Double Dare

by Tia Mowry

  DEDICATION

  I dedicate this book to my incredible son, Cree, and my lovely and supportive husband, Cory.

  —Tia

  To my entire family—my mother, Darlene; father, Timothy; my brothers, Tahj and Tavior; sister, Tia; husband, Adam; son, Aden; and daughter, Ariah.

  —Tamera

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Cassie

  Chapter 2: Caitlyn

  Chapter 3: Cassie

  Chapter 4: Caitlyn

  Chapter 5: Cassie

  Chapter 6: Caitlyn

  Chapter 7: Cassie

  Chapter 8: Caitlyn

  Chapter 9: Cassie

  Chapter 10: Caitlyn

  Chapter 11: Cassie

  Chapter 12: Caitlyn

  Chapter 13: Cassie

  Chapter 14: Caitlyn

  Chapter 15: Cassie

  Chapter 16: Caitlyn

  About the Authors

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  CASSIE

  THE ONE WORD my friends would never use to describe me is speechless. But as I stared at the older woman standing in the middle of my tiny front yard, I might as well have been mute.

  “Cassandra, I presume?” said the woman who had just introduced herself as our Grandmother Lockwood.

  “Wow, do you have it, too?” my identical twin sister, Caitlyn, blurted out. She and our mother were standing right behind me on the stoop. “You know—like, extrasensory powers?”

  Mom looked surprised. But I was too distracted to worry about that.

  “So, I see my guess was correct.” Our grandmother smiled a tight-lipped little smile at me, then turned to my sister. “Then I suppose you’re Caitlyn. It’s wonderful to see you both again after so many years.”

  I wished I could say the same, but I didn’t remember her at all.

  “What are you doing here, Verity?” Mom pushed past us, facing off against the older woman. “I thought I told you—”

  “And I told you, Deidre,” Grandmother Lockwood said icily, lifting her chin and looking down her long, narrow nose at Mom, “it’s important that the girls know their heritage. We’ve already waited too long in my opinion.” She raised one thin, pale eyebrow. “An opinion that is rather more educated about these matters than yours, I might add.”

  “You—I—but—” Mom sputtered.

  Caitlyn and I glanced at each other. Our faces always look almost the same—identical twins, right?—but at the moment her stunned expression was a mirror image of my own. On top of everything else, this woman had interrupted our mother? And was still standing? Even more shocking, Mom currently appeared fairly speechless herself, which happens to her even less often than it does to me. She never would have made it through twenty years in the military otherwise—not to mention the police academy.

  “Now, girls.” Grandmother Lockwood stepped toward us. “We have much to talk about.”

  “Wait,” I blurted out, suddenly realizing something. “Lockwood . . .” I looked at Cait again. “That’s the family from, like, England or somewhere that you keep talking about, right? Are we talking about the same Lockwoods?”

  It hardly seemed possible. Cait had found out about the Lockwoods online. They were a family with special powers. Very special.

  “I saw something about the Lockwoods on a message board,” Caitlyn told our grandmother, sounding rather shy. Again, not normal.

  “Yes, I’m aware of that.” Grandmother Lockwood pursed her lips. “Fortunately my nephew—your father’s cousin—spotted it immediately and was able to take care of it.”

  My mind was still trying to catch up with all this. What was happening here? Was this snooty British woman really our father’s mom? The whole idea was just too weird. Especially since, up until recently, I hadn’t even known we had a grandmother other than Maw Maw Jean.

  I mean, I guess we had to have another one, but our dad had died when Caitlyn and I were babies. I suppose we’d always assumed his parents were long gone, too.

  Only it turned out that we assumed wrong. A little over a week ago, totally out of the blue, a package had arrived addressed to the two of us. Inside were three things—a key-shaped necklace, an old leather-bound book, and a letter from a grandmother we never knew about, the same woman who was now standing in our yard.

  And now, we’d just come home from our birthday party at my friend Megan’s pool when suddenly a taxi had pulled up in front of our house and Grandmother Lockwood stepped out.

