Chapter Six

Raven sat at the kitchen table sipping a glass of cold chocolate milk when Doug stumbled into the kitchen, not looking fully awake.
“Hey, last night when I found you on the porch, you were making funny noises and moving around. Having a bad ream or something?” he asked finally, breaking the long silence.
“Yeah, it was me and you on a date,” Raven answered. Doug lifted one eyebrow at her questioningly, not understanding.
Deborah, who had heard the conversation, snickered.
“You all ready for work?” Laurel asked cheerfully, stepping into the kitchen.
“Not so loud,” Sean winced in a whisper, holding his hands to his ears. “It’s too early for loud noise.”
Chris leaned over and bellowed in his ears. “GET OVER IT!”
“What’s all the shouting about?” Cassie asked, poking her head into the kitchen.
“Oh, just giving Sean a wake-up call,” Raven answered, and the others hid smiles. Sean sat down, clutching his head.
“Are you all ready for work?” Adam asked, coming up behind Cassie and putting an arm around her waist.
There was a collective groan and then Nick walked in, his handsome face as stony and cold as ever. Raven was irritated with him right then. He was so hung up over Cassie that it was making her sick. He could mask his feelings from everyone, but she could mask her feelings better than he could, and she knew he was dying of jealousy because of Adam and Cassie standing there, so clearly in love.
“Has anyone seen my earrings?” Suzan asked.
“Which ones?” Laurel replied.
“The carnelian ones,” Suzan answered.
“Do you think that wearing that stone is such a good idea?” Diana’s voice floated from another part of the house.
“They’re the only ones I’ll be wearing,” Suzan assured her.
Raven grinned to herself, her annoyance with Nick vanishing rapidly. The last time Suzan had worn carnelians she’d been trying to get the star player on the football team, but she’d ended up with the whole football team instead. And the other girls swore that they would never forget the sight of Suzan in the bathroom pulling all the carnelians out of her clothes as the football team stampeded her. But carnelian was her working crystal. Laurel’s was amethyst, Melanie’s was jade, Cassie’s was hematite, Diana’s was chalcedony rose and Deborah’s was citrine. Raven had never heard the guys’ working crystals. Raven kept her special crystal on a silver chain at her throat.

At the store before it opened, Dave called everyone in the back for a meeting.
“It’s a week until Christmas and I need six people to work on Christmas Eve and six on Christmas Day,” he said, looking around at all of them hopefully.
“The twelve of us can work on those days,” Adam said.
Dave’s face lit up. “Really? You would do that?”
“Yeah, no problem,” Adam assured him.
“I’ll give you extra pay and everything, but you’d do that? Really?” Dave looked anxious.
“Yes, really,” Cassie said, laughing. The others were laughing, too.
Dave looked perplexed, unsure of why they were laughing.
“Okay. Thank you all so much.” Then he looked at his watch. "All right, people, it’s time to go to work, y’all.”
"What kind of work?” Suzan asked, and the Henderson brothers chorused, “Hard work!”
“What was that about?” Melanie asked.
Raven shrugged. “It’s over my head.”
“Or under our feet,” Nick murmured, and Deborah socked him in the shoulder.

Raven was all alone in the only open express lane when Tracy came by. Raven glanced at her watch. It wasn’t anywhere near lunch time.
“How come you guys are working on Christmas?” she asked. “Don’t your families want you home for the holidays?”
“We’re our family,” Raven answered. She sighed and stretched. Her back was getting cramped from sitting on the tall stool.
Tracy nodded, not quite understanding her words. “Okay, whatever. I have to get back to work before I’m fired.” She waved and walked away.

Lunch was dull. No one said anything, they were too tired. A lot of people were coming by to get their groceries before Christmas came around and a lot of the elderly women were baking for the holiday and Nick was slumped in a corner, exhausted from hauling heavy bags of flour.
Laurel and Melanie were talking in hushed tones and darting Raven looks every now and again. Raven was a little annoyed at their staring but let it slide, closing her eyes to drift off.
An argument drifted back to the room, but Tracy nor Marie seemed to notice.
“Why do we have to work on Christmas day?” Doug demanded.
“We have no reason not to and we could use the money,” Adam answered.
“But we always had Christmas with our parents,” Doug protested.
“Your parents aren’t here,” Adam said quietly.
“If you and your two girlfriends weren’t so stupidly idealistic and let us take care of the Outsiders when we had the chance, our parents would still be alive!” Doug shouted.
“My parents wouldn’t be alive,” Adam pointed out.
“Yeah, but ours would!” Chris yelled. “So our parents were afraid to face Black John, we still had them. Deb lost her parents, too. The Outsiders were never nice to us, they hunted us!”
“You, of all people, should know that,” Doug added. “They came after you with a gun!”
“We weren’t nice to them, either,” Adam said evenly.
“We didn’t try to kill them,” Chris hissed.
“Both of you, let’s just concentrate on Longnight, all right?” Cassie pleaded.
“All right,” the brothers muttered reluctantly.
Raven felt a smile curve her lips. Nick had told her that the brothers liked Cassie, too.
“What’s so important about Longnight?” Chris asked.
“The night of the solstice,” Melanie explained patiently. “The longest night of the year, hence Longnight, and this year there’s a full moon then.” She paused, probably because someone passed, then went on. “We’ll need it to complete the Circle.”
“Raven said she’d be busy that night.” Chris was confused.
“Well, we’ll figure something,” Cassie assured him.

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