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Haunted Halloween with Janenifer DeLucy and a Giveaway

Whisper of Light Excerpt
by
Jennifer DeLucy

Nothing makes you look over your shoulder more than talk of a hag in your house. The laundry room, the piano room, any space that would normally be dark at night would stay fully lit this evening. It would be hard to fall asleep with all the lights on, but honestly, it wasn’t not like we’d be all that relaxed anyway.
Adalia was no slouch. She suspected more was happening than we’d let on. She only had to look at the facts. We’d known something had followed her here from the very first night she’d arrived, yet now we were sounding the alarms?

“How come we can’t turn the lights off?” Adalia observed, staring at the floor lamp in the corner.
“We’re just playing it safe, honey. Just in case,” I said.
“In case what?” I sighed. This kid was persistent. “In case our visitor is feeling mischievous.”
“Like how? Are we talking blanket stealing mischievous? Cuz I’ve had that happen already.”
“Well, let’s not worry about it too much. Just try and get some sleep, okay?”
“Okay.” She rolled over on the couch, pulling the blanket closer around her.
I looked at Gil, and he shared my worried expression. We’d already spent two nights with a hag in the house and she hadn’t done anything yet, but she’d decided to show herself to Adalia tonight, so she’d probably been biding time, maybe to feel out the competition.
We took turns nodding off, me two hours, Gil two hours, and after Gil woke me from my first round of sleep, I dragged myself up from the air mattress and blinked blearily. The DVD player read 2:46 a.m.
“I need to use the bathroom,” I said. “Spot me two minutes?”
“No prob.”
Shuffling across the kitchen and into the laundry room, I rounded the corner to the half-bath and shut the door behind me. There was a poorly insulated window to the right of the toilet, and the room’s position in the house always made it so damned cold compared to the rest of the downstairs—especially the toilet seat. Pleasant.
After I’d completed the task, I glared at the mirror on the wall. Any time you watched a movie with ghosts in it, they always appeared in a mirror, and that wasn’t so far from the truth. Ghosts did love mirrors, but not because of the added dramatic effect. Actually, Laura said that spirits were attracted to reflective surfaces, mainly because they couldn’t see themselves in it, and the phenomenon fascinated them. Humans could sometimes spot a spirit in glass or water, but the spirit itself could not, because the very definition of a lingering astral meant that they never fully acknowledged what they were.
So I approached the mirror with some trepidation, half-scolding myself for being a sissy.
Standing bravely in front of it, I was met with the most horrific vision mankind could ever behold—myself. My hair was insane, my eyes were droopy, my skin washed out. Good grief, I needed to start using facial cream, pronto. But other than that and the window behind me, the coast was clear.
I snorted, turning around to leave, and was immediately nailed to the floor in frigid shock at the sight of a face—the menacing, nearly lunatic expression of a haggard old woman smiling at me from outside the window. My words caught in my throat as I tried to call for Gil. The look of her was grotesque, with absolutely corpse-like skin, deep gray, sunken flesh beneath her eyes, filthy teeth. The worst were those eyes. They glowed a putrid green, with tendrils of red that spidered along their whites. As I stood there she laughed, low and sinister, and though she was outside of the window, I knew she could be beside me, before me, behind me, at any moment she wished.
Finally, I said the first thing that came to me. “Get the hell away from us, you bitch!”
Redirecting one’s feelings into anger wasn’t always a healthy way to deal with fear, but it worked just dandy this time, thank you very much. I had no idea if the tactic had made the tiniest difference to the hag, but it had given me the clarity to run the hell out of the bathroom and call for Gil. I was grateful that I’d been breathless with fear when I did, since the sound wasn’t likely to wake the others while still getting Gil’s attention.
Flying into the kitchen, he caught me as my knees gave way. “Hey, Nicky. What the hell?”
“She was outside the bathroom,” I said, still unable to control the full body trembling. “She was outside the window. The bathroom… ”
“Jesus.” He pulled a chair out from the table and led me to it, then darted off to the bathroom to have a look. I steadied my breaths, still fast in tandem with the beating of my heart. I was more terrified than I’d been in years. I’d never seen anything so creepy before, and I was praying to every deity known to man that I’d never see it again.

Circle of Light by Janenifer DeLucy
Publisher: Omnific Publishing (October 9th, 2012)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Paperback
Series: Light, #3
Empath and Pathcrosser to the dead, Lillian Hunt has finally come into her own as a Sentient being. All seems well in her brave new world… that is, until a tragic turn sends her tight knit Sentient group on a rescue mission through lore-infested Europe. Their goal is to save the love of Lily's life—vampire Sentient, William Maddox — from both the prejudice of their own society and the dark intentions of ancient vampires. But how will they keep hope alive, even as time runs out?

Prize:

  • 1 winner will receive a signed copy of Seers of Light and a $25 Gift Card to Amazon!
Rules:
  • You must be at least 13 to enter.
  • Name and email must be provided and counts as 1 entry.
  • Extra entries are possible and links must be provided.
  • Contest is US Only and ends November 17th.
  • Once contacted, the winner will have 48 hours to respond.
  • The form must be filled out to enter.

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Haunted Halloween with Janenifer DeLucy and a Giveaway + TIME