“RISE AND SHINE, baby doll,” Cassie sang out, yanking back the curtain over our bedroom window.
“Urgh!” I mumbled as the bright morning sun poured in, practically blinding me as I peeled one eye open. “What time is it?”
“Not sure.”
I was too tired to actually roll my eyes, but I wanted to. Cassie was probably lying about not knowing the time. Since it was an in-service day, I’d planned to sleep in. Not leap out of bed at the crack of dawn like my sister always did.
“Seriously, get up,” she said. “Granny Lockwood’s here.”
That woke me up the rest of the way. I sat up, tossing my covers aside. “She’s here now?”
“Uh-huh. She wants to talk to us about what happened yesterday.”
I got dressed in record time. Soon Cass and I were sitting at the kitchen table with our grandmother and Mom. Grandmother Lockwood looked grim, although to be honest, she always looks a little bit that way.
“Tell me everything that happened yesterday,” she ordered, staring from me to Cass and back again.
“Okay.” Cassie poured herself a glass of OJ. “First I brushed my teeth—”
“This is no time for fooling around, Cassandra,” Grandmother Lockwood interrupted sharply.
“For once, I agree with your grandmother,” Mom put in. “We need to take this seriously, girls.”
That was kind of a change of pace for Mom. Up until now, she hadn’t wanted much to do with this whole Sight thing. Then again, I couldn’t blame her. Her long-lost husband might be alive—that was a big deal, for real!
“Well, you already heard about the visions that Cassie and I had about Lavender, right?” I began.
“Yes. But tell me again.” Grandmother Lockwood leaned forward. “Don’t leave out any details.”
Grandmother Lockwood asked a bunch of questions, especially when we got to the part about the key chain.
Finally she seemed satisfied. “All right,” she said. “Now let’s return to your training.”
“Hold on.” Mom sounded wary. “Verity, we talked about this so-called training of yours . . .”
“Deidre, we don’t have time to go through all this again, all right? The girls could be our only way to find John before it’s—” She cut herself off, shooting us a wary look.
“Before it’s too late?” Cassie guessed. “That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it? What do you know that you’re not telling us? Because none of this is making much sense.”
“No kidding,” I murmured.
“You might as well tell them,” Mom told Grandmother Lockwood. “They’re in this now—they should know everything.”
“Who is that lady, and what did she do with our mother?” Cassie murmured.
“Fine,” Grandmother Lockwood said with an impatient sigh. “Girls, my people are still working on finding out more about John’s disappearance—and that key chain.”
“And?” Cass prompted.
“And they’re working on a few leads that seem to indicate that he could be in danger,” the old woman said grimly. “Now that word has leaked out that he might be alive, it seems someone doesn’t really want him to be found.”
“Like that guy who kidnapped Lavender?” I guessed. “He knew about the key chain.” I shot Cassie a look. “At least we think he did.”
We’d already told Mom and Grandmother Lockwood about that, and they both nodded. “Yes, I’m sure it’s all connected,” Grandmother Lockwood said. “My people are trying to figure out who that man might be.”
Just then the phone rang. “Don’t say or do anything important until I get back,” Mom ordered. Then she hurried out to the living room to answer.
Grandmother Lockwood hardly seemed to notice. She pulled Dad’s worn wool scarf out of her purse. “Let’s get started. Where’s the talisman?”
“Here,” Cassie said, pulling the key-shaped pendant out from under her collar.
“But Mom wants us to wait for her,” I said at the same time.
“Time is of the essence, Caitlyn,” Grandmother Lockwood snapped. “Please do as I say.”
I might not be a rebel like Cassie can be. But I have my stubborn moments sometimes.
“Okay.” I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair. “But it’s not so urgent that we can’t give Mom two seconds to get off the phone.”
Have you ever heard that saying about someone’s eyes shooting flames? Well, I always thought that was kind of a goofy saying. But right now, as Grandmother Lockwood glared at me? I kind of got it.
Luckily Mom hurried back in right at that moment. “That was the San Antonio police,” she announced. “The perp finally confessed.”
“He did?” Cassie sat up straight. “He admitted to kidnapping Lav?”
“More or less.” Mom took her seat. “Although he claims he was going to let her go either way. It seems he’s a San Antonio local, well known to the department thanks to a pretty long rap sheet—mostly petty stuff like shoplifting, some breaking and entering, drug offenses, that sort of thing. So he was willing to cut a deal once he realized he wasn’t getting off scot-free.”
“What did he say?” Grandmother Lockwood demanded. “Who was he working for?”
Mom sighed. “That’s the trouble—he didn’t seem to know. He gave a name, but it turned out to be fake. So all we know is that some unknown person hired him to get that key chain back before it got to me.” She shrugged. “Obviously, he failed.”
