Montrose Paranormal Academy, Book 1: The Nexis Secret: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel

by Barbara Hartzler

  I blinked until the fog cleared. Better play it cool, like nothing had just happened. That strange vision just made me feel like I was finally on the right track.

  I climbed up the stairs from the subway to East 103rd Street in Harlem with the rest of the Guardians. We were a trio of two-by-two ark buddies on a pilgrimage ordered by our fearless leader. When I snuck a peek at Bryan, his lips were twisted, his eyes skittering over everyone and everything on the crowded sidewalk.

  The overcast sky dimmed to a darker shade of gray, Brooke following right on her brother’s heels as he led the way past eclectic New York shops and beautiful old brownstones to Lexington Avenue.

  Tony lagged behind with me as we shuffled down the crowded street. We turned the corner into a construction zone, which lasted until we reached 104th.

  “Smell that. It’s heavenly.” Laura inhaled, lingering in front of a fragrance shop on the corner.

  I caught a whiff of exotic sandalwood. “If only the rest of New York smelled this good.”

  “True dat. No time for window shopping, little sis.” Lenny shoved her down 104th as Tony pulled me along the sidewalk. “Pick up the pace.”

  “Hey, I go at my own speed,” she cried, punching Lenny’s bicep.

  “Yeah, why don’t you stop and smell the sandalwood?” I twirled my dark hair into a rope and whipped it at Tony. “We could pass for brother and sister, I guess.”

  “Funny.” He pursed his full lips that any girl would pay to have. Under the glare of the streetlights, his dark hair really contrasted against his features.

  “Wow, your skin is paler than mine. Anyone ever tell you that you look like a vampire?” I hissed at him.

  He jerked his face toward me as he bared his teeth. “If I was, you wouldn’t be around long enough to tell anyone.”

  A large Latina passed us, covering the eyes of her two kids and huddling them to her side.

  I cracked up so loudly both brother and sister pairs turned around. “Watch out, Tony Cullen is scaring the locals.”

  Laura and Brooke busted out laughing, but Bryan and Lenny furrowed their foreheads like I’d asked them to multiply square roots.

  Tony just hung his head. “You don’t want to know.”

  It felt good to smile, even laugh again. Things had been way too heavy lately. Maybe this so-called initiation trip was just what this little group needed. Even Mr. Tall Dark and Skeptical might have a little fun. I knew I had a mission, but it could still take a page out of my brother’s playbook and have a little fun, right?

  We crossed Third Avenue into the residential area of 104th Street. Circles of light haloed the gum-dotted pavement every few feet as the street noises died down. Tall brick buildings covered with evenly spaced windows sprouted on our right, then on both sides of the street. I scooted closer to Tony. “Are these the projects?”

  He shrugged, eyes darting around. “Not the scary ones you see on TV. These are mostly remodeled co-ops. Don’t worry, there’s a police station a couple of blocks over. It’s perfectly safe.”

  I bit my lip, trying not to let the shivers crawl up my spine. From our spot in the back of the group, Tony and I herded the sheep forward until we crossed Second Avenue. We passed a few oddball shops and brownstones that screamed old New York. Then we came to our final destination.

  “Beautiful.” I whistled out all the pent-up air in my lungs.

  A massive circle of stained glass glowed in the gathering dusk from several stories up. We stopped in front of the enormous stone church. Above the door it read St. Lucy’s Church and School. “Awesome, I have a church and a school. Does that mean I’ll have to become a saint to get my full inheritance?”

  Bryan ignored me and checked his watch. “Good, we’re on time. I told Father Patrick that we’re doing a paper on St. Lucia and we had to interview a priest. I know. I hate lying to a man of the cloth, but it was the only way to see the library.”

  I glanced over at Tony and he shot me a quirky look. We followed the siblings up the steps to the church. In the doorway, I stopped.

  A strange sensation of utter sorrow mixed with determination submerged in the pit of my stomach, but I pressed on. You don’t get a church named after you for happy reasons.

  A hush fell over us as bright soprano voices feathered the air of the grand stone foyer. A long high note pierced through the cracks of the sanctuary door, then faded to silence. I tiptoed across the tiles after Brooke and Bryan.