  That was weird enough, since we’d recently moved from San Antonio to tiny Aura, Texas, which was miles from civilization, including taxi dispatchers. The weirder part? I’d already seen her arrival happen. At least sort of.

  I forgot about that when Mom stomped forward. “Verity, enough.”

  She seemed to have recovered her voice. And her attitude. “I told you, things are under control here. You ought to go home and let me handle my children.” She glared at the old woman.

  Grandmother Lockwood barely glanced at her. “The closest hotel I could find is in a town called Six Oaks,” she told Cait and me. “Do you know where that is?”

  I nodded. Aura is so small that it doesn’t have its own mall, hospital, or basically anything else you’d want to find. Including, apparently, a hotel.

  “Yeah, it’s a few miles from here,” I told her.

  “Good.” Grandmother Lockwood took a few steps toward her taxi, which had been idling at the curb this whole time. “I’m off to check in and recover from my flight. But I’ll call for you tomorrow. Are you free for brunch, perhaps?”

  “Okay,” Caitlyn said eagerly. “Are you sure you can’t stay right now? We have so many questions—”

  “Hold on!” Mom blurted out. “Listen, Verity—”

  “What on Earth is the problem, Deidre?” the older woman responded coolly. “Am I not allowed to take my granddaughters to brunch to celebrate their birthday?”

  Mom sputtered some more at that. Cait was watching her, looking worried. Uh-oh. My sister and I may look almost identical, but our personalities are anything but. For instance, my sister is nothing if not a peacemaker. The last thing I wanted was for Caitlyn to say something stupid, like that we didn’t want to go to brunch after all, in order to make that blustery look on Mom’s face go away.

  “We’ll be there,” I told Grandmother Lockwood quickly, stepping down off the stoop to face her. She was only a couple of inches taller than me, even though I’d just turned twelve that day. “I mean, thank you. We’d love to have brunch with you.”

  “Wonderful.” She reached out and patted my arm. Her skin was papery-dry and cool, but I barely felt it.

  That was because it was happening again.

  Buzzing filled my head, drowning out everything else. Even though she was right in front of me, Grandmother Lockwood’s face faded out to a dim blur. In its place, I saw a much sharper version of her standing in a fancy-looking room. She was on the phone, looking disgruntled as she listened to whatever the person on the other end of the line was saying.

  As she pulled her hand away, I staggered back, gulping for air. Visions always left me a little confused and freaked out. At least it wasn’t as bad now, though. When the visions first started happening, I’d thought I was losing my mind. Not that the truth was much less crazy . . .

  Grandmother Lockwood gave me a sharp look but didn’t say anything. Why not? Did she realize I’d just had a vision? After all, she was the first person who’d seemed to know anything about the weird ability Caitlyn and I had both developed lately. Namely, the ability to see the future—whether we wanted to or not.

  “I’ll be back for you tomorrow at ten a.m. sharp.” Grandmother Lockwood eye
d my mother as if daring her to protest.

  Mom glared back at her. “Fine,” she spat out. “Brunch. But I’m coming too, and that’s that.” She narrowed her eyes, as if expecting Grandmother Lockwood to protest.

  The old woman waved one thin hand. “Of course,” she said. “I absolutely insist you join us, Deidre.”

  Mom blinked. “And we need to have a little talk first. Just you and me.” Uh-oh. Yeah, Mom seemed to be recovering, all right. She was using what Cait and I call her scarymama voice now. It’s enough to stop me in my tracks and bring my sister to tears. Or vice versa.

  Grandmother Lockwood? Immune, apparently.

  “Fine, fine, but it will have to wait until the morning. I’m exhausted.” The old woman started to turn away. Then she stopped. “One more thing, girls. I sent you a package, but it was returned.” She shot Mom another raised eyebrow. “Did you see it?”

  “Yes,” Caitlyn said eagerly. “We got it. But . . .” She trailed off, giving Mom a vaguely guilty look.

  “I see. Then by chance do you still have the Lockwood family talisman? It wasn’t in the package when it came back.”

  Mom looked startled. “Family talisman?” she echoed. “What’s that?”

