Enchanting the Exorcist

By Leanna Renee Hieber

Fear and hate create a doorway for the demonic to enter. It will take the love between a spirit and an exorcist keep these demons at bay…

Someone is targeting immigrant communities and the churches that serve them in turn-of-the-century Manhattan. After performing an exorcism at a local tenement, Reverend Roberto Coronado learns that the nearby aid society has been plagued with insulting leaflets that use devilish imagery to mock the incoming “immigrant horde.” As the harassment escalates from incendiary literature to arson, Coronado is determined to catch the culprit—whether man or a demon.

Luckily no one knows demons better than Maggie Hathorn, the spirit of a socialite who once courted demonic forces during her life but has spent her afterlife seeking redemption by serving the living as a spectral liaison for New York City’s Ghost Precinct. Maggie isn’t keen on revisiting her own weakest moments, but she can’t resist the chance to help solve another crime by the side of her beloved exorcist. As she fights her demons—both literal and figurative—Maggie yearns for the kind of fully committed love that she sees all around her between the living, and sometimes even between the dead.

But can a ghost and a living man truly get their own happily-ever-after?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Aug 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781094450650

Leanna Renee Hieber

Raised in rural Ohio and obsessed with the Victorian Era, Leanna’s life goal is to be a ”gateway drug to 19th century literature.” An actress, playwright and award winning author, she lives in New York City and is a devotee of ghost stories and Goth clubs. Visit www.leannareneeheiber.com

Book preview

1

MANHATTAN, DECEMBER 1899

"I renounce thee!"

Reverend Coronado emphatically continued exorcism rites in the small upstairs room of a tenement building on First Avenue and 10th Street, hoping to save the life, mind and body of a young immigrant child who writhed on a small, sweat-drenched cot. Coronado was exhausted and so was his mentor.

Reverend Blessing had been leading the exorcism, as he’d done for decades, but the elder pastor was flagging. Coronado, his protégé, continued now with renewed fervor. Blessing sat in a rickety chair against the wall, passing a brown-skinned hand over his close-shorn white hair, and pressed his palms together. He murmured prayers for the aid of saints and angels. As he leaned forward, sweat dripped from his brow. The silver cross around his neck swung out and caught a bead of perspiration on its filigree surface. He usually kept that cross hidden beneath the layers of his black clerical suit and white collar, but he, like Coronado, had brought those tokens of faith to face forward on their clothing, an extra layer of psychic and preternatural protection.

Reverend Blessing tried to rise to his feet again but wavered. I’m sorry, my brother—

Coronado held up a hand and offered the genuine smile he’d been told by friends and loved ones resembled a ray of sunshine. Even if the smile was given when tired or scared – and here, he was both – the expression did its job anyway. Blessing nodded, sitting back again to lean against the wall and close his eyes, breathing deeply to try to recover his strength.

The little boy, beset by a virulent, negative presence that had taken over him, thrashed on the small pallet. In Coronado’s experience, demons weren’t the grisly, named entities of bestiaries and grimoires. They were insidious shadows that might once have been spirits but had long ago turned toxic, forsaken a moral core and exchanged any scrap of humanity for unrelenting cruelty. These forces preyed on the innocent differently than they did on those who courted them. Coronado’s job was to remind this child of his own strength and his spirit’s ability to reject the offending presence as the priests did through scripture. The child’s parents stood outside in the hall, noisily weeping in response to any sound that came from their troubled son.

Reverend Coronado recited another few lines from the Book of Common Prayer, shifting between the Episcopalian protestant tradition he’d chosen as his path and some of the Catholic rites he’d learned from his father’s side of the family. As he pronounced another rejection of evil, the boy shook again, an inky mist rising up from his small body and then settling back down again, a terrible mask that then fused with his body.

Coronado could use some help, he thought.

Unconsciously, in a gesture that had become a fond habit, he pressed his hand to his sternum. Doing so, he felt a flutter there, near his heart, and hoped a beautiful spirit would soon follow. Her chill would prove a welcome relief to his flushed, perspiring face and her kind heart would prove a balm to his straining one.

Margaret Hathorn, a ghost who had chosen to manifest in her favorite ballgown in the grand style of the 1880s, felt a distinct pull on her body. She was floating, silvery and luminous, above the settee in the parlor of the home she shared with her Ghost Precinct operatives when she felt as though a warm hand had found her shoulder, turning her around and pulling her away.

Oh! she announced to Zofia, the spirit of a child she considered a little sister. It would seem I am being summoned by the new method Reverend Coronado and I have created together.

Maggie. Zofia pouted, puffing out a transparent lower lip. You were just going to braid my hair!

And I shall, dear one, when I return, Maggie called to her fondly. She could feel her manifestation in the townhouse fade. The reverend must truly need me!

Often buffeted at will by the needs of the spirit world, Maggie tended to travel as that great force bid her. But this was different. The reverend’s pull was specific, intentional and tactile. She could feel his hand on her shoulder even though it was just the incorporeal connection of their spirits that was causing this shift.

She and the reverend had met when she possessed him, taking over his body to experiment with how she might move and maneuver the living. She could not have predicted how their instant, fond, deep and increasingly potent connection could, in turn, maneuver her.

The sensation of his summoning was dizzying. Closing her eyes, she waited for the sounds around her to change, an indication that she had arrived in the intended space.

The cry of a child made her open her eyes and see Coronado bending over a small cot, one hand raised with a silver dispenser of holy water, the other hand upon a small silver cross around his neck. That cross had been Maggie’s in life and she gave it to the reverend as a way that he could ground and protect her, in order to keep her safely tethered to this world. It had been fashioned as a way to help her, but she was eager to appear and be of service to him this time.

What are you doing here? Blessing asked wearily from a chair in the corner. His dark skin was wet with sweat and his body was hunched in exhaustion.

You tell me, Reverends! Maggie replied, I was summoned! Her generally jovial expression fell, replaced by concern as she got a good look at the child. Oh, no, what’s happened?

The child turned, restless and pained, and tried to look at Maggie, his bloodshot eyes focused and unfocused.

Miss … are you an angel? the child whispered, then coughed up blood as something in him changed.

A dark shadow passed over; a nothingness superimposed over his face in one repulsive moment. The silhouette then eased back against the confines of the child’s skin, his face again showing a bruised forehead, tearstained cheeks and a bloody chin.

A terrible inhuman growl, gurgling and vile, emanated from the child’s mouth.

Maggie recoiled, all too aware of that infernal sound. "Begone, demon! I renounce thee! she gasped and instinctively floated behind Coronado. Oh, Reverend, that lightless force. Dark shadows such as that … those are what killed me.…"

I’m sorry, Coronado said over his shoulder, eyeing Maggie and turning back to the child alternately. I didn’t think, in touching the cross, it would bring you face-to-face with your old foe again. But I should have known, exorcist and all.

No, don’t apologize. We should have known our … connection would force me to face my literal demons, once and for all.… Setting her jaw, she forced herself to stare at the struggling child, recognizing the inky pall shifting over the child, the black mist coursing under thin skin. "I mustn’t let these shadows terrorize me, past or present."

"Either help us recite prayers, Miss Hathorn, or I’m going to have to ask you to go haunt some