A COUPLE OF hours later, the whole family finally got a chance to relax and talk in the swanky hotel suite Granny L had rented.
That’s right. The whole family. Me, my sister, our mom. The grandmother we hadn’t even known about until a few weeks ago.
And our dad.
“This is amazing,” Caitlyn burbled for the millionth time. “I can’t believe we’re all here together!”
Mom shook her head. “It really is hard to believe.”
She was sitting on the sofa with Dad. The two of them had barely stopped holding hands since we’d walked out of the LA police station a little while earlier. Cute, right? A little weird, too. I wasn’t used to seeing Mom looking so happy—almost giddy. Which was so not a word I would normally use to describe her.
But whatever. This was definitely an unusual occasion.
“So I still don’t get it,” I said. “How’d that scrawny old guy manage to take you prisoner in the first place? Hired ninjas or something?”
Dad chuckled. “Not exactly.” Then his expression went serious again. “It all started with a vision.”
“Ugh.” I rolled my eyes. “I should have known! That’s how all our troubles start lately.”
Caitlyn laughed. “Not necessarily,” she told me. “Some of our visions have led to good stuff. Like this.” She beamed at Dad.
“Your visions, maybe,” I reminded her, my hand straying up to touch the talisman around my neck. “Mine only show the bad stuff, remember?”
“What?” Dad leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
We’d filled him in on a few things over the past couple of hours, including the fact that both Caitlyn and I had inherited the Sight. But we hadn’t had time to cover all the details yet.
“Yeah, that’s how it seems to break down between us.” I gestured at Cait. “She sees good stuff happening, I see bad stuff.”
“Really? Wow.” Dad stroked his chin with the hand that wasn’t clutched in Mom’s. “Bummer for you, Cassie.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Only it’s not that simple,” Caitlyn protested. “Sometimes it gets all mixed up—like in those visions we had when Lavender got kidnapped. That was all bad, really, but I saw some of it, too.”
“Only the parts Lav thought were good, like when she thought she was going to a sample sale,” I said. Then I blinked at Dad, who looked confused. “But never mind that. You were going to tell us how you ended up that nut’s prisoner.”
“Right.” He nodded. “I had a vision about you girls, back when you were just toddlers.”
“You did?” Mom said. “You never told me that.”
Dad bit his lip. “That’s because of what I saw. It was the girls crying and screaming as someone dragged them into a car. I was afraid it might be Quentin.”
“What?” I leaned forward in my chair. “Quentin? Why?”
“He’d contacted me just before that,” Dad explained. “Somehow he’d figured out the Lockwood legacy—I still don’t know how.”
“We do,” Caitlyn said with a gasp.
“We do?” I stared at her. “Want to fill us in?”
“It was the diary!” Caitlyn sounded excited. She glanced at Granny L, who was wandering around the room, occasionally stopping to touch Dad on the shoulder. “Right? You said it was out of the family’s possession for a while, and I saw that post about it on the Internet . . .”
Then I remembered. Caitlyn had done some online research and found a message board where someone mentioned the Lockwoods. The poster claimed to have found a diary in some junk shop somewhere—one that had belonged to Dad and other Lockwoods before him. We’d already figured out that it was the same one Granny L had been using as a talisman.
Granny L nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense,” she agreed. “Although we still don’t know how the diary ended up out in the world.”
Dad looked startled. “Wait—are you talking about my diary? The little leather one I used to carry around?” He gulped. “Oh, man . . .”
“What?” Mom squeezed his hand. “What’s wrong, John?”
“This is all my fault!” He passed a hand over his face. “I lost that diary on a train once—someone must have found it, and somehow it ended up with Quentin.”
“So that’s how he found out about the Sight?” I said.
“I suppose so.” Dad sighed, leaning back on the sofa. “And once he did, he was determined to use my power to rule the world, or live forever, or make money—actually I’m not really sure what he thought he could do with it. But if there’s power to be had, some people will do anything to grab it.”
“So wait,” I said. “What did your vision have to do with all that? The one about us.”
“It happened a couple of months after Quentin first contacted me,” Dad explained. “He was trying to convince me to work with him to figure out how the Sight works—he was sure he could expand my powers, maybe figure out how to re-create them . . .” He shook his head. “Naturally, I said thanks but no thanks. So then he started making threats.”
Mom looked grim. “The girls?”
“Yes. And you. He seemed so desperate—I wasn’t sure what he’d do,” Dad said. “Then I had that vision while I was kissing you girls good night, and, well . . .”
