Exorcism — Tamara Thorne

The Devil Comes to RavencrestThe Jazz Age In the 1920s, Henry Manning ruled Ravencrest with an iron fist. He held debauched parties that would have inspired Jay Gatsby himself. From the Manning fortune to a beautiful wife, the silent film star known as the White Violet, Henry had it all ... including a loyal cult that worshipped the demon Forneus.Deal with the DevilViolet lost her life putting a stop to the demented perversions that Henry and his demonic familiar visited upon Ravencrest ... but now that evil has returned.The Soulless Child In the night, an innocent maid is seduced by a demon lover. A child is born, but it is not of this earth. Father Antonio DeVargas is summoned as ghostly parties light up the old poolhouse and phantom screams rip open the night. Meanwhile, the White Violet wanders the halls of Ravencrest warning the inhabitants of death and disaster to come.And the current master of Ravencrest, Eric Manning, is decidedly not himself.Midnight. The witching hour. Watery echoes in an empty building. The grand Greek Pool at Ravencrest Manor babbles and gurgles as chlorine-scented water flows like cool blood in veins and arteries. The moon, full and high above the arched glass ceiling, shines its light into the cobalt pool, casting splintered rays across the water. A spring and thunk from the tall diving board, then somehow, water explodes into the air. The sound ebbs and flows with movement.But if no human ear is present to hear it, no eye to see it, can these things be real? Or are they merely tricks of light and sound, magic courtesy of Mother Nature? Soft golden lamps flicker to life. And then, music, faint but unmistakable, rises and echoes. Eddie Cantor. If You Knew Susie Like I Know Susie.Laughter. The sounds of a party, of voices, of champagne glasses clinking.Then something white and serpentine slithers and stirs beneath the water like glistening cold silk, there and gone again in an instant.