it
came a shock wave of cocaine fever. Ray started to burn out as the
decade waned, and personal troubles involving his children took a
toll, so finally, in 1982, he sold the club and retired early, living
like a prince, and treating all of Flicker Street as his kingdom.

VIII. Thaumaturgy Revisited...

The man who purchased The
Lucifer Club was known as Prester John Grey, and he was well-known
all through Flicker Streeet and the larger Hallmark music scene. Prester John was born Vance Orlison Parminter in 1949 in Exodesia, the offspring
of Grey Parminter and Basil Dylan Orlison (son of “Doc Vance” and
Eve Dylan, daughter of Dr. Basil Dylan, the first major physician in
Hallmark), both born 1920. Basil D. Orlison had a sister, Faustine,
b. 1922, an occultist who owned the first occult shoppe in thecity,
even before Malcolm Bradcroft's shoppe, called simply Faustine's.
Faustine married the aspiring bookstore magnate TR Bessemer Jr., an
African-American entrepreneur. Their children were Eve Bessemer, b.
1953, and Taurean Bessemer III, born 1955, who as an adult merged his
business with the smaller Noel chain, though Bessemer-Noel in its
entirety was later sold to OrDeR Enterprises.

Faustine and Malcolm
Bradcroft merged their interests into one shoppe, and in tandem,
willed it to Cary and Ashton (though Ashton was technically not alive
to see it). Faustine passed away in 1955 in childbirth. Hence
Bradcroft LTD was born. In the years between Cary taking the shoppe
and his affair with Katherine Van Juss (1956-1959), he began to fancy
Grey Parminter, a formidable witch, whose lover Basil, was slain by
the Exodesians in 1953.

Grey Parminter's story goes
something like this: Her grandmother was Exodesian High