The Sisters Eight Book 9 Read online

  “About those inventions of yours, Mommy,” Annie said. “Were you really working on the secret of eternal life? Because a few people have been asking about that.”

  “Oh no,” Mommy groaned. “Was Serena one of them?”

  “Yes,” Annie said.

  “Poor Serena,” Mommy said. “She’s always getting herself worked up about one thing or another. Her . . . problems all started when she turned eight and didn’t get a power.”

  “She doesn’t have a power?” Marcia said.

  “No,” Mommy said.

  “Phew,” Petal said, wiping her forehead.

  “She’s the only one in our family who doesn’t,” Mommy said.

  “What about your brother,” Annie asked, “our uncle George?”

  “We went to his wedding to Aunt Martha this summer,” Durinda added. “Did you know they were getting married?” Durinda hurried on, not waiting for an answer. “Anyway, he seemed nice enough and not at all evil, but I don’t recall him having any powers.”

  “Funny,” Mommy said, “I always forget about George. No, he doesn’t have any powers, and he doesn’t know about Queen’s and mine either. Somehow, we always managed to keep it from him. Anyway, not having a power has always made Serena very testy. But to answer your earlier question, no, I was never working on the secret of eternal life. That’s just something I let people think to throw them off the scent of my really important experiments.”

  “Well, but,” Annie said, “you’re a member of SOLSA, the Secret of Life Scientific Agency, so you can’t really blame people for what they think.”

  “That too,” Mommy said.

  “Wait a second,” Rebecca said. “You’ve got one sister who does crazy things because she has no power, and you have a twin sister who takes you hostage because she thinks you’re constantly trying to one-up her. Respectfully, Mommy, is everyone in your family nuts?”

  Mommy considered this for a moment. “Yes,” she finally said, “every last one, which is why I’ve been a little slow to introduce you to some of them.”

  A little slow?

  “Respectfully,” Rebecca asked in a softer voice, “are you nuts too, Mommy?”

  Mommy considered this for an even longer moment. “I suppose I am,” she finally said. Then she smiled. “But not in any way that’s dangerous.”

  Phew.

  “Not like Queen,” Mommy went on. “She got a good education, and so did I. She married a handsome man, and so did I. Then we both had octuplets on the same day. You’d think she’d think our lives were pretty even. But no. As soon as she found out I was having a baby, a ninth baby, she took your father and me hostage so no one else would know I had something she didn’t. But now that you all know, I’m sure she’ll make us all regular size again and send us back to our world.”

  “About that,” Annie said with a nervous smile. “Um, no. Now she says she plans to keep us all here.”

  Just then there was a soft tap at the tower door.

  Who was that?

  “It’s Zinn,” a voice whispered softly. “May I come in?”

  “Are you alone?” Zinnia said, going to the door.

  “Yes,” Zinn whispered.

  “All right then,” Zinnia said, opening the door just wide enough to let him in and then quickly shutting it again.

  Zinn looked at the bundle in Mommy’s arms.

  “Cute baby,” he said. “Is that what this has all been about?”

  We nodded.

  He rolled his eyes. “Only Mummy would do this.” He heaved a sigh. “Oh well. Never mind that now. We have more important things to discuss. Like, are you ready to get out of here now?”

  “You want us to leave?” Zinnia said.

  “Well.” Rebecca sniffed. “I find this highly insulting.”

  “Actually,” Petal said, “I would be happy to go any time now. I find this place spooky.”

  “It’s not that I want you to leave,” Zinn said, “but Mummy is getting a bit upset, so there’s no telling what she’ll do next. Plus, my brothers and I have talked it over and while we’d love for you to come visit again, we wouldn’t want you to live here. It’s too crowded. Plus, once you’re safely out and the rest of the world knows about the baby, you’ll no longer be in danger from Mummy, at least not over that. Plus, we’ll get to go back to living in a normal-size house again and seeing other people. So as you can see, there are all kinds of pluses to go around.”

  “But how do we get out of here?” Marcia asked.

  Zinn shrugged. “How did you get in?”

  “Yes,” Daddy said, “how did you ever get inside?”

  So we explained about the infinity sign and the lying-down eight and all of us connecting ourselves to one another to make one giant symbol.