“You wanted to protect your daughters,” Granny L finished for him, sounding angry and proud all at once. “Oh, John!”
“What else could I do?” Dad shrugged. “I struck a deal with Quentin. At least I thought we had a deal.”
“What do you mean?” Caitlyn asked. “What kind of deal?”
“Quentin probably double-crossed Dad somehow,” I told her. “Right?”
Dad smiled ruefully. “Right.” He turned to Mom. “Remember the fishing trip I took to Canada with my mates from school? And the business trip to Seattle a few months after that?”
“Let me guess,” Mom said. “Those were actually trips here to see Quentin.”
He nodded. “We’d agreed that I would come over to LA for a week or so at a time as often as possible—minimum four times per year.” He grimaced. “But after the second trip, he saw some random comment online and got paranoid, thinking I was spilling all his secrets or something.”
“And then you left again, supposedly to take the flying lessons you’d always talked about,” Mom said softly. “Only that time, you never came back.”
There was a moment of silence. All those years lost. Stolen by a paranoid old man.
“Anyway,” Dad said at last. “Quentin has plenty of resources, so it was easy for him to fake that small plane crash. Apparently, nobody was actually hurt—well, except for the plane, of course. But everyone thought . . .”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. We all knew the rest. Quentin had decided to make sure Dad would never spill his secrets—or leave—again.
“Too bad Quentin didn’t realize that the Sight doesn’t answer to anyone, no matter how much money they have,” I said. “I mean, it’s not like Cait and I have any idea how to control it.”
“We’re getting better, though. At least a little.” She smiled at our grandmother. “Grandmother Lockwood has been helping us.”
“Is that right, Mother?” Dad smiled at Granny L. “I’m glad you found the girls in time. That’s why I came up with my escape plan now, after all these years. I hadn’t tried before then because I was afraid of what Quentin might do to my family even if I did manage to get away. But once I realized that the girls would be coming into their powers . . .” He glanced at us. “Although I assumed it would only be one of them.”
“Surprise!” I said, which made everyone laugh, even Granny L—a little.
“It took a while to convince Nicholas—he’s the butler—to help me,” Dad continued. “He was always very kind, but he was also afraid to cross Quentin. Everyone who works for him is.” He shuddered. “But finally we hit on our plan. I was afraid it might not work . . .”
“It probably wouldn’t have if not for the girls’ visions,” Mom spoke up. “They’re the ones who figured out where to look for you.”
“Really?” Dad smiled at Cait and me. “That’s my girls.”
For some reason, out of everything that had happened that day, that was what did me in. That one little stupid phrase: That’s my girls. Still, tears came to my eyes as I finally realized what was happening here. I had my father back!
“Scoot over, Mom,” I said, hopping up and hurrying over to the sofa. “You’ve been hogging Dad this whole time. Give someone else a turn, okay?”
Mom laughed and moved aside. “Hey, me too!” Caitlyn exclaimed, racing over and flinging herself onto the sofa on Dad’s other side. “Daddy sandwich!” she exclaimed, hugging him.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Dad, I’m the cool one and she’s the dork,” I informed him. Then I hugged him, too.
And that’s when the vision came. Buzzing filled my head, and my real father—my real, live, long-lost-but-now-returned father—faded away, replaced by a vivid version of him standing in a fancy room.
As in, a really fancy room. It was the size of the Aura Middle School auditorium, pretty much, with lots of gorgeous furniture and a huge Persian rug covering part of the marble floor. What looked like real oil paintings of old-fashioned people lined the walls, and there was also a British flag hanging by the window. And did I mention the enormous Christmas tree over by the fireplace?
Oh, and Caitlyn was there, too, along with Mom and Granny L and a bunch of other people I didn’t recognize but was pretty sure I might be related to, all looking as happy as could be . . .
“Whoa!” Cait exclaimed, breaking the spell.
I blinked, the vision gone as fast as it had come. “Did you see it, too?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She looked worried for a second. “Wait—if we both saw it, that means it’s going to be both good and bad, right?”
Dad and the others looked confused. “What’s going on?” Mom asked. “What did you see?”
I ignored her question, at least for the moment, turning over Caitlyn’s comment in my head. Nothing about what I’d just seen had seemed bad at all. Then again, when it came to the Sight, it could be hard to tell . . .
“I know,” I said, reaching past Dad to squeeze my sister’s hand. “It’s probably one of those moments when everything is so great that you never want it to end, so knowing it will end is the bad part.”
She smiled and squeezed back. “Yeah. Kind of like right now.”