  Grandmother Lockwood ignored her. Again, not something most people would dare to do. But I was quickly figuring out that Grandmother Lockwood wasn’t most people.

  Caitlyn was already stepping forward, her hand reaching for the thin silver chain around her neck. “Yes, we have it,” she said, pulling out the pendant from beneath her shirt.

  I shivered when I saw it. Lockwood family talisman, huh? So we were right. Cait and I had already figured out that our visions got stronger when we were wearing that thing. A lot stronger.

  “Where did you get that?” Mom sounded a little hysterical now. “What is it? Verity, I demand that you—”

  “Tomorrow,” Grandmother Lockwood cut her off firmly. “We’ll discuss it all—tomorrow.” She nodded at Cait, who was still holding the talisman. “Keep that safe. It’s irreplaceable.”

  “Um, okay?” Caitlyn said. But Grandmother Lockwood was already striding back toward her cab.

  I sank down onto the front step, my mind whirling. “Wow,” I said. “I can’t believe she’s here.”

  Mom glowered at us, opening her mouth as if to say something. Or to start yelling, more likely. Fine. I was ready to do a little yelling myself. Now that our grandmother was here, it was more than obvious that Mom had known about this crazy vision thing. And she’d never told us about it. Never warned us. How could she do that? Mom and I had a tendency to butt heads at times, especially when she got all strict about stupid stuff like curfews and makeup. But even when I didn’t agree with her decisions, I’d always trusted that she was trying to do what she thought was right. But how could she possibly think it was right to keep us in the dark about something so important?

  I was more than ready to have it out with her if she wanted—scarymama or not. But Mom snapped her mouth shut again without saying a word. Spinning on her heel, she stormed back into the house and slammed the door behind her. Cait’s eyes were wide.

  “Whoa,” she said. “She seems mad. Like, for real.”

  “Gee, ya think?” I rolled my eyes. “Obviously she didn’t want us to even know our grandmother exists. No duh that she’s a little peeved when the woman herself just shows up on our doorstep and starts talking about talismans and stuff.”

  Cait stepped closer. “By the way, did you have a vision just now?”

  I grimaced. “Yeah. Just Granny Lockwood on the phone, no biggie.”

  That was how the visions worked. They happened seemingly randomly—we would touch someone, and bam, there it was. We would see a scene from that person’s future. How far in the future was anybody’s guess. And what we saw ranged from super-important stuff, like Mom almost losing her job or a friend being hurt, to stupid trivia like someone getting a bad grade on a test or whatever. We couldn’t control the visions, like, at all.

  At least, we hadn’t been able to control them so far. That letter from our grandmother had mentioned teaching us to get a handle on our abilities. Or something like that—Mom had grabbed it away before we’d read more than the first few lines. Speaking of which . . .

  “You know, we might want to keep an eye on Mom,” I told Caitlyn. “I wouldn’t put it past her to pack us up and move to Timbuktu tonight to avoid that brunch. Or maybe put out a hit on Granny L. Just saying.” I was only half joking. It wasn’t easy to wrap my head around the fact that Mom had hidden a whole entire grandmother from us all this time. I wouldn’t be getting over that anytime soon.

  Caitlyn bit her lip. “Don’t make Mom mad, okay, Cass?” she pleaded. “I mean, this has to be a shock for her, too.”

  Instead of promising anything of the sort, I got up and hurried inside without responding. Caitlyn followed.

  Mom was pacing around the tiny living room with her cell phone pressed to her ear, apparently mid-rant. “—and I was afraid this might happen. That woman never could take no for an answer, even though I’m just trying to protect them from what happened to—”

  As soon as she saw us, she frowned—well, more than she already was, anyway—and stopped talking. Then she headed for the back hall.

  “Hang on, Cheryl,” she snapped. “The walls have ears.”

  Cheryl was her sister, our aunt, who still lived in our old neighborhood in San Antonio. So she was in on this, too?

  Mom disappeared into the bathroom, clicking the lock and then turning on the shower full blast. I pressed my ear to the door, but all I could hear was mumbling.