  Zinn shrugged again. “If that’s how you got in, it must be your way out.”

  “But there were exactly eight of us then,” Georgia objected.

  “And there are eleven now,” Rebecca said. “I don’t think we can make a figure eleven.”

  “No,” Zinn said, “but you can make an eight with eleven. I don’t think it’s the number that counts so much as the shape.”

  Oh.

  Oh!

  “Are you sure it’s okay for you and the baby to travel?” Durinda said as Mommy rose from the bed, bundle in her arms.

  “We’ll be fine,” Mommy said.

  “And I really should be getting home anyway,” Daddy said. “The taxes are long overdue. I’m sure my accountant is having fits by now.”

  “Not to worry, Daddy,” Annie said. “We took care of that. And we’ve taken care of paying all the bills too since you’ve been away.”

  We had a new respect for Annie in that moment. She could have said “I took care of that” and “I’ve taken care of paying all the bills,” both of which would have been accurate. She had been the one to actually do those things. But instead, she’d given credit to all of us, and we realized that that was even more accurate. Because somehow, everything we’d done, we’d done together.

  Well, except for the things each of us absolutely had to do on her own.

  “Everybody ready?” Annie said, and we assumed our positions on the floor, forming a lying-down eight with eleven people, one of whom was the new baby held tightly in Mommy’s arms.

  “I hope you’ll send notes,” Zinnia said to Zinn, who gave us a little wave.

  And then the earth shook, the sky spun, and it was all—

  Boom!

  Bam!

  Shazam!

  Pow!

  Kazowie!

  And, and, and—

  Our First Epilogue Ever

  “Eights!” Pete shouted.

  “Eights!” Mrs. Pete shouted.

  “Eights!” the McG shouted.

  “Eights!” the Mr. McG shouted.

  “Eights!” Will Simms shouted.

  “Eights!” Mandy Stenko shouted.

  Yes, they were all still there.

  “My,” Daddy said, looking stunned as he helped Mommy to her feet, “this place is a little more crowded than I remember it being.”

  “Yes, well,” Pete said, “we figured we’d better all wait until the Eights got back safely.”

  “How long would you have waited for us?” Jackie asked.

  “Forever, if necessary, pet,” Pete said, wiping a tear of joy from his eye. “Forever.”

  Oh, Pete.

  We hugged him.

  “Oh, and Mr. Huit?” Pete said. “I kept the Hummer in great shape for you while you were gone.”

  “Good man,” Daddy said, clapping him on the back.

  “Oh, and I also taught your oldest how to drive,” Pete added, “accidentally.”

  Daddy raised a quizzical eyebrow at him.

  “Perhaps I’d better explain how that came about,” Pete said, and suddenly we were filling our parents in on eve­rything that had happened since New Year’s Eve, and then we were filling in the Petes, the McGs, Mandy, and Will on e
verything that had transpired in the snow globe.

  “I can’t believe you,” Will said. “You Eights are amazing! And now there are nine of you! You’re the Eights . . . plus one!”

  Yes. That would take some getting used to.

  “You mean,” Mandy said to Mommy with a gulp, “that from now on, they’ll have these powers all the time?”

  “Well, yes,” Mommy said, “but I’m sure they’ll only use them when absolutely necessary and for the greater good.”

  We put on our best innocent faces, hoping everyone would believe her.

  “And never during school hours,” the McG said sternly.

  “Unless absolutely necessary,” the Mr. McG said. “You know, for the greater good.”

  Just then the cats made their presence known with much great meowing, so we acknowledged their presence with many good scratches under each chin.

  “I feel cheated,” Zinnia said glumly.

  “How come, dear?” Mommy said.

  “Because the other seven got a whole month when they were the center of attention,” Zinnia said, “while I only got a measly week. Okay, eight days.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Rebecca said. “How self- centered can you get?”

  Rebecca? Talking about someone else being self- centered?

  She must have sensed our glares because she glared back at us. “What?” she said. “Just look at this day Zinnia’s had, that we’ve all had—we’ve lived through an entire huge adventure in a single day!”

  We hated to say the words but: Rebecca was right. It had been an amazing day.

  “Is it still our birthday?” Georgia asked.

  “Yes,” Daddy said. “It’s exactly eleven thirty at night.”

