CHAPTER TWELVE

Tax Day was here at last!

The date was April 15, 2008. It was a Tuesday, our birthday was fewer than four months away, we still had Principal McG as a teacher because no replacement had been found yet, Mandy had spent the day looking at us with new respect in her eyes, and we were happy to be home from school.

Happy, that is, until...

"That's true, what Pete said, isn't it?" Petal asked.

"Which thing?" Annie asked.

"Don't you find that whatever Pete says, it's always true?" Jackie said.

"I know I do," Zinnia said.

"I'm hungry," Georgia said.

"Is there any pink frosting in the house?" Rebecca asked Durinda.

"I'm not the talking refrigerator," Durinda said. "Why don't you direct that question to Carl?"

"Which thing Pete said?" Marcia asked, recalling us all to the matter at hand as Rebecca left to consult Carl.

"When he said that once whichever of us whose month it is finds her power and gift," Petal said, "then we're all safe from danger for the rest of the month? That thing he said."

Later, we would wonder if it was Petal's insistence on a safe world that caused disaster to fall upon our heads.

Rebecca returned from the kitchen, can of pink frosting and spoon in hand. Ignoring the rest of us, she crossed to the window near the front door and pushed the curtain aside.

"It's such a nice day out," she said. "I wonder if we should play outside before doing our home—"

Then she cut herself off before any of us could, before completing the second part of homework.

"Oh no!" Rebecca shouted. "Come quick! Our worst nightmare has returned!"

"What are you talking about?" Annie demanded.

"April Fools' was two weeks ago today," Durinda said.

"So don't expect us to fall for that old 'Come quick!' routine again," Georgia said.

"But I'm serious!" Rebecca said. "It's the Wicket-she's come back!"

"Now I know she's lying," Jackie said.

"We sent the Wicket on a wild-goose chase to Beijing," Marcia said.

"Yes," Petal said, "but we always knew she'd come back one day, didn't we? And she is our biggest nightmare. Of course, we have a lot of biggest nightmares."

"What do you think?" Zinnia asked the cats calmly. "Is Rebecca lying or telling the truth?"

Eight cats raised their furry kitty shoulders and shrugged.

"Would you stop talking to the cats about me?" Rebecca said. "Please come—this is serious. It's the kind of change I hate, a change for the worse!"

We don't know why we listened, because we really were sure Rebecca was lying or else needed glasses, but seven of us went to where she was standing, looked over her shoulder out the window, and saw—

The woman still struggling to get her suitcase out of the taxi parked in front of the house next door was an adult, but short enough to be a child, with coal black eyes, a fright of spiky yellow hair, a very plump body, and short legs that looked like they couldn't run fast but could kick hard. The person looked like a toadstool and had on khaki pants and a red shirt with polka dots—no coat. She never wore one, no matter what the weather, and her suitcase was still tied together with a string that didn't look as though it was doing its job properly.

"Oh no!" eight voices cried.

Our evil neighbor the Wicket had returned.

***

"I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes,"Annie said.

"Me neither," Durinda said. "I could have sworn it was another practical joke."

"Yes," Jackie said, "like all those foolish jokes we were playing on each other two weeks ago."

"Sometimes foolish things turn out to be true," Rebecca said darkly. "Just because something is foolish, that doesn't mean it's not true."

"Oh no!" Petal cried. "Does this mean that next the cats will try to stage a coup and take over the house?"

"Earth to Petal," Georgia said. "Remember, the kitty coup practical joke was one Zinnia and you made up?"

"Yes, but what if—" Petal started to say, but she was cut off by the oldest among us.

"We need to remain calm," Annie said, "and try to figure out what this means."

"I hate to sound like Petal," Durinda said, "but what could it mean other than disaster?"

"Maybe it just means that the Wicket got bored with Beijing," Georgia suggested.

"Or maybe once she realized Mommy wasn't in Beijing, she figured it was safe for her to come back," Jackie said.

