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about this time? " That's what Georgia and Rebecca would have said. Even Marcia might have said it on a bad day. But Annie was always the most patient of us with Petal and Zinnia.
    "Will our house still be there?" Petal fretted. "It's raining so hard. Maybe it's all under water by now!"
    "Don't you remember?" Rebecca pointed out. "We live in a magnificent stone house."
    "It's practically a castle!" Zinnia added.
    "And it's high on a hill," Jackie said gently. "Water tends to go downhill, not up, so our house won't be under water."
    "Yes," Petal said. "I remember all that now. But do you think the foundation of our house is strong? Because if it's not, with all this rain, and then the wind..."
    Really, sometimes Petal was a lot to take. We did worry what it would be like when the time came to have her take center stage for a month. She'd probably make us huddle with her under our beds for the entire month of June, never discovering her own power or gift at all.
    Poor Petal, we realized as she went on and on. She just couldn't help herself.
    It was a good thing then that when we arrived home from school something happened to make Georgia forget about her depression and Petal forget about worrying.
    One of the cats was missing.

CHAPTER FIVE

    Usually, when we arrived home from school, we found all eight cats waiting for us right inside the door. The cats were hungry or they needed us to clean out the litter boxes for them or maybe they just wanted a good scratch behind their furry ears. Those cats: they were always after something.
    But on that day, there were only seven cats there to greet us: Anthrax, Dandruff, Jaguar, Minx, Precious, Rambunctious, and Zither. Greatorex, Georgia's cat, was nowhere in sight.
    "Where is she?" Georgia cried, concerned.
    Even the seven remaining cats looked concerned. They looked frantic too, more frantic than they had looked since the night back in January when our evil neighbor the Wicket had broken into our home and gone through Mommy's private study in search of her Top Secret folder.
    "I'll try to get information out of them," Zinnia offered, referring to the cats, "but it's very hard to talk to them when they get like this."
    "Why don't we all change out of our wet things," Annie suggested, "and put on our play clothes? Then we can search."
    "But if she were in the house," Georgia said, "then the other cats would have seen her and they wouldn't look so frantic. She must be out there." Georgia looked out through the window. "She must be lost in the monsoon!"
    "She will drown for sure," Petal said. "Cats hate rain. Plus, Greatorex doesn't have an ark."
    "Will you both stop it?" Rebecca said. She turned on Georgia. "You're beginning to sound as bad as Petal." She turned on Petal. "And you sound as bad as... you! "
    "I'll make hot cocoa for everyone," Durinda offered.
    At least she wasn't trying to serve us all tea again.
    "It will be fine," Jackie soothed Georgia. "We'll find your cat."
    "I don't see any evidence why that should necessarily be true," Marcia said, "but why don't we take Jackie's word for it anyway?"
    Normally, the first thing we did after arriving home from school was our homework, because Annie made us, but not on that day. There were two reasons for this: (1) we were all upset about Georgia's cat going missing—although no one was as upset about it as Georgia—because it reminded us of the night our parents disappeared, or died; and (2) Ms. Harkness, beautiful Ms. Harkness, hadn't assigned any.
    So we all changed out of our wet things and into our play clothes and had some cocoa in the dining room.
    By that point, the seven remaining cats had settled down a bit. In fact, Rambunctious had settled down so much, she was snoozing in the center of the table, her long tail circling around Rebecca's empty cocoa cup.
    It was then, just as everyone was starting to breathe a little easier—if for no other reason than that we were all dry and we'd drank something warm—that we heard