The Scarlet Crane: Transition Magic Series Book One by J.E. Hopkins

Author:J.E. Hopkins [Hopkins, J.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Storm Tree Publications
Published: 2016-03-13T05:00:00+00:00

Darwin

The Northern Territory, Australia

“Guess what?” Eleven-year-old Sarah Billingham asked her parents as she pushed the last chunk of bloody beef into her mouth. “One of the other kids in my class—Belle—woke up in Transition yesterday. Now there are two freaks at St. Bart’s.”

Their family steakhouse outing was the first time Sarah had seen her mom and dad since they’d dropped her at St. Bartholomew’s Preparatory School two weeks earlier. She’d started Transition a week before the trip to St. Bart.

Jack Billingham sighed. “Sarah. Neither of you are freaks. Is Belle okay? She knows not to try magic, right?”

“We’re the only two in the entire school,” Sarah said. “Sure feels like we’re freaks.”

Sarah had been terrified of magic from the time she was old enough to understand Transition. She’d sworn she’d never try it to her parents, her teachers, and kids she met online.

But now she carried a secret, a problem so terrible and foul that she’d promised to use magic to help fix it. Her promise gnawed at her relentlessly.

She needed to distract her dad from questions about Belle. Her mom gave her the chance.

“You have blood on your chin, dear. I think you’re part vampire.” Sarah swiped her mouth with the napkin in one hand while pulling the hair out of her eyes with the other. The insubordinate strands bounced off the cascade of curly red hair surrounding her freckled face and fell back over her forehead.

“This is ripper rare cow! It’s so much better than the boiled shit at St. Bart’s.”

“Watch your mouth, Sarah,” her dad snapped. Her parents had worked at the Ranger Uranium Mine in Australia’s Northern Territory for more than thirty years. Sarah had learned to talk using four letter words, the backbone of communication among Australian miners. “You’re going to a proper boarding school; you need to clean up your language.”

“You haven’t tasted their food, Jack,” Sarah said. “That shit is way worse than crap.” He hated it when she used his name.

Her mom interrupted before her dad could react, caressing his cheek with the back of her hand, smiling. “For such a smart man, you seem to have trouble with a simple truth. The more you push our daughter, the more she resists.”

“I don’t give a damn, Jill. She needs to listen to me.”

Sarah grinned. “You both know I’m sitting here, right?”

Her father sighed. “Only too bloody well, I do.”

“Finish your meal, dear,” her mom said. “Your curfew’s close, and we have a 250-klick drive home after we drop you off.”

Sarah shoveled the last bit of baked potato into her month. “Okay, ready to go.”

Her dad tossed cash on the table and they strolled from the restaurant to his newest baby, a Range Rover. He was a nut about cars, Rovers in particular. He bought a new one every couple of years. Sarah guessed the dirty gray car had been white when they left Jabiru, but this was the middle of the wet season, and the outback roads to Darwin were a mess.

The ride to St.

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