Hawthorn Academy: Year Three Read online

  Hawthorn Academy

  Year Three

  D.R. Perry

  This is a work of fiction with frequent puns, bad jokes, and pop culture references. All characters depicted are my own creations even if they resemble a pack of Slytherdors with a HuffleClaw mascot at times. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Dragonets are, sadly, mere figments of my imagination and I have no idea where you can get one as a pet.

  Copyright © 2020 D.R. Perry

  Cover by Fantasy Book Design

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, December 2020

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-64971-355-1

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-356-8

  The Hawthorn Academy Year Three Team

  Thanks to our JIT Readers

  Rachel Beckford

  Dave Hicks

  Veronica Stephan-Miller

  Editor

  SkyHunter Editing Team

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  Glossary

  Providence Paranormal College

  Thank you!

  Connect with the Author

  Other LMBPN Publishing Books

  Chapter One

  "This is creepier than I thought it would be."

  "Peep!"

  At least my dragonet agreed. The stairs down to the basement in the apartment in The Point were musty, damp, bare concrete.

  "I wonder if they'll let us put a rug down here or something." Logan shrugged. "It echoes an awful lot. Hurts the ears don't you think?"

  "I hoped it'd be a little, you know, homier." I sighed.

  "I like it." Noah snorted. "Fits my new vampiness. Complements it, actually. Maybe even makes a fashion statement, like Dorian's wardrobe."

  "Noah, honestly." Elanor held up her key ring, jangling the bobs of metal against each other. "Don't be so melodramatic. It's not like vampires are new. Or that you're the first one to get turned as a teenager either."

  "Technically, I'm an adult." He held his hand out and gazed at his maroon-painted fingernails.

  "I'm about to catch up to you." I chuckled.

  "Nope." Noah shook his head. "Can't catch me; I'm the ginger fang man."

  "Thought that was your boyfriend." Logan grinned. "Because Jonah's a redhead. Get it?"

  After a moment absent of the laughter Logan expected, he slapped his hand over his mouth.

  "No, no, I get it." Noah shrugged. "Or maybe I'm not getting any with Jonah in jail. Open the door already, El."

  Elanor stuck the key in the lock and tried turning. Nothing happened.

  "I just picked these up this morning." She blinked. "I don't understand."

  "Peep!"

  "Meow?"

  "What is it, Doris?" Logan called after his mercat as she ran up the stairs.

  The door at the top opened and briefly let in light. Thankfully artificial. It got blocked by the bulk of the person standing in the doorway.

  "Trouble with the key?" The voice was a warm tenor, but gravelly somehow, as though the speaker had swallowed water down the wrong pipe a minute ago.

  "Yeah, I'm afraid so, Mr. Micello." Elanor pushed past us, heading up the stairs to meet the man coming down it halfway.

  He reached out, flipped a switch, and a bare bulb went on over her head. His face was broad and round, with a physique to match. He clung to both handrails as he descended, which I noticed were reinforced.

  I narrowed my eyes, almost closing them, trying to get in touch with my sense of the magic around me. Something about Paolo Micello felt familiar, but I couldn't place from where. If he was an extrahuman of some sort, I wanted to know what kind.

  He's a troll, of course. Like your friend. What's his name? Begins with a b and ends with an r. Oh, you know, from Gallows Hill.

  "Bartholomew!"

  "No, that's my nephew. But you've met him along with others I call kin." He nodded. "Which is one reason I agreed to rent this apartment in the first place."

  "Oh." Elanor blinked and backed down the stairs.

  "I'm sorry about the key. It goes to the apartment on the third floor, which is also for rent but unsuitable for a vampire. If you happen to know anyone else looking for a place," he glanced at Logan and me. "A nice young couple perhaps, please inform me."

  He reached for a ring of keys on his belt and removed a set, then held them up while squinting. "My eyesight isn't what used to be. I mistook the B for three." He chuckled. "Let's switch, and you'll be all set."

  "Thanks." Elanor exchanged keyrings with Mr. Micello.

  "If you need help moving, that's Bartholomew's summer job. Let me know, and I'll send him over with the truck."

  "That'd be super helpful," Noah said. "My hours are...limited, Mr. Micello."

  "Understood. And call me Paolo."

  He turned and headed back up the steps with a painfully stiff gait. Either Paolo Micello feared stairs or had trouble with his legs.

  Why not both?

  I narrowed my eyes and tried to visualize what my inside voice, which maybe wasn't so much evil as terrifyingly pragmatic, meant. Tiny flecks of reddish-gold dazzled me, collected somewhere around Paolo's knees. What that signified, I didn't know. Once the door closed behind him, Logan elbowed me.

