Nothing else happened that night and Jon went to bed, the next morning he was woken by excited shrieking coming from downstairs. Leaping out of bed he ran downstairs in time to see his sister and mother hugging and dancing around squealing for joy.
"We Won, We Won! they sang, Mikey came out of his room and shouted down to them
"Won what?
"The Competition, we're going on an all expenses paid holiday to Mermaid Cove!"
"Really? Cool!"
By this point Jon was thoroughly confused but after some patient questioning found out that apparently his family had been entered into a lottery to go on a luxury holiday, they were to be picked up tomorrow and whisked away to the tropical Paradise of Mermaid Cove, where they would spend a month in the lap of luxury, along with the other winners.
At around this point Karyn came to the door , very excited, apparently she too had won.
The rest of the day was a blur as arrangements were made, time off from school was suspiciously easy to arrange, Jon decided to make some safety wishes, firstly he wished that the stone would exist in a pocket dimension, which only Jon could reach into, regardless of whatever form he was in, whatever new name he might have he could always access the stone, secondly he wished to know if anything bad would happen to them on this holiday - apparently not and finally he wished that he could make wishes silently , and the stone could hear them telepathically.
The next day a huge limo showed up, big enough for Jon, his brother , his sister and his parents, as well as Karyn and her Mom and Dad.
when they reached the airport they found the other winners, The De Vries, Athena and her Moms Violet and Giselle and Moose Matthews and his grandparents ( his parents died when he was a baby).
Athena was a weird witchy girl that was Zoe's best friend and Moose was the biggest guy in school, he was actually an OK guy for a Jock, just a bit too easily led by others. Everyone looked happy to be there and Jon had to admit , so far this was definitely interesting, a month away from school would be fun and apparently there was an arrangement with the school whereby certain activities on holiday could be traded for extra credit, probably windsurfing for Gym credit or writing a report on his holiday for English and History. Turning to Karyn with a big grin he said.
"This is going to be amazing!