  “Eleven thirty?” Petal yawned. “No wonder I’m so tired.”

  “Could we open our presents now?” Zinnia said.

  “Or at least eat our birthday cake?” Durinda said.

  But we didn’t get to do that right then because the doorbell rang.

  We couldn’t be absolutely certain but we were fairly certain no good could come from a ringing doorbell at eleven thirty at night.

  “I’ll get it,” Mommy said, the bundle still in her arms.

  It really was amazing, we thought, Mommy’s energy level, considering she’d just had a baby that day.

  We all trooped after Mommy toward the front door.

  “Why,” Daddy asked as we passed the front parlor, “is the suit of armor wearing my smoking jacket?”

  “So he looks appropriate with that corncob pipe and your fedora,” Annie said.

  “Oh, I see,” Daddy said.

  Mommy opened the door, and we looked over her shoulder and saw who’d rung our doorbell. It was our evil toadstool of a next-door neighbor, the Wicket. She didn’t have an evil fruitcake in her hands this time, but still.

  “Can I help you?” Mommy said sweetly.

  “You?” The Wicket squinted up at Mommy. “I wasn’t expecting you. You’re back?”

  “Apparently,” Mommy said.

  “Well, never mind that now,” the Wicket said. “I came because one of your girls is a witch.”

  “Are you joking?” Mommy said.

  “I never joke,” the Wicket said. “I saw her with my own eyes. She summoned animals to your front lawn and then she sent them all away. It was . . .” The Wicket’s accusing finger scanned over all of us until finally settling on Zinnia. “That one!”

  Poor Zinnia. The Wicket was forever getting our names wrong, but when you are distinctly the smallest it is easy to get pointed out in a crowd.

  But what did this mean, Zinnia accused of being a witch?

  Petal threw herself at the Wicket’s ankles and held on tightly. “Please don’t burn Zinnia at the stake,” she begged. “She’s one of the nicest to me and she takes up the least amount of space.”

  “Zinnia? A witch?” Mommy laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Didn’t you read about it in the newspaper?”

  “Read about what?” the Wicket said.

  “A few animals escaped from the zoo, but everything’s fine now,” Mommy said. “Now then, instead of accusing one of my children of being a witch, wouldn’t you rather meet my new baby?”

  “Oh no,” the Wicket said. “You mean there’s another one?”

  For the first time, it really hit us. There was another one of us now, a little one, and what would this one be able to do when she hit eight?

  Oh, this was a lot to get used to.

  “See how beautiful she is?” Mommy said, holding the baby forward so the Wicket could get a better look whether she wanted to or not. “And you know what her father and I have decided to call her?”

  We wanted to hear this too. Suddenly, we were dying to know.

  “Nine,” Mommy said, beaming.

  “Nein?” the Wicket said. “The German word for ‘no’? You’ve named your baby No?”

  “No,” Mommy said. “I mean, of course we didn’t do that.”

  “Then you’re calling her Nine?” the Wicket said. “Like the number?”

  “Yes, like the number,” Mommy said, “only we’re going to spell it numerically, so she’ll be 9.” Mommy used one hand to trace the invisible number in the air. “Her name is 9 Huit. You see, Robert and I named the other girls with letters, starting with A and ending with Z. We thought if we gave the new baby a name using some random letter, she’d just feel like an afterthought. But this way, she’ll feel extra special.”

  “This,” the Wicket said, backing away, “is just the nuttiest house.”

  “I’ll have Jackie bring over a piece of birthday cake tomorrow,” Mommy called after the Wicket, “if there’s any left. Hope you don’t mind that it’s not fruitcake!”

  Then Mommy slammed the door.

  After we lit the candles, sang to each other, blew out the candles, and cut up the cake, we all sat around the table to eat it and to knock back a few juice boxes.

  Mmm, mango—finally, not that unexotic starfruit again.

  It was hard, as we ate, to keep our eyes off 9. We had a little sister! What would she be like? Who would she be like?

  “Mmm,” Rebecca said around a mouthful of cake, “good frosting.”

  Well, some of us couldn’t take our eyes off 9.

  “When you think about it,” Jackie said, “this is like the Return with the Elixir.”

