Hi all! I am (finally) back with the next chapter of HFHM!
First off, sorry for the delay. My writing/editing schedule has gotten destroyed in the last month, and I am actually submitting this from my table during breakfast while the rest of the Hawthornes eat pancakes. I try really hard to keep to the schedule in my Bio, but I will change it if I'm going to be late like this time.
Anyway, new reader? Welcome! While technically the fifth book in the HFHM series, this chapter is written as a bit of an intro to my world. However, there is plenty of sex, mayhem, and plot in the previous sixty chapters, so give them a peek!
Returning reader? Welcome back! Thank you so much for all the love you showed for the finale of Book Four. I'm not sure how I can top that performance, but here's to giving it my best effort. Book Five is going to have its share of surprises, and I can't wait to share them with you!
Don't forget to rate and comment when you're done! This helps other readers find the story, and is an excellent (and free!) way to support your favorite authors here on Lit. Thanks again to Literotica itself for giving me a platform to share this story with you, and TJ Skywind for being that final set of eyes. I think it's his superpower.
So enough from me. Winter is on it's way out as the Radley Home prepares for...
Springtime
Mike Radley yawned, then stretched his arms, causing his left shoulder to pop egregiously. Opening his eyes, he realized that he had drifted off to sleep. It had been a long night chasing a swarm of scarab beetles out of his house and he had apparently drifted off sometime after breakfast.
The scarabs themselves were the result of an empty tomb that was discovered on the other side of his otherwise empty basement. Originally thought to be a crack in the foundation, everyone had been surprised to discover that the crack in the otherwise smooth concrete led somewhere else. Once Tink the goblin had declared the wall to be non-load bearing, Abella had been brought in to knock it down with a single punch. The gargoyle had been happy to help, but not so much when a colony of scarabs fled the room and crawled across her stony flesh. Despite being impervious to their clicking jaws, Abella had squealed and nearly taken everyone out with her wings in her hurry to brush them off.
"How long was I out?" he asked. His head was currently in the lap of the home's resident banshee, Cecilia. The pupils of her eyes were white like pearls, and though she was blind to the visible spectrum as he understood it, she was capable of seeing souls and spiritual energy. Able to see the souls of the scarabs, she had been a huge asset tracking them down. Each time the colony attempted to set up a new nest, Tink would punch a hole in the wall with a hammer while everyone pitched in to catch them in some cloth sacks that Tink had once used to make her clothes out of.
"Perhaps an hour." Her voice had a soft, Irish lilt to it, and her white hair floated about her as if she was suspended under water. Like her eyes, her hair was a startling white color, save for a thick lock of red just over her right eye. "You needed it."
"I suppose." He sat up and groaned, his back tensing up. He had only meant to sit for a few minutes, and his body protested being prone on the bench for so long. He yawned again, then gave the banshee a peck on the lips. A chill ran through his body. "I didn't miss it, did I?"
Cecilia smiled. "You wouldn't hear the end of it if you did. There's plenty of time, Sofia is getting lunch ready if you want to help."
"I'll see what I can do." When he stood from the swing, she floated up to join him. Caressing his cheeks with her hands, she winked and then vanished from sight. With the banshee gone, he felt a bit warmer already.
Out in the front yard, a small cluster of centaurs moved about, trimming away the last branches of winter. It was the middle of March, and they were getting ready for the Spring Equinox celebration, which Naia had promised him would be a sight to behold.
When he had first moved into the home nearly nine months earlier, the front yard had been just a small sidewalk that traversed what couldn't have been more than thirty feet of grass. Now though, it was home to an illustrious garden maze, at the center of which stood a magnificent sundial that had been recently polished. The giant bushes of the home had been trimmed into topiary figures by the centaurs, and already this month, he had chased away a few randoms who had wandered into his yard to take pictures.
The Radley estate hadn't always been so popular, but magical homes had a way of gathering attention, both good and bad. Chasing off people who wanted to take pictures of the bushes was far preferable to the literal battles he had fought in the yard with monsters and witches alike. It had been almost six months since the last incident—which was the current record.
A pale figure wandered out from the maze and held up a hand in greeting. It was Sulyvahn the dullahan, who was also Ceclia's twin.
