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mustered in her situation, "that's Marcia's job now."
    Pete's eyebrows shot up nearly all the way to his hairline.
    " Marcia? " he said.
    ***
    It was the worst Mother's Day of our lives because Mommy wasn't there, and neither was Daddy, and yet somehow the Petes made it better than it should have been under the circumstances.
    After his initial shock, Pete said no more about the new power structure in our home, instead doing his best to make us feel at home in his home. Pete the mechanic, it turned out, made a mean lasagna, and by that we mean that it was good.
    We all enjoyed playing with Old Felix, Mr. Pete's cat.
    There was enough frosting on the Mother's Day cake for us to split it evenly, half the frosting for Rebecca, half for the rest of us.
    And Mrs. Pete didn't even mind that we hadn't brought her any presents in honor of the day.
    "I'm not a mother," Mrs. Pete said. "I'm just a woman who's lucky enough to have a husband who can make lasagna, plus, of course, I'm lucky enough to have all of you in my life."
    We all huddled in to give her a hug.
    Really, the only bad thing about the day—outside of the very big bad thing of missing our parents—was that poor Marcia was still getting those headaches.
    "Huh," Pete said as Marcia massaged her temple with two fingers. "Maybe you should see a doctor about that? After all, you wouldn't want there to be anything wrong with your head."
    ***
    When we arrived home that night, stuffed and both happy and sad, Marcia headed upstairs immediately, not even bothering to grab the spear first, while the rest of us went off to the drawing room for some after-dinner juice boxes.
    It was then that Jackie spotted the loose stone sticking out from the wall.
    "That's odd," she said. "That only happens when there's a new note back there."
    Durinda carefully removed the stone, and once it was out, we all looked inside.
    There was a new note!
    "Read it!" Petal shouted.
    "Read it!" Zinnia shouted.
    "I'll read it!" Georgia said.
    "No, I'll read it!" Rebecca said.
    "We'll all read it together," Annie instructed, since Marcia wasn't around to instruct us.
    And so we did.
Dear Marcia,
Nine down, seven to go. This one does take some getting used to—hope you're feeling better soon!
    As always, the note was unsigned.
    But what could this possibly mean? The person—whoever the invisible, possibly magical person was—who left us these notes only did so when one of us received her power or her gift. With the occasional exceptions, like the very first note telling us the terms for discovering what happened to our parents and that insanely confusing one about Beware the other Eights! And only once had one of us received her gift before her power: the time Georgia sent her gift back.
    So this could mean only one thing...
    Seven Eights stood with hands on hips and shouted upstairs, "Marcia Huit, you get down here!"
    And when she was down among us, groaning as she held her head, seven Eights glared at her and shouted:
    " Did you perhaps get your power and neglect to tell anybody? "

SIX

    "Must you all shout so loud?" Marcia winced. "I already have a terrible headache."
    "Of course we have to shout so loud," Georgia said. "We're outraged!"
    "Yes," Marcia said, "but it's bad enough being me already. Oh, I do wish the people in the Big City would stop doing so many busy things. It's hard to keep track of it all. And all the lights in the room aren't helping my headache any!"
    "Let's all go to Fall," Annie suggested calmly, naming the most peaceful of the four seasonal rooms Mommy had created for us.
    "Good idea," Durinda said. "Fall is the most soothingly dark. You'd think Winter would be the darkest, but there's always so much glare from the snow."
    So that's what we did: we went to Fall.
    Petal immediately began making a big pile of fake crinkly leaves so she could jump in them, which was fine with us. At least it kept her busy.
    But poor Marcia was still groaning, as was Minx over in the corner. The