  “What’s Jackie talking about?” Georgia said.

  “Don’t you remember my telling you about this once before?” Jackie said.

  Georgia shook her head.

  “It’s from the book I read on screenwriting once,” Jackie said. “Remember, in your month, when you sent away your gift I told you that you were refusing the Call to Adventure?”

  “I think I vaguely remember something like that,” Georgia admitted.

  “Well, this is what happens at the end of the adventure,” Jackie said. “If a heroine’s journey is complete, she returns home with an elixir, which is really just some sort of good thing that’s objective proof the journey has been a success.”

  “So 9’s our elixir,” Annie said.

  “Yes,” Jackie said, “I think so.”

  That was good. It was good to think of 9 that way, rather than as . . . competition.

  “Oh, but I am depressed,” Rebecca said, shocking us by putting her fork down while there was still frosting left on her piece of cake.

  “Me too,” Georgia said. “We have our elixir, so our journey has ended.”

  “No offense, Mommy and Daddy,” Annie said, “we missed you horribly, but . . .”

  “But when you were away, we were important,” Durinda said.

  “There was magic,” Jackie said.

  “Even if it was sometimes scary,” Petal said.

  “And great mysteries to solve,” Zinnia said.

  “Even if that was scary too,” Petal said.

  “But who are we now,” Marcia said, “now that the adventures are over and the mysteries are as solved as
mysteries can ever be solved?”

  “You must be joking!” Will Simms said.

  “You’re going to be in fourth grade in just a few weeks,” the McG said.

  “A whole new grade,” the Mr. McG said. “With maybe even a new teacher.”

  “You have a new baby in the house,” Mrs. Pete said.

  “Plus,” Mommy said, “there’ll always be some danger in your lives.”

  “How so?” Marcia asked.

  “She means because of our powers,” Annie said, proving once again that she could be as smart as an adult. “It’s fine for people in this room to know about us, but if the greater world ever found out . . .”

  She let that hang there in midthought, but even the dimmest among us could complete it easily enough. If word got out, other people, some of them even scientists but not at all like Mommy, would want to put us in a lab and study us. Governments and armies and all sorts of people would want us as secret weapons. Our lives would no longer be our own.

  We gulped.

  Our lives were good lives, and we couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow that to ever change.

  “Plus, never mind all that,” Pete said. “You’re you.”

  What did he mean by that? we wondered. We only hoped it wasn’t an insult, not from Pete.

  “What do you mean by that?” Mandy Stenko said, saving us from having to reveal our own heightened paranoia.

  “He means,” Will said, “that you bring the mystery and magic and adventure with you. Because wherever you go, whatever you do, and even if there’s now a 9, you’re the Eights! So as long as you’re around, the mystery and the magic and the adventure can never end.”

  Eight faces grinned from ear to ear.

  And, in that moment, it was enough.

  But wait a second. Wait just one second.

  What was that mango juice box doing in 9’s tiny hand, and how had it gotten there?

  We all stared down at 9, shocked, as 9 looked back at us and giggled.

  “Oh no,” Daddy said. “We’re going to need a bigger house.”

  A Letter to Readers

  If you’re reading this note, you’ve finished reading The Sisters Eight Book 9: The Final Battle . . . for Now. I hope you liked it!

  It’s hard for me to believe how much time has passed since Greg, Jackie, and I started work on this series. For the public, the first book appeared in December 2008. But for us, it all started two years earlier. Jackie was six in December 2006 and we were staying with friends in Crested Butte, Colorado, when a snowstorm hit and the airport was closed. We were originally meant to stay there for six days, but the snowstorm kept us there for ten. There were no other kids in the area and our friends didn’t have TV, so by the last few days we were looking for new ways to entertain ourselves. What would you do in such a situation? What we did was to begin brainstorming a book about eight sisters—octuplets—whose parents disappear one New Year’s Eve. Jackie came up with names for the sisters, I named the cats, Greg contributed the crazy inventions such as flying watering cans, and we were off and running. Jackie also came up with all the powers and gifts for the Eights. At the time, it seemed cool that Zinnia’s gift would be a snow globe—but who could have ever guessed that what seemed to be such a random choice on Jackie’s part would turn out to play such a major role in the conclusion of the series?