  "Write it down." He held my phone, which he'd managed to take out of my bag without my noticing. "Or type. And sorry about picking your pocket."

  I glanced up, wondering whether Noah and Elanor had noticed this exchange. They were too busy opening the door. We followed them inside, me tapping out a memo on my phone about Paolo's spark-infested legs for later.

  "Wow." Logan stopped so suddenly that I bumped into him.

  "Whoa!"

  We tumbled to the floor together, his arm caught in the strap on my bag. Ember swooped out of nowhere and caught my phone a hair before it fell on the floor. She landed while holding the electronic device against her scaly little face.

  "Peep?"

  Doris sauntered up to stand beside Ember, where she sat with her tail curled around her legs. The look she gave us reminded me of Professor Luciano, who died protecting us only a short span of weeks ago. I burst into tears, my awkward tangle with Logan suddenly transformed. I clung to him like a rock
in the rapids.

  Ember's eyes widened. She headbutted the mercat, knocking her off-center and breaking the impression. As though in apology, Doris ran to my side, rubbed against my shoulder, and purred.

  "Hey." Logan touched my face and wiped away tears. "Hey, Aliyah. You're gonna be okay."

  "He won't. Not ever again." I sniffled.

  "Hawkins said this is normal." Tears stained his face too.

  "I'm tired of feeling like this." I shuddered and leaned back. "Like any minute I'll go to pieces."

  "Me too." Logan sat across from me now, our hands still clasped.

  "I don't know what to do."

  "Me neither."

  Fabric rustled beside us.

  "You're not alone." Noah's hand felt cool and soothing against my cheek.

  "Yeah." Elanor hugged her brother. "That's why we rented this flophouse in the first place."

  "You never gave us the ten-cent tour." I used my sleeve to dab under my eyes.

  "As you can see, we've got this lovely linoleum, circa nineteen eighty-five."

  "You doofus." Elanor rolled her eyes. "This design is clearly from the early nineties."

  Just like that, we all laughed. For Logan and me, it was wet and snotty, with something sharp inside that still threatened. However, I was a fire magus and he was water. Both of us were accustomed to volatility, only not so emotional.

  "Let's show them the bathroom first," Elanor said.

  "Yeah. Don't want literally snot-nosed whippersnappers in my bedroom." Noah's attempted snort had a little too much sniffle in it. So he shared this grief also, but in a less obvious way.

  The bathroom was right behind us. When Noah pushed the door inward, I expected a tiny room. Instead, it opened to my left into a decently sized space, decorated in Pepto-Bismol pink. The showerhead side of the bathtub sat behind it, the bar hanging bare without even rings for a curtain. A sizeable cabinet supported the sink, which stood between the tub/shower and toilet.

  Logan stepped up to it and splashed his face several times. Then he turned, hands and face dripping. No towel hung from the ring by the sink or the hooks on the wall to my right.

  "Oops." He blinked.

  "Here." I reached into my bag and brought out a pack of tissues.

  "Nah, this is better." Elanor held out a dishtowel.

  "Oh." Logan reached for it but paused. "You were never this nice when I made mistakes back ho—I mean in Vegas."

  "I don't have to pretend anymore." She shook the towel. "Go on."

  He dried his face, then folded the towel and hung it neatly beside the sink. He gazed down at the damp pink porcelain, unmoving.

  All those fine manners of his. Which of those were written in blood, do you think?

  Angry red and orange lines in trails like the ones that come from staring at a light for too long crossed his back, superimposed over his clothes. I swallowed around a sudden lump in my throat.

  "Let's call Bar." Elanor tugged her brother's sleeve. "And get out of here so Aliyah can wash up."

  He nodded and scooted past me, not looking up, which was normal for Logan some of the time. But not for now. I could tell by the way his shoulders stood high like they reached for his ears.

  "We're going to be okay." I squared my jaw and reached for the faucet. "All of us."

  I felt Noah's presence in the doorway behind me although he didn't speak. Somehow, I sensed his abject disagreement. Instead of responding to that, I splashed my face thoroughly. Once the tight sting of tearstains eased, I closed the tap and made use of the towel.

  "Let's finish that tour, then." Noah turned on his heel and led me out of the bathroom.

  Elanor and Logan joined, having finished their call in the kitchen. There was plenty of room in there for a table and chairs. A set of wooden pocket doors slid aside to reveal a windowless living room. It had a bricked-over fireplace with a marble mantel. One of those faux flame lights squatted on the hearth. Noah sauntered over toward it, chuckling.

  "This is what sold me on the place."

  "Fun."

  "It gets better." Elanor grinned. She headed for a door to the right of the fireplace, which I couldn't imagine led to anything bigger than a closet.

  I was wrong.