  “Choir practice, ugh,” Tony whispered to me.

  “It’s gorgeous.” I held one finger to my lips, pausing mid-step.

  Another muted refrain rang out, the low alto rising in a soporific crescendo. I arched up to my toes as the music swelled, peeking into the triangular window of the nearest door.

  “C’mon.” He grabbed my hand, yanking me down a dim hallway. “If anyone’s destiny depends on this, it’s yours.”

  “Fine. Have it your way.” I waved my farewell to the beautiful music, my beacon of hope that melted away the dark subway vision.

  Yellow light spilled from the open doorway into the dim hall. Bryan led the way, and everyone else trickled through behind him.

  “After you.” Tony stopped and waited for me to walk into the small library in front of him.

  “Good to know chivalry is still a thing.” I nodded at him, the smell of burning wax searing my nose right away.

  In a room as big as a bedroom, shelves of books lined the walls from plush carpet to coffered ceiling. The windows were draped with burgundy velvet. Candles flickered in gilt candelabras on the windowsill between the fabric panels. Old hardbacks stacked with ancient leather-bound volumes lined each shelf, all miraculously dust-free.

  Bryan and Lenny stood in front of a large mahogany table in the center of the room, their sisters seated in Victorian chairs in front of them. Bryan scooted out the remaining chair, nodding at me to sit.

  Then a black-clad man with a white collar bustled in. “It’s nice to see manners haven’t died out in the teenage population.” He adjusted his dark frames against his grayed temples. Those small, beady eyes reminded me of someone.

  Bryan shook hands with the priest, who then took the remaining seat. “Thanks for meeting with us, Father Patrick. You’ll be a big help to our project.”

  Father Patrick cracked his knuckles, then flexed his fingers. “You’ve been assigned one of the more interesting saints, I must say. What did you want to know?”

  “We want to know the legend of St. Lucia.” Laura’s tiny voice sounded larger in this small space. She gulped, then turned to me. Silence hung heavy in the room.

  Brooke glanced at me just like Laura had. Then she pulled out a pad of paper, her pen poised over it. “Tell us about how she became a saint.”

  Behind me, Bryan rested his hand on my chair. His fingertips grazed my shoulder, tracing the tiniest circle on my back. How could I concentrate while he was doing that?

  “There are many legends that surround St. Lucia.” Father Patrick’s gaze swept over us in a wide arc. “The legend goes that she was martyred for her faith after she refused to marry a prominent man. He purportedly turned her over to the Diocletian’s governor in Syracuse, who killed Christians in the Middle Ages. When she refused to recant her faith, they tried to drag her off but couldn’t move her, as if she were made of stone. Then they tried to burn her, but God saved her then, too. So they gouged out her eyes, eventually running her through with a sword. Because of her eyes, she’s the patron saint of the blind.”

  My jaw dropped, but I closed it with a snap, biting into my cheek to stop the scream that rose in my throat. Still, my blood curdled. “Why would they gouge out her eyes?”

  Bryan’s hand clamped around my shoulder. Was it to comfort me or hold me in my chair so I couldn’t run away? Brooke scribbled furiously on her notepad, filling page after page.

  The priest’s eyes probed mine, sort of like the eyes in my subway vision. Then his gaze softened as he adjusted his collar. “I’m o
bligated to tell you that the Catholic Church doesn’t endorse all of this as fact, since there’s not enough evidence to support it. That form of torture wasn’t common in that time but was done on occasion. There is evidence on both sides, but the older sources do support the theory.”

  The rotund man moved to a shelf on the opposite side of the room, his black suit crinkling as he moved. “Wait, I think we have something that will help.”

  He pulled out a large brown volume and gently laid it on the table in front of us. With shaky hands, he flipped through the ancient leather-bound parchment until he came to a picture. One I’d seen before, a woman with hollow eyes.

  “It’s also rumored that God gave her glorified eyes to replace the ones she lost. Whether that was in heaven or on Earth is much debated.” Then he flipped to another picture, a drawing of the sandy-haired saint with jeweled eyes.

  I gasped. I’d seen that image two times before, but never like this.

