playing.”

  “Although he is good to have on your relay team,” Andrew said.

  “That may be,” Annie said, “but he’ll never beat Jackie.”

  Despite Annie’s words, Jack kept gaining and gaining on Jackie, until they were running dot and dot. Since he’d caught up, we worried he might pass her. We wondered how that would make Jackie feel. We couldn’t remember the last time anyone or anything had outraced her.

  But that never happened.

  The two of them upped their speeds until we could barely see the dots anymore as they zinged along side by side, equals, and then stopped, back among us once again.

  “What we need,” said Jackie, not even out of breath, “is an incredibly long rope.”

  “But how would we get it up there?” Georgia said. “I don’t think any of us could throw a rope all that way up with any accuracy.”

  “I doubt we could get enough velocity from down here,” Marcia said. “Gravity would be our enemy.”

  “Then we need someone to drop a rope out of that tower window,” Jackie said, “first securing one end around a strong object in the room. With a long enough rope, it would be as good as having wall-walkers.”

  Eight heads swiveled to face the boys.

  “Don’t look at us,” Jack said. “I’ve had more fun today than I can remember having in quite some time. After all, I don’t usually get a decent race out of anyone or anything. So I’d love to help you, but I can’t. Mummy would no doubt see it as aiding and abetting.”

  “It wouldn’t end well for us,” Drew added.

  “How much worse can it end?” Rebecca said. “You’re already on KP duty.”

  “Oh, it could get worse,” George said, for once showing a dark side. “You don’t know Mummy.”

  “Is she here?” Annie said. “Perhaps if we could talk to her . . .”

  The boys ignored her. We all did, because that was when Jackie cupped her hands around her mouth, tilted her head up toward the tower room, and began to shout.

  “Daddy!” she called at the top of her lungs. “Daddy!”

  Soon we were all doing the same thing. Well, except for the boys, who no doubt would have shouted “Duddy!” instead.

  “Daddy!”

  “Daddy!”

  “DADDY!”

  At that last, the tower window flew open and a familiar head popped out. Except for a miniature version of it glimpsed through a snow globe, it was a head we hadn’t seen in seven months and eight days. The man above us rested both hands on the windowsill and leaned his upper body all the way out.

  “Daddy!” we all shouted again, this time in incredible glee.

  “Girls!” he shouted down at us, sounding if anything more gleeful than the eight of us combined.

  Jackie shouted, “Have you got any rope up there with you?” and at the same time Daddy shouted, “How in the world did you get in here?”

  But neither question got answered because just then two hands appeared—pretty hands with long red fingernails—took hold of Daddy by the forearms, yanked him back inside, and then slammed the window shut.

  Seven

  “Daddy!” we screamed at the closed window.

  What just happened?

  “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” Andrew said, “or at least not much.”

  “She’s never killed anyone before,” Drew said.

  “Or at least not yet,” George said.

  “Not that we know of,” Jack said.

  “I can’t help you out with the rope,” a fifth boy’s voice said from behind us, “but I can offer you a chance to get past the dogs.”

  We turned to see who had spoken.

  The boy was Marcia’s height.

  “I’m Mark,” he said. Then, singling out Marcia, he added, “And you must be Marcia.”

  “What do you propose?” Marcia asked by way of a response.

  “Only this,” Mark said. “You come downstairs with me to my basement laboratory—”

  “Not the basement!” Petal shrieked in horror, cutting him off. “That’s where all the spiders go to hold their meetings!”

  Proving himself to be a wise Other Eight, Mark ignored Petal.

  “Once we’re there,” Mark continued, “we’ll have an invent-off, kind of like a cook-off, only with scientific inventions. The person who comes up with the best invention wins. If I win, you don’t get past the dogs. But—”

  “If I win,” Marcia finished, “you call off the dogs.”

  “I like this,” Rebecca said. “It’s like we’re going down in order to go up.”

  “Kind of like going south to go north,” Annie said.

  “Didn’t we do that once on one of our vacations?” Georgia said.

  “Well, I don’t like this one bit,” Petal said with a shudder. “I don’t like that we have to go into the basement at all. But on top of that, if Marcia loses, we could be stuck down there . . . possibly forever!”

  “What do you calculate your chances are of winning?” Jackie asked Marcia.

  “You mean, as opposed to losing?” Marcia said.

  Jackie nodded.

  “Hmm,” Marcia said. “Well, I’m an Eight, he’s an Other Eight.
I have certain talents. He, based on the evidence of his brothers, no doubt has complementary talents. That means, let’s see, add twelve, subtract fourteen, add another sixteen, do a few other things . . .” She paused, considering. “I calculate my odds to be an even fifty-fifty.” And now Marcia smiled. “I like those odds.”

  Marcia thrust out a firm hand toward Mark, who took it for a shake.

  “Deal,” they said at the same time.

  Down in the basement, while Marcia and Mark prepared to prepare their inventions, Petal cowered behind Durinda.

  “Do your dogs even have any special powers?” Zinnia asked. “I did notice that all they seem to do is lounge around in doorways blocking people’s passage.”

  “Why don’t you ask them the next time you see them?” Rebecca suggested.

  We were impressed to see that the basement laboratory was completely stocked with impressive- laboratory things.

  “Do you have lab coats here?” Georgia wondered. “When doing her experiments, Marcia rather likes to look like a mad scientist.”

  “Actually,” Rebecca admitted, “some of us like her to look like a mad scientist too. It adds a thrilling note of insanity to the proceedings.”

  “Well, I don’t like it,” piped Petal’s voice, slightly muffled by Durinda’s body.

  “Of course I wear a lab coat,” Mark said, putting one on. Then he tossed one to Marcia. “I’ve even got a spare.” He rooted around in a drawer and pulled out a couple more items. “And I’ve got protective goggles for each of us too.”

  Marcia put on her coat and they both put on their goggles.

  “Ready?” Mark said.

  Marcia nodded.

  Mark did a whole bunch of things really quickly, moving all sorts of materials and potions around the lab table. While he was doing that, Marcia got a single beaker and placed it on the table in front of her.

  “There!” Mark said with satisfaction as he gazed upon his invention, a cone-shaped item constructed of chicken wire and papier-mâché. There was an opening in the top of it.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” Marcia asked, not sounding terribly curious.

  “Why, it’s a homemade volcano,” Mark said, as though the answer were obvious. “Now I’ll create some fire,” he said, rubbing two sticks together.