"Yer lookin' well rested, me lord." Sulyvahn was holding a small bucket full of clipped flowers that had yet to bloom in one hand and a pair of shears. While the centaurs maintained the rest of the gardens, the dullahan had somehow become in charge of the flowers themselves.
Mike nodded. "You didn't see any of those beetles out here, did you?"
"That I haven't." Sulyvahn pulled one of the flowers from his bucket and eyed it with suspicion, then gave it a shake. A tiny green light fell out of it and bounced off the ground. It looked like a tiny devil, and it stood up and chittered at Sulyvahn angrily.
"What is it?" asked Mike.
"Just a pest." Sulyvahn gave the creature a hard flick with his finger, and it vanished in a puff of smoke. "Now that spring is almost here, we be seeing a bit more of them. They're creatures from my world, no idea why they atall they be showin' up."
"Hmm." Mike made a mental note to bring it up next time he saw Titania, the queen of the fae. He had only seen her twice since November, and both times had been brief. The queen never came to the real world, but visited his mind while sleeping. It was a strange arrangement, but it allowed her a short respite from the faerie court. "Should we be worried?"
"Nah. Little buggers are like locusts, they'll just start eatin' everything. I'll get the centaurs to spray some of that silvered water to get them out."
"You do that." Mike waved in parting and walked inside the house.
The smell of freshly baked goods tickled his nose, and he walked across his living room and into the dining hall. It was the biggest room in the house, currently, able to sit everyone comfortably. Tink had custom-made chairs for everyone to accommodate their unique body shapes. Currently, the doll Jenny was sitting on a small wooden chair across from a large rat that wore a crown on his head and plastic glasses that looked like they had been taken off of a Mr. Potato Head.
Jenny's face was the placid smile of a thrift shop horror, but Reggie the rat king wore an expression of doubt. Mike paused to see what they were looking at, and realized that the two of them were playing
Battleship.
"Problem?" he asked.
"I am fairly certain she is cheating," Reggie said. The empty plates on the table rattled threateningly, but Reggie had long ago stopped letting the haunted doll intimidate him. The rat king and Jenny, once enemies, had apparently worked past many of their differences, and it said quite a lot about their relationship that Jenny didn't actually attempt to hurt him. "I have yet to figure out how."
"Hmm." From where he stood, Mike had a great view of Jenny's board. She had snapped the boats into pieces and scattered them about. As far as he knew, the rules didn't explicitly state that was forbidden, which would probably be argued about later. It wouldn't be the first banned game in the house as a result of rule-breaking. "Well, good luck."
"Thank you," Reggie said, and Mike continued into the kitchen.
The smell of baked goods reached him well in advance, and he entered in time to see a feminine figure with a very shapely ass bent over in front of the oven. He paused to admire the view, then kept moving when Sofia stood holding a muffin pan.
"Cornbread?" he asked. He saw that the counters had been covered in different baked goods, such as pies and cakes. "Seems a little basic."
The cyclops turned to regard him with a long stare. She stood well over a foot taller than him, but he feared her tongue more than her physical presence. Though she could be sweet when the two of them were alone, she typically chose to berate him over little things. It didn't bother him anymore, because he knew for a fact that it just played into her kink.
"I
thought
it would be nice to offer something that wasn't so sweet." She lifted the door of the oven with her foot, which caused it to slam with a metallic
bang
. The kitchen itself had expanded toward the end of February, but nobody knew why. This had allowed Mike to purchase a much larger fridge and redecorate the place so that it looked almost like a kitchen in a high-end restaurant. Sofia had appreciated the extra room to cook, and had spent a good chunk of the winter prepping meals that tasted like they had been cooked by professional chefs.
"Sounds like a great idea," he offered. "I love cornbread."
She huffed at him, and then moved the pan over to cool. "Aren't you supposed to be helping somewhere?"
"Yep." This was an outright lie, but it would get him out of the kitchen without further discussion. He snapped up a small pastry from the edge of the counter on his way out, then dashed out of the kitchen when she opened her mouth to yell.
When he passed the dining room table, Reggie's arms were crossed in anger, his whiskers twitching. A pair of forks hovered threateningly over his head.
