It's the early 1990's, and rock musician Rain Sanders has met a band of psychics who convince him to develop his psychic powers and help them battle an entity that calls itself "Nicodemus Castevet". Chapter excerpt: "... Gus slammed on the brakes suddenly; the bus jolted violently as the brakes locked up; the tires screamed like mortally wounded horses, and then the bus swerved wildly---and tipped over. It all seemed to happen in slow motion; the bus tipped with a drunken grace that would have done credit to Foster Brooks, rolled onto its right side---and everyone and everything inside it went flying. The entire world disintegrated into roaring and screeching and crashing and yells of anger and shrieks of fright as the bus skidded along the roadway on its side; the windows on the underside of the bus shattered on contact with the asphalt, sending shards of glass flying everywhere. And above it all improbably, I could hear Razor's voice calling out, "All right!! A wreck!!"..." Excerpt: "...Just about the time I began to recover, I became aware of Wish struggling a little ways away from me, all tangled up in something that looked like giant spaghetti, more squawking in indignation than squealing in fright---and of someone looming over me. It was Tommy...and then again, it wasn't Tommy. For starters, his irises were completely black. And the look on his face was no longer human; it was more that of some savage, predatory creature on the prowl for blood and red meat. I looked for his shield pendant---and a terrible chill hit me in the pit of my stomach; it was gone. It must have gotten knocked off him during the crash---and when he'd been thrown from his bunk, he'd been thrown free of the shield coils hidden under his mattress as well. He'd been left with no defense, and Castevet had gotten to him again...and this time, he'd taken Tommy over completely. Tommy/Castevet snarled - it sounded even more animalistic than his expression looked - and reached for me, fingers clawed, going for my throat. I grabbed for my own shield pendant; as desperately winded as I was, I was in no condition to fight back. But the pendant was gone; like Tommy's, it had gotten lost during the crash. My heart - and my stomach - sank. I was in big trouble; as weak as Tommy had been from Castevet's attack, he was as much stronger than normal, now, driven by Castevet's power. His fingers clamped around my throat, cutting my air off completely. I was already starved for oxygen from getting the wind knocked out of me during the crash; now I was getting no oxygen into my system at all, and the lights were going out on me again..."
About the Author: Wren Hazard grew up in the 1970s in southern Rhode Island. She has been aware of spirits since the age of eight. She became pen pals with Dennis L. Crabtree and his wife in the 1980s. Wren shares her little brick house, as well as her beloved Styx and Cheap Trick L.P.s, with cats Hermes and Farrah, and dogs Darla and Lawrence-Henry. They all live just around the corner from the Crabtrees. Dennis L. Crabtree is a disabled electrical worker who has been struggling to become a published SF novelist for "longer than I care to remember", as he puts it. His wife, Jade, became a pen pal to Wren Hazard somewhere in the 1980's, and when Wren asked her to 'help her out' with a novel she was writing, Jade asked her husband to have a look at it, since she didn't feel qualified for the task. In reading the manuscript, Dennis realized that, while it had the makings of a good novel, it was too crude for any editor who made his/her living reading submissions for a large publishing house to be able to take the time out to help her make it more acceptable---and since he had nothing but spare time on his hands, he offered to step in as a combination ghost writer and assistant editor and help her out with the project. She accepted his offer; the result is Wish of Pentacles, the novel you have in hand.