Chapter Nine

They next day at work, Raven was given smiles and secretive winks from everyone in the Club. They would grin at her and whisper, “You’re in now!” and hurry away.
“What’s up with them?” Del asked. “They look like they’re planning to blow up the White House or something.”
Raven shrugged. Maybe they’d done the same thing to Cassie, too. “I guess they’re all really happy or something.”
“I think I’m hallucinating,” Del muttered. “Did Nick just smile?”
“You’re hallucinating,” Raven assured him.
“Raven, would you take this out back to Big George for me?” Dave asked, handing her a plastic bag. Raven nodded and put a ‘closed’ sign on her cashier lane before heading out back with the bag.
“George?” Raven called, looking around. “George? Dave sent this for you.”
“Big George is inside,” a voice said, and Raven jumped. She turned and found Nick standing behind her.
“Dude, Armstrong, don’t do that to a girl,” she gasped. She held out the plastic bag. “This is for George.”
Nick took the bag and set it down and out of the way.
“We need to talk,” he said seriously.
“What about?” Raven feigned innocence.
Nick’s dark eyes met hers. “You know what about.”
Raven’s heart plummeted into her shoes. “Oh. That.”
“I didn’t tell the others because I knew they’d make a big deal over it all,” Nick said.“I just want to know why you won’t let anyone love you.”
Raven rolled her eyes. “I just ain’t the lovey-dovey type, all right?”
Nick stared down at a spot of grease on the floor. “That’s not the kind of love I meant.”
“Nick, I’ve never wanted to fall in love.” Raven tore her gaze away from his eyes. “I set my mind to something and I don’t budge. Besides, what about Cassie?”
Nick’s gaze wavered, and Raven knew she’d hit a button.
“I still love her, the way Diana still loves Adam, but she can never love anyone else,” he said quietly.
“I don’t even want to be having this conversation,” Raven said, spun on her heel and walked away.

At lunch, Raven sat in a corner teaching Del how to play poker. She didn’t sit with the others and they didn’t mind, even though they kept giving her grins.
After work, the Circle trooped home.

“It’s my turn to cook dinner,” Laurel announced.
“No tofu!” Melanie called from the bedroom.
“I’ll be back in time for dinner,” Raven assured no one in particular, and headed out the kitchen and off the back porch. She walked along the beach to AJ’s house and knocked on the back screen. AJ pulled the door open.
“Hi.” He frowned. “I’ve seen you before. Oh, wait, you’re Raven. Come in. My place is clean this time.” He grinned.
Raven stepped into the living room.
“Things trippin’ with the others?” AJ asked.
Raven nodded and sank down on his couch.
“Not that I want to talk about.”
“Well, we can go at it on my Playstation if you want to take your frustrations out on me,” AJ offered.
Raven laughed. “All right, you’re on.”
AJ popped in a game and they sat down in front of the TV with their controls.
“I can whip your butt at MarioKart,” Raven warned.
“Everyone can,” AJ muttered and they began to play. “Why are you called Raven, anyway? Your mom like birds?”
Raven flinched at the mention of her mother; AJ didn’t notice.
“Yeah, or Edgar Allen Poe.”
“I knew a girl with a birdie name,” AJ said. He fell silent and tried to get ahead of Raven but she just smashed him off the path with a giggle. “Vicious!” He cleared his throat. “Her name was Dove. Dove Cameron.”
Raven froze. AJ noticed her player stop and looked at her.
“What did I say?”
“You said Dove Cameron?” Raven asked, turning to look at him. She stared at him, his familiar face of a stranger.
AJ nodded. “You know her? She lived around here till she was, like, six and then her parents died, so she moved. She changed her name to…” He noticed her staring at him. He finished with one word. “Raven.”
Raven’s mouth dropped open.
“I knew I’d seen you before,” AJ gasped. “Dove!” He threw his arms around her in a hug.
Raven found herself in his arms, in shock. She didn’t know what to say. Alex, of all people. The one person from her past she’d never wanted to see again.
“How have you been? I’ve been waiting to hear from you for years,” AJ whispered.
Raven could only cry softly.
AJ stroked her hair. “Girl, how have you been on your own? You been all right?”
Raven nodded weakly, sniffling.
“I’m sorry if I upset you,” he said gently.
Raven was still in shock. One in a million chances and it was him. Impossible. He’d want to meet the others. They’d find out…
There was a knock at the door.
“Trey man, is Rave in there?”
Raven jerked back. It was Doug. He peered through the screen.
“Dude, you aren’t Trey! Are you AJ?”
“Is it dinner?” Raven asked, hastily wiping away her tears.
“Yeah, and we have a meeting afterwards. Come on,” Doug said.
Raven headed for the screen door.
“Come back and see me soon,” AJ said.
Raven nodded, even though she wasn’t sure if she would ever some back.
“Later, Dove.”
Raven slipped out the door and joined Doug.
“You got a thing for that guy?” he asked.
Raven laughed. “No. Not him.”
“Why did he call you Dove?"
“Every birdie name is the same,” Raven answered, repeating what Alex had said to her all the time when they were kids.