  It opened out into a room padded with thick noise-canceling tiles. A mic stand, an amp, a keyboard, and a stand holding an electric bass and an acoustic guitar filled most of the floor space.

  "Welcome to Piercing Whispers central."

  "Has Dylan seen this?" Logan asked.

  "Later. He's still on shift at the Lyceum."

  "So, where are your rooms?" I leaned against the mantel.

  "Off that hall." Noah paced toward me, then linked his arm through mine. "Check it out."

  Two doors led off the hallway, and each already had a sign on it, indicating whose room was whose. Noah's was a collage of construction paper decorated in rainbows. Elanor's sign was painted plywood decorated with FiFi's molted feathers.

  "Luckily, the closets are the same size." She pushed her door open. The only thing in her room was a perch for her phoenix. "We'll be redecorating, obvs."

  "Yeah." I nodded. "You got a great space here. How much did it run you?"

  "Not much." Noah shrugged. "Some of it's barter. We're playing one free gig per month for Paolo. Did you know the Micellos own The Baybridge?"

  "No, I didn't." I gave him a side-eye Izzy would have been proud of. "You're getting a job though, right?"

  "Security." Noah nodded. "For the Ambersmiths, overnight."

  "What about you?" Logan asked Elanor.

  "Nothing yet. I applied all over town, though."

  "Well, Paolo must think Piercing Whispers is something else." Logan picked at his thumbnail. "Renting to someone without a job. Or he's got some ulterior motive."

  "You worry too much, Lo."

  "Think I've earned the right."

  I reached out, grabbed Logan's hand and squeezed, like he'd done for me the day after Professor Luciano died saving Noah and me. He glanced at me, eyes wide for a moment before nodding.

  "Shouldn't someone be at Hawthorne Street when Bar gets there?" I asked.

  "Yeah." Noah nodded. "Team kid siblings, you're on moving truck duty. El, we should check out that bodega across the street, see what they've got. I'm borderline hangry."

  "Mood." Elanor patted her stomach. "There's nothing in the fridge."

  We said goodbye at the door on the side of the house, where the basement stairs let out. For a moment, I watched them crossing Palmer Street toward Tropica Mart. Then, I turned and headed up the sidewalk with Logan.

  "Should we text Cadence?" he asked. "Doesn't she live near here?"

  "Yeah, she does. But she said something about going to Boston today."

  "Oh." We walked all the way up Lafayette in silence. "Hey, look!" He pointed at the window for Engine House.

  Brianna stood at the register inside.

  "That's some good news." I sighed.

  "Yeah. After getting laid off from Walgreen's, she was so worried. Should we go in and say hi?"

  "I don't think there's time. The line in there is huge."

  We caught her eye and waved enthusiastically before turning to walk up Derby Street toward Hawthorne.

  Bar's truck was already in the driveway, and he stood shuffling his feet on the stoop outside as though he wasn't sure which bell to ring.

  "Hey, Bar."

  He turned, raising his eyebrows. "Oh. Hey, Aliyah. Logan."

  "It's the one on the right." I reached into my bag and got my keys. "But no need to ring."

  "How much stuff do they got?"

  "Suitcases, a table and chairs, a futon." I opened the door and let the guys through. "That's all I'm sure about. My folks were in the basement when I left. Who knows what else they unearthed?"

  In the living room at the top of the stairs, we found all the luggage and boxes. Bar hefted the entire stack of boxes with a suitcase balanced on top and carried them down the s
tairs without even pausing to catch his breath. Logan and I dragged the rest of the cases plus Noah's old knapsack, which he'd filled with adult coloring books and colored pencils.

  Mom and Dad stood beside the truck, trying to offer Bar help putting everything in the back. He didn't need it. By the time Logan and I set the luggage down, the boxes were safely stowed.

  "We've got furniture out back," Dad said.

  "Kitchen stuff and some linens too," Mom added.

  We made something like an assembly line, passing bags and boxes along the path that Bar navigated with the futon, table, chairs, and a pair of bed frames that looked like they could be bunked if desired.

  "What about mattresses?" I shook my head. "Those frames aren't any good without them."

  "That was my housewarming gift." Bubbe emerged from her office carrying a pair of handled grocery bags, sides bulging. "Ordered them yesterday. They're arriving on Palmer Street in about an hour."

  "What are those for, then?" Logan stared at the bags, which smelled heavenly.

  "Everyone helping out, of course." Bubbe grinned. "Rugelach and three kinds of babka. And a treat for Noah along with the recipe."

  "’Scuse me for asking but is he gonna be able to eat at all?" Bar cleared his throat. "On account of being, well, a vampire."

  "A dear friend recommended it." Bubbe nodded. "There are very few things vampires can eat, but she's got nearly two centuries of experience sampling them."