  Behind black frames, his eyes found me. “Beautiful, isn’t she? Personally, I find it hard to believe the part about her eyes isn’t true. All the artwork from medieval times portrays her without eyes or with her eyes on a tray. Some even with her glorified eyes, like this rendering here. There must be a reason she’s the patron saint of the blind.”

  He slid the book back and shut it with a bang. “Even though the evidence is scant, that is mostly due to the time period. They didn’t call it the Dark Ages for no reason. Sometimes, you have to have a little faith.”

  I shot a sidelong glance at Laura and Brooke, but they wouldn’t meet my gaze. Did they know about this? Why wouldn’t they have told me already? Those questions twisted into an inner funnel cloud of what-ifs.

  He threw his hands up and let out a long sigh. “But alas, I am among the few who still believe the old legends. If we could only discover why Diocletian would gouge her eyes out, everything might finally fit into place.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us about the eye myth in particular?” Brooke’s pen paused for a split second. She actually met my gaze this time. “If that’s okay with you.”

  “Let’s hear all about it.” I couldn’t censor the blatant sarcasm. This saint’s story, coupled with that picture I’d seen in the Nexis book, hit too close to home. I certainly wouldn’t want to trade places with her. Why would I want to hear the rest of her sad tale?

  Father Patrick glanced at the Roman numeral clock above the doorway. “I wish I could stay and chat, but choir practice just ended. I’ve got to set up for tonight’s mass.”

  “Wait.” Brooke dropped her notepad, chewing on the end of her pen. “Are there any books you can point us to? I think this angle would be a great way to go for our paper. But we’d need some good sources for our reference list.”

  “Only if you promise to be extremely careful.” He circled the room, then came back with a stack of books and a wink. “I don’t want to hear you in confessional crying about how you ruined two thousand years worth of history.”

  Brooke helped him lay out the books one by one on the polished table. “I promise we’ll take good care of them.”

  “I’m leaving you in charge. I’ll be back in an hour.” He wagged his finger and walked out the door. Then he peeked his head back in. “You know my favorite part about St. Lucia? She is a picture to the church of how God’s love is blind. Even when we can’t see it, he loves us for who we are, not what we do.”

  “Interesting take,” I muttered under my breath. “Not exactly a perfect analogy if you’re the one getting your eyes gouged out.”

  “That was intense,” Brooke whispered, then held her breath until he left the room. “Why don’t we each take one book and see what we can dig up?”

  She pushed an aged greenish leather volume my way. The book had a strange symbol on it, a winged cross in the middle of a four-pronged circle. Kind of like the stained glass window up front. “What’s this emblem?”

  Bryan peeked over my shoulder. “That’s the Guardian crest.”

  The whole group except Brooke huddled around me to get a glimpse of the crest.

  “Is this a Guardian church or something?” All eyes turned on me like a pack of hungry dogs.

  Brooke gently shut her book. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because of the stained glass window out front. The crossbars form this same symbol,” As soon as the words flew out of my mouth she bolted out the door.

  “Wait here. We’re going to go check it out.” Laura scuttled down the hall after Brooke.

  Lenny eased down in the chair next to me. I’d almost forgotten he was there. He hadn’t said a word most of the night. “You know, there aren’t a lot of Guardian churches left these days. We’ve lost some to Nexis, some to the Watchers, but most to the politics of the post-modern era.”

  “How do you know this is a Guardian sanctuary?” Tony paced the length of the library, back and forth. “What if this is a trap? I don’t like it.”

  A bubble of anger gurgled in my stomach. I pushed back my chair. “Now wait a minute. I just noticed that the crossbars in the stained glass window and the Guardian symbol are similar. I couldn’t care less where the churches affiliations lie. I only want to find something that pertains to my brother.”

  He combed pale fingers through his dark hair, but his gaze slanted above me. “Just because a church was built with a Guardian symbol doesn’t mean that they’re still affiliated. For all we know they could’ve defected to Nexis fifty years ago. Besides, I wasn’t talking to you, sis.” He smiled at me, but his pacing resumed.

