“It’s just, I wish I had more time to seek out the dark forces and join their hellish crusade.”

62. The House of the Magus – Jack Shackleford

Juliet Morley is taking a break from acting since the unfortunate death of her friend. And she has a great place to take that break, a large house that her rich husband bought, which also happens to have a cottage on the property. Her husband has let the cottage to someone mysterious though, someone she hasn’t seen that brought giant furniture and a sense of unease that gets to the dog first and then Juliet.

It turns out the tenant is a Christopher Lee-knock off and his “daughter” and his “wife.” They knew the person who built the house, Simon Ansell aka Magister, a super serious magic dude with a very serious library. Juliet doesn’t like it in the library. Juliet’s husband tells knock off-Christopher Lee that he can use the library if he wants since he knows it contains very important materials to his crap horror novel writing and his more serious witchcraft writing that nobody buys.

And then there are the accidents. The “wife” of the new cottage dwellers dies, some girl Juliet saw on the highway and almost picked up gets murdered (she has some guilt there), and then her husband and their housekeeper get into a car crash on their way to the train station. So, Juliet is alone, with her grief and her dog that disappears off page for quite some time, and the people in the cottage…who show up to the house with suggestions of the magic and non-magic kind and worm their way in. Juliet’s sort of a prisoner of herself and also them.

So, eventually, they get to the part where they seduce Juliet into witchcraft, as they always do in these novels. You see, she has this force inside her that she hasn’t been able to understand and she was always just too much for her husband, but in the context of ritual magic and the necessary sacrifices, Juliet’s special and also required.

 

Extremely special and required and very relaxed due to the lack of ritual sacrifices – Snuffy.