  Caitlyn watched me. “So much for Mom’s good mood,” she said softly.

  “Yeah, seriously,” I muttered, flopping onto the sofa.

  Our birthday had gone really well up until the moment Grandmother Lockwood climbed out of that cab. We’d had a big pool party for all our friends, and had even managed to stop something bad from happening to one of those friends, thanks to our visions.

  Caitlyn and I had already figured out one thing. Seeing the future meant being able to change the future. At least if we could puzzle out what we were actually seeing, which wasn’t always easy.

  “Do you think our grandmother . . .” I paused for a second. Saying that still felt weird. “Do you think she’ll be able to tell us more about our visions?”

  Cait brightened. “I hope so! That’s what she had said in the letter she sent us.”

  “You mean the letter she tried to send us.” I clenched my fists, thinking back to the way Mom had snatched Grandmother Lockwood’s package out of our hands, even though it had been addressed to us. Totally not fair. But then again, Mom had done a lot of not-fair stuff over the years, as we’d just discovered . . .

  At that moment Mom emerged from the bathroom, her expression still stormy. Hopping to my feet, I stomped toward her, my own expression matching hers, as I got fired up all over again.

  “Well?” I demanded. “Are you going to stick to your word and let us go tomorrow or what?”

  “Cass!” Caitlyn whispered, sounding horrified.

  I knew why. Mom hated when we sassed her. But this was way beyond sass. “Because we can’t keep going like this,” I blurted out before I even knew what I was going to say. “Seriously, Mom, you can’t keep secrets like this, okay? Because we’re having all these wackadoodle visions lately, Cait and me both. And they’re getting worse . . .”

  The words poured out of me as I babbled on about the visions for a while. How they’d started about six months earlier. How Caitlyn and I had figured out we were both having them. How they were getting more frequent—and more vivid.

  Behind Mom, Caitlyn looked alarmed and a little queasy. We hadn’t told Mom any of this before today, and I guess me suddenly spilling my guts took Cait by surprise.

  But Mom didn’t look surprised at all. She just listened.

  “. . . so anyway,” I finished, clenching my fists at my sides. “We h
ave to know what’s happening. We have to talk to our grandmother.”

  I braced myself for her response, determined to hold my ground, no matter what. What was the worst Mom could do? Ground me forever?

  But she just sighed, her shoulders slumped, and she looked almost . . . defeated.

  “I was afraid something like this might happen,” she said with a shrug. “In any case, your grandmother came all this way to see you. I won’t stand in the way if y’all want to get to know each other. Maybe there’s no point in trying to protect you anymore.”

  I traded a shocked glance with Caitlyn.

  “Protect us from what?” I asked, but Mom stayed silent.

  “So—so we can go to brunch?” Cait added cautiously.

  Mom shrugged again. “Of course. If you want to go, I’m not going to stop you.”

  I opened my mouth to repeat my question. But then I closed it again, deciding not to push it.

  For now.

  2

  CAITLYN

  MY HEAD WAS still spinning as I crawled into bed that night. Cassie was perched at her desk across the room fiddling with her cell phone. Our house in Aura only has two bedrooms, which meant Cass and I were sharing a room again for the first time since we were six years old. At first we’d both been less than thrilled about that. For one thing, Cassie seems to have inherited Mom’s military obsession with keeping things neat and tidy. While I, um, didn’t. I definitely hadn’t been looking forward to coming home and finding my socks alphabetized and my school notebooks spit-shined.

  But that wasn’t the only reason. When Cassie and I were little, we hadn’t just shared a room. We’d shared everything—every thought, every feeling, every minute of the day, pretty much. It had been us against the world, best friends as well as sisters.

  When had that changed? I wasn’t sure. Sometime along the way I guess we just grew apart. By the time we’d moved to San Antonio a few years ago, we were living almost totally separate lives. So sharing a bedroom again? Awk with a capital Ward.

  But now I was actually glad we were stuck in this room together. It gave us a chance to get to know each other again. Besides that, it gave us time to talk about what was happening. And lately, a lot of stuff was happening.