"How do you mean?" Marcia asked.

"I'm not sure," Jackie said with a shrug.

How could she remain so cool? we wondered. Then we remembered: she could now outrun anyone on the planet. Of course she was cool.

"Maybe," Jackie went on, "she decided we can't really do anything to her. Or maybe she's decided to pursue her evil course of action in spite of us. There's really no way to know until we learn more."

"Which is why we should just do our homework right now," Annie said.

"You are kidding us, aren't you?" Rebecca said. "We can't do homework at a time like this!"

"Of course we can," Annie said. "We have to. Our lives are so far from normal, we have to hang on to the few normal things we still have left."

So that's what we did, our homework, pretending all the while that it was just any ordinary day in ordinary people's lives.

At one point, Jackie went down to get the mail from the mailbox. Through the door, which she'd left open, we heard voices. We followed those voices, looked out the door, and saw that Jackie had run into the Wicket.

The strong smell of fruitcake wafted up to us, making us feel sick to our stomachs.

"Nice hair ... Rebecca," we heard the Wicket say. That was the Wicket all over: she was always getting our names mixed up, as if it didn't matter to her which one of us was which.

"Welcome home ... Serena:," Jackie said sweetly.

"Serena?" The human toadstool was outraged. "Why'd you call me that?"

"Is that what you heard?" Jackie said. "But I said Welcome home ... neighbor."

Then Jackie turned smartly on her heel, leaving the Wicket to stare after her as she walked calmly away.

***

Homework done, dinner done, there was time for life to throw one more "Come quick!" at us.

"Come quick!" Rebecca called from the drawing room.

"What now?" Seven voices groaned.

"The stone is loose again!" Rebecca shouted, sounding almost hysterical.

"Oh, right," Jackie said. "So I'll go in there and I'll pull out the stone and then Rambunctious will jump out at me again."

"I heard that!" Rebecca said. And now she was practically shrieking: "Please come!"

We went.

"And may I remind you," Rebecca said as we entered the drawing room, "that I wasn't lying about the Wicket before."

This was true.

"But I don't understand," Annie said. "Why are you so upset?"

"Because," Rebecca said, "Jackie already got her power and her gift this month, and yet now the stone is loose again. There must be another note in there! But what could another note in the same month mean? Once the second math note comes—you know, the ones that say 'this many down, this many to go'—we don't get another until the next month."

Poor Rebecca. She was gibbering.

"Maybe she's right," Annie said. Then she turned to Jackie. "You open it. It is still your month, after all."

"There just better not be another cat in there," Jackie said, slowly pulling the stone free.

But there was no cat, and there was a note.

The note, that ominous third note, read:

Beware The Other Eights.

Other Eights?

"What other Eights?" Jackie wondered.

But before any of us could wonder anything else—and believe us, we were all wondering—something happened.

We heard a sound. It sounded like the wind howling. This was odd. The weather had been very calm that day, not a leaf blowing in the schoolyard, and yet now it was as though there were an enormous storm brewing.

We looked toward the window, expecting to see the trees moving outside. But what we saw instead was a carrier pigeon strike against the glass. More pigeons followed. Then we heard the same sound coming from all around us: wind, almost like thunder, and then those striking noises.

Sixteen feet raced through the house, sixteen feet that now knew they could stand up well enough on their own. We raced from room to room, looking out the windows, witnessing clouds of pigeons strike against the glass.

And then we were in the front room, and now the incredible sounds were striking against our very front door.

It was Jackie who opened the door, Jackie who let the first pigeon in, Jackie who removed the first tiny scroll from the silver tube attached to that first pigeon's leg.

And then there were more pigeons in the house, flying around, and we were all removing tiny scrolls from silver tubes attached to tiny pigeon legs.

But no matter how many tubes we opened and scrolls we read, we always found the same thing:

Beware The Other Eights.

Jackie looked up at us, stunned. We all were.

"Other Eights?" Jackie asked. "What other Eights?"