Marcia's Madness Read online

  "That would be awful." Petal shuddered. "I wouldn't like to have Bill Collector come back, even if he did seem awfully nice for someone with the power to split us all up."

  We didn't bother correcting Petal and telling her that Bill Collector came from Social Services while bill collectors would come from somewhere else. There were only so many times we could repeat ourselves.

  Georgia returned with an unusually large stack of mail, which she happily dropped in front of Annie. From the beginning of our troubles, Georgia had always seemed happy to drop a lot of mail in front of Annie.

  "Bills, bills, and more bills," Annie grumbled, but there was something false to that grumble and we had the feeling that after Marcia's grab for power, Annie was rather pleased to see bills if it meant she was the only one who could pay them.

  "Hello! What's this?" Annie said, holding up an envelope.

  "Looks like a cream-colored envelope to me," Marcia observed.

  "Have bill collectors started getting fancy?" Rebecca wondered, not sounding terribly interested in the whole thing.

  "It looks like some sort of invitation," Durinda said.

  "Ooh!" Zinnia said. "I hope we've been invited to a party!" Then her face fell. "But whose party could we possibly be invited to?"

  "That's right," Georgia said. "Will's birthday party was in January and Mandy's won't be until December."

  "We haven't sent ourselves an invitation to our own birthday party in August," Petal said with a puzzled frown, "have we?"

  We ignored Petal. We knew that soon enough—all too soon!—we'd be required to pay lots of attention to her.

  "It definitely is an invitation to something," Jackie said. "See the pretty slanted handwriting? That's called calligraphy."

  "And look," Annie said. "It's addressed to 'Robert and Lucy Huit and the Eights.'"

  "Open it!" seven Eights cried at Annie. "Read what it says!"

  And Annie did.

  You are cordially invited

  to

  the wedding of

  Martha Huit

  &

  George Smith

  on Saturday, the 21st of June, 2008,

  in France.

  Hold on a second here.

  We were being invited to a wedding? In France?

  And who, by the way, were Martha Huit and George Smith?