“So he was just a hired thug,” I said.
“Yes.” Mom shrugged again. “The Lavender thing was his idea, apparently—he was still hoping to get a paycheck out of the whole disaster somehow. But then he got cold feet. He claimed he was about to call his mother to let Lavender go when y’all accosted him at El Mercado.”
“Never mind.” Grandmother Lockwood picked up the scarf again. “Back to work . . .”
This time Mom didn’t protest. Grandmother Lockwood had me and Cassie touch various objects and focus on Dad to try to bring on visions about him. Her techniques had worked in San Antonio the day before, and a few other times in the past, but today we weren’t having much luck. After half an hour or so, we were all feeling a little frustrated.
“I thought you knew what you were doing, Verity,” Mom said. “This seems like a waste of time. According to John, the visions come whenever they come, and there’s not much you can do to change that.”
Cassie and I traded a surprised look. How much had our father told her about the Sight? At first we’d assumed the answer to that was a big fat nothing. But maybe not so much . . .
“You’re not helping, Deidre,” Grandmother Lockwood snapped back. “Girls, try again.”
“ARE YOU GOING to get popcorn?” Liam asked. “We could split one if you guys like extra butter.”
“Sure, I’m in,” I said. Liam, Bianca, and I had just walked into the movie theater at the Six Oaks Galleria. Cassie and her friends were there, too. They’d decided to get a group together to see the latest blockbuster, and when the B Boys had invited Liam, he’d invited Bianca and me.
I wasn’t sure how Cassie felt about us crashing her evening with the popular crowd. She hadn’t said much to me since around lunchtime, when Grandmother Lockwood had finally released us from training. Then Lavender had called with some new bit of juicy gossip about Sakiko Star, and a few minutes later Cass had gone rushing off to Megan’s house.
Not that there was much to talk about, since Grandmother Lockwood’s training exercises hadn’t worked this time. Cassie and I hadn’t had a single vision all day. It figured—when we didn’t want to see stuff, we did. And now that we hoped to find out more about our dad? Zippo.
I got in line at the snack bar with my friends. Lavender and Biff were right in front of us.
“Yo, dude.” Biff held out his hand to Liam for a fist bump. “This movie’s going to be epic!”
“I hope it’s not too scary,” Lavender said with a dramatic shiver.
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from all the monsters.” Biff slung his arm around her shoulders, and she giggled. Okay, I wasn’t the world’s biggest Lavender Adams fan, and I didn’t know Biff very well at all. But I had to admit, it was sort of cute how couple-y they were acting tonight.
And they weren’t the only ones. My gaze wandered a little farther up the line to where my sister was standing with Brayden. They weren’t quite as obvious as the other pair, but I could tell they were getting closer. Majorly adorable!
I bet Mom and Dad were adorable back in the day, too, I thought, flashing again to the key chain. How cute was it that he’d kept something like that all these years? I only wished we knew what the message on it meant . . .
Just then Emily hurried past me toward the front of the line. “Hey, let me cut, okay?” she said to Brayden, poking him in the arm.
“No cuts,” Cassie spoke up with a smirk. “Sorry not sorry.”
“Come on,” Emily wheedled, ignoring my sister and smiling up at Brayden.
“You heard her.” Brayden shrugged and grinned. “Sorry not sorry.”
Emily frowned. “Thanks for nothing, Brayden,” she snapped, giving him a little shrug. Then she spun on her heel and stormed off.
Meanwhile Cassie turned, scanning the line until she spotted me. She waggled her eyebrows, then nodded toward Emily.
Huh? It took me a second to catch on. Then I got it. She’d had a vision about Emily a while ago. I guessed her expression meant it had just come true.
But who cared about some dumb random vision? We needed to see something more important than Emily flirting with Brayden—before it was too late, as Grandmother Lockwood had said.
The movie turned out to be pretty boring, so I spent most of it going over all the clues in my head, trying to figure out something we’d missed. Trying to figure out what the visions were trying to tell us about our dad.
But no luck. By the ending credits, I remained just as perplexed as ever.
On the way out of the theater, Cassie caught up to me. “Did you see that?” she murmured. “With Ems earlier? That was my vision.”
“Yeah, I got that,” I said, still distracted by my own thoughts.
Cassie turned away. As she did, her elbow grazed my arm, and suddenly the real world faded out, replaced by a buzzing sound and the vision of Cassie standing on the beach, staring at the ocean, dressed in a cute bathing suit I’d never seen before.
I shook it off as soon as she moved away. Talk about random! It was late fall—not exactly beach season. Obviously, whatever I’d just seen happened far in the future.
In other words, random. And no help at all.