  “You meant our fearless leader.” I swiveled around the back of my chair. Bryan’s hands still clutched the spindles, and suddenly we were eye-to-eye. One staring contest I wasn’t going to lose, not even to those gorgeous blue eyes. “You’ve had a plan all along, haven’t you?”

  He inched his face forward, those eyes zeroing in on my mouth.

  I squinted at him and pursed my lips.

  He backed up slowly. “Mr. Harlixton told me there might be a book in here with a few pages missing. Apparently there was a break in a few years ago.”

  “What? Why wouldn’t he tell me that?” I bit my lip, anything to stop my thoughts from escaping unchecked, but they overflowed. “Do you think it has something to do with my brother?” My insides leapt for joy at the idea of it.

  Bryan’s hand covered mine. “I don’t know, Angel Face. But he gave me the title, so if it’s here, we’ll find it.”

  “Here it is.” Tony dropped a book down on the tabletop in front of me.

  My pulse went crazy as my heart beat a new rhythm. Slowly, I opened the book, flipping through the pages until something caught my eye. A tiny scrap of parchment where the page had been ripped out. This was it.

  I blinked, and the library faded to black. Then to room came back into focus, except my brother stood over this table. And he wasn’t alone. A much younger Will was right by his side.

  James had a flashlight in his mouth, as he sliced through the pages of the book I’d just been ready at lightning speed,

  “Hurry up.” Babyface Will’s hands flailed around like a madman. “C’mon already.”

  James froze, his fingers running under the headline, St. Lucia and the Sacred Stones.

  Babyface Will hissed and said something unintelligible, grabbing my brother’s collar. The visions started to fade, but I rubbed my temple, fighting to hang on to this picture of James.

  Then he grabbed a few pages … and ripped. Running toward the door, he stuffed the pages in his hoodie.

  A tear leaked from my eye as the vision disintegrated before my very eyes. The room morphed back into reality. All three guys stared at me like I was crazy.

  “What was that?” Bryan’s jaw dangled open. “Was that a vision?”

  Pursing my lips together, I nodded. “I saw my brother. The night he did this.” I pointed down to the ripped remnants. “It was something about St. Lucia and the Sacred Stones.”

  Tony’s
jaw dropped too. So did Lenny’s. They all stared at me like I was crazy.

  Then Bryan’s mouth slowly curved up, almost a smile. “I knew it. This isn’t the first time you’ve had these visions. Am I right?”

  I looked up at him and a tear trickled down my cheek. Heat seared my neck, singing my cheeks, but I couldn’t look away.

  His eyes sparkled, like they were lit up from the inside.

  “How did you—”

  Suddenly the door burst open. A strange man loomed in the doorway, almost identical to Father Patrick, minus a few pounds and a few gray hairs. His glare locked on me. “It’s you. The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew. You’re the next Seer, and you’ll bear the same mark.”

  Chapter 17

  Frozen, I stared at the strange man as he cocked his head at me. He lunged toward the guys, knocking each one of them to the ground in a series of swift kicks and punches.

  My heart thudded against my ribs as I wriggled out of my chair and skirted around the table, but there was nowhere to go. The fake priest guy was blocking the only exit, and my friends were writhing on the floor in pain. I couldn’t just leave them. I needed to think of a way out.

  A small wrought-iron instrument gleamed in the crazy guy’s right hand. In two seconds flat, he darted across the room—straight for the candelabra. He plunged the metal rod into the flames until it glowed, a strange symbol reddening across the iron—a triangle with a swirling eye in the middle.

  Then he lunged toward me.

  My breath caught in my throat and I reared back.

  With wild eyes, he grabbed my wrist in a death grip and forced my arm close to the red-hot branding iron. Even inches from my flesh, the glowing symbol still scorched my skin.

  “Yeow!” The pain was stinging, and I’d do anything I could to make it stop. Thrashing like a wild woman, I kicked at his shin, dug my nails into his arm, but I couldn’t wrestle free from his bruising grip. There was only one thing left to do. I’d summoned my powers by accident at the Hard Rock. Could I do it again on purpose?

  Closing my eyes, I mentally called out to my light powers. If there really is such a thing as angel fire, come to me now.