Raven sat on the kitchen counter beside Chris, Doug and Deborah. Doug was poking at the food warily.
“What is it?”
“It’s Chinese stir-fry,” Laurel answered.
Chris perked up. “Stir-fry?” Then he prodded the rice with his fork. “Where’s the pork?”
“Oh, no pork,” Laurel replied lightly. “It’s vegetarian.”
Doug choked on a mouthful. Deborah pounded on his back until he could swallow.
“Vegetarian?” Doug echoed when he could finally speak.
Chris puffed out his chest. “Man need red meat,” he said in a me-Tarzan-you Jane voice, thumping himself on the chest.
Adam snorted and choked on his food, trying not to laugh.
Diana stood up. “Cassie and I are going out to prepare a Circle. You guys got the dishes, okay?”
“We got it, mom,” Melanie teased.
Cassie and Diana headed out off the back porch and Deborah hopped off the counter.
“Everyone done? If you are, you should leave,” she said.
Adam arched one eyebrow. "Why?”
The sound of loud guitars and drums blasted out of the den as Ska attacked their ears.
Laurel and Melanie clapped their hands over their ears and ran out of the kitchen as Chris strode in, nodding his head to the beat and grinning to himself. Suzan sat at her plate, scowling.
“I think I’ll be leaving,” Adam said to them and ducked out hurriedly.
Nick sat in the corner watching Chris and Doug shake their hair all over the place and yell along to the lyrics, unamused.
“Come on, Raven,” Deborah urged, her dark curls flying as she did an air-guitar. Raven stared, then reached up and pulled out the copper comb, letting her hair loose and jumping with the others. Suzan rolled her eyes and stood up, beginning to clear away the plates.
Nick went over the sink and rolled up his sleeves before turning on the tap and filling the two sinks with water. He squirted a generous dose of dishwashing detergent into one sink and watched as the bubbles frothed.
Suzan had soon stacked all the dishes and silverware by the sink and left the kitchen as quickly as she could. Deborah was left to clean the table. Doug dried the dishes that Nick washed and Chris put them away. Raven got the glamorous job of cleaning out all the food and taking out the garbage.
The porch door opened and Laurel poked her head into the kitchen.
“Circle meeting!” she yelled over the music.
Instantly the radio was off the six of them were scrambling over the wooden railing and trotting down the beach to the Circle marked with candles.
They stood inside and Diana completed the Circle.
“This is our first meeting in a while as a full Circle,” Cassie said. “We have our seventh girl.”
“First manner of business,” Diana began solemnly, and all attention was on her. “We’ve just heard about a new Master Tool.”
Raven noticed Cassie looking at her.
“We’ll need all the Master Tools with the complete Circle or the Powers can be called upon and disrupted unless everything is kept in harmony,” Diana said. “Things got unbalanced with the enormous control Black John had when he was here and if there is a final Master Tool we’ll need it if danger ever arises.”
“I thought we had them all,” Suzan said, her china-blue eyes clouded over with confusion.
“There’s a knife,” Raven offered. All eyes were suddenly on her. “It has the same symbol of the moon on it as the other Tools.“The skull was earth and water. The diadem is air and the arm-band is fire.” Raven paused. “When I was little, the old Crone often told me of Life. She had a little rhyme for it. ‘Earth, water, fire air/ Met within a garden fair/ Bound as one in a basket of skin/ Form for mortal lest evil begin.’ She said that all four elements combined made people, and that the fourth tool symbolized life. She never said what it actually did, but it was ‘for life’. And I remember where she said it was now. Something like…Land which the moon reigns. But it made no sense because there is no country where just witches live and there is no rain on the moon. I suppose there are other homophones of ‘reign’ that I haven’t thought of yet.” She paused again. “Where the land meets the land.”
“That sounds weird,” Sean muttered.
“I can’t make any sense of it,” Melanie admitted, looking stumped.
“Diana’s land, she sometimes called it that, too,” Raven offered.
They all sat in silence, thinking hard.
“Well, I guess we should come back to that,” Cassie said finally, breaking the still silence.
“I don’t think any of you have been keeping watch on our situation, but the Outsiders from the island are still after us,” Adam said. “We’ve had a great life here and all, but they’re coming for us. We have to be prepared to leave again.”
They all stared at him.
“I know what you’re thinking, but we don’t have much of a choice,” Melanie agreed. “The police are after us too, and we won’t have much in the way of verbal defense. Portia and her brothers have probably organized their story well enough that we’ll have no way to convince the police we’re innocent.”
“They won’t really believe we’re witches, will they?” Laurel asked.
“The state police won’t, but any cops from the island will,” Adam replied.
“We’ve had enough for tonight,” Cassie said finally. “Let’s close and go to bed.”
They stood up and Diana opened a gap in the Circle. They filed out one by one and headed up the beach to the house.

Raven lay on the carpet floor in the pitch blackness of the dark, words from a now familiar voice floating in her ear.
“ ‘More on the case of the teenage cult. A highway patrol officer from Florida says,he pulled over a group of teenagers in a van the Saturday after the school dance and that the passengers in the back were wearing formal clothes. There were only six passengers and a driver, he stated, but there was a jeep that pulled over with it and five or more passengers in it. The passengers from the van fit the descriptions of several members of the cult. The officer also stated that one of the passengers, a girl, told him they were going to Orlando for a concert that was never really being held. Investigators have yet to follow that lead. Of the two fires on Crowhaven Road where all the members of the cult lived, eleven deaths have been reported so far. All victims were parents or guardians of the members of the cult. As for the accomplice, her house was untouched. She had no known guardians to speak of and the house was under the name of Dove Cameron, whom the investigators are unable to locate.’”
Raven closed her eyes and sighed. They were getting closer.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws