I've a need for knowing what potion you mixed with these, lass." The rich baritone of his voice washed over her with a mesmerizing quality. She liked the sound. A lot. 'Twas deep and majestic, the kind of voice a body would never tire of hearing....Apparently we have company. We shall finish this conversation anon.""I highly doubt that we will," she retorted. "My brother has arrived to accuse me of witchcraft and arrest me. Unless you are available for hire as my protector, this conversation is quite finished."Instead of appearing shocked, the stranger's eyes took on a twinkle. "Is that so? Most damsels in your distressed shoes would be either weeping or swooning by now. Instead you offer me employment. I'll admit I am fascinated by your offer.

Calling on his inherent magic, he pictured a shape less conspicuous in the mortal realm. An instant later he stood before his companion in his new body and found himself surprisingly comfortable in the denim and cotton garments that came with it. Perhaps this confining human shape had its advantages. He nodded in satisfaction and looked to the woman, "Will this do?"***Will this do me? Now that is the question.Wynn took in the Guardian's human form and hoped her eyes were not literally bulging out of her head, because they sure as heck felt like they were. It felt as if the usually obedient organs couldn't take in enough of the new view in their natural state and wanted to reach out and touch the gorgeous specimen of man that now stood before her.Because... wow.

You see, a witch has to have a familiar, some little animal like a cat or a toad. He helps her somehow. When the witch dies the familiar is suppose to die too, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, if it's absorbed enough magic, it lives on. Maybe this toad found its way south from Salem, from the days when Cotton Mather was hanging witches. Or maybe Lafitte had a Creole girl who called on the Black Man in the pirate-haven of Barataria. The Gulf is full of ghosts and memories, and one of those ghosts might very well be that of a woman with warlock blood who'd come from Europe a long time ago, and died on the new continent.And possibly her familiar didn't know the way home. There's not much room for magic in America now, but once there was room.("Before I Wake...")

You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us.

Lynetta bared her wickedly sharp pointed canines and hissed. Her long black hair hung wildly to her hips, tangled and teased by the breeze. She was petite like me but as strong as a male body builder. Her grip on Dominic remained iron tight. Her soul-less black eyes, vacant and without a care, really ate away at my heart. I surveyed the yard for any kind of weapon I could use against the vampire. My heart surged when I spied a colorful whirligig attached to a wooden stake embedded in my mother's pampered pansy garden nearby. Without a second's hesitation, I dashed for it and yanked it out. Running at the vampire, I screamed at the top of my lungs, "Death to the blood sucky vampire!" which gave me some courage. It wasn't every day I had to beat one vampire off of another when they didn't even really exist!

Witches are naturally nosy,” said Miss Tick, standing up. “Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet again. I will give you some free advice, though.”“Will it cost me anything?”“What? I just said it was free!” said Miss Tick.“Yes, but my father said that free advice often turns out to be expensive,” said Tiffany.Miss Tick sniffed. “You could say this advice is priceless,” she said, “Are you listening?”“Yes,” said Tiffany.“Good. Now...if you trust in yourself...”“Yes?”“...and believe in your dreams...”“Yes?”“...and follow your star...” Miss Tick went on.“Yes?”“...you’ll still be beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Goodbye.

No one in hundreds of years has had that kind of power -- the power to control the elements. Not since the slaughter of the 1600's ... She has saved her greatest warrior for the moment when you are most needed. It is you, Isi, not us; you are the one destined to save the planet. We boys are just window dressing while you are the last knight of the Earth, pulled from her core and given from her heart to save us all. Haven't you noticed it? The flowers turn their faces to you, as if you were the sun. The most timid and previously abused bird curls up in your arms, as if it were her most natural place. When you are sad, the sky shares your sorrow and darkens in empathy. When you are happy, the moon throws herself into eclipse and the stars themselves wink at you to celebrate your joy. You are her daughter, the daughter of Earth, and she smiles when she sees you.

I am not a witch! I am a healer,” she cried. “There is a world of difference between the two."“Call yourself whatever you will, Branwyn. Your powers do not scare me. In truth, I sought you out a-purpose in the hopes you would heal me from the effects of a spell. ‘Twas cast on me by a wretched sorceress when I refused her…ah…advances.”Fearing another trap, Branwyn stared at the ground. “Methinks you mistake me for another. I am naught but a lowly healer, cast off by an overzealous brother in a fit of religious fervor. Wh-why do you ask me such things, m’lord?”“Very well,” Eirik snapped and pocketed her wand. “If you wish to indulge in games, at least choose one that gives me equal pleasure. By Thor, I’ve been long without a woman.” He closed the distance between them and hauled her into his lap.

Her eyes scanned the room and spotted her cell phone lying on the coffee table at least three whole feet away from her hands. She groaned. This was when she didn't want to be a witch, she wanted to be a Jedi, so she could use the Force to make her phone fly right into her hand.What the hell, right? Lifting one arm she reached out an open hand toward the small electronic device. Use the Force, Wynn, she thought and had to stifle a slightly punch-drunk giggle.From his seat in the oversized chair, Knox eyed her strangely. After a moment, she gave up and dropped her hand to her side, rolling her head along the sofa cusions to meet her mate's gaze. "What were just doing?" he asked warily."Using the Force."He looked from her to the table and back again. "Did you do this successfully?"She shook her head and grinned. "The Force is weak with this one. I'll never be a Jedi Master.

I thought that you would be frozen in awe when you found the sequence, when you heard a bird's song repeating my Morse code, my cry for help, my S.O.S, when you saw the same numbers in the petals of a flower and the structure of a pine cone, when you saw with your own eyes the interconnectedness of all things.But I was wrong.You searched for a male god, a creator, an intelligent designer, or you banished the beauty and mystery of the world beneath the cold concrete grave of closed-eye skepticism. The few of you who could still hear my music felt tortured and misunderstood; you reached out for any conspiracy theory large enough to explain your alienated despair, your sense that the Earth was dying and no one cared.But listen to me -- you are not alone. Run your fingers through the grass and grab it in your fists, feel my pulse echoing through your blood. You. Are. Not. Alone. And I -- I am not dead yet.

I had always heard rumors of her, Nanook thought, she who can control the wind, the water, the earth, and fire ... she who can talk to time. But those were old myths of a woman who lived many thousands of years ago, the first daughter of the Earth. There is a prophecy that she will return again, during the end times -- every religion has someone like that, someone to wait for and put your faith in, but my culture had mostly covered up her existence. We had a god of the sea, a god of the land, a god of the air, a god of fire, but no one who could control all of the elements. We spoke, only in whispers, of the ancient bloodline -- the descendents of the Great Mother. Too many superstitious minds, too many men concerned only with their own power and position, had heard these whispers in the past and taken gruesome steps to erase the descendents. The lineage was said to be broken, the blood of the Great Mother spilled for the last time.

Quincy laughed. "If I were Elizabeth I shouldn't thank either of you for that comforting diagnosis. Would it do any good to open Aunt Sarai's grave and drive a stake through her? If you believe in as much sorcery as that, you must regret the days of witch-burners, Carew."Carew said quietly, "No. Witch-burners were barbarous blunderers. If I wanted to suppress a dangerous letter, could I do it by burning the envelope and leaving the letter loose? The witch would come back unchanged; I should merely have postponed the danger until another time and place. And have further handicapped myself to meet it, by depriving the witch, by violent death, of the years allotted her, or him, for evolution."Joseph said with dry humor, "She might not have used them for that, Carew. At least not for your idea of it."Carew shrugged. "That would be her responsibility, not mine. And, in any case, she would be that many years nearer the time of her inevitable change."This time Joseph did not answer, only smiled.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.I believe in the reality of progress.I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

But then, not long after, in another article, Loftus writes, "We live in a strange and precarious time that resembles at its heart the hysteria and superstitious fervor of the witch trials." She took rifle lessons and to this day keeps the firing instruction sheets and targets posted above her desk. In 1996, when Psychology Today interviewed her, she burst into tears twice within the first twenty minutes, labile, lubricated, theatrical, still whip smart, talking about the blurry boundaries between fact and fiction while she herself lived in another blurry boundary, between conviction and compulsion, passion and hyperbole. "The witch hunts," she said, but the analogy is wrong, and provides us with perhaps a more accurate window into Loftus's stretched psyche than into our own times, for the witch hunts were predicated on utter nonsense, and the abuse scandals were predicated on something all too real, which Loftus seemed to forget: Women are abused. Memories do matter. Talking to her, feeling her high-flying energy the zeal that burns up the center of her life, you have to wonder, why. You are forced to ask the very kind of question Loftus most abhors: did something bad happen to her? For she herself seems driven by dissociated demons, and so I ask. What happened to you? Turns out, a lot. (refers to Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus)

Hold on to me!” Tedros yelled, hacking briars with his training sword.Dazed, Agatha clung to his chest as he withstood thorn lashes with moans of pain. Soon he had the upper hand and pulled Agatha from the Woods towards the spiked gates, which glowed in recognition and pulled apart, cleaving a narrow path for the two Evers. As the gates speared shut behind them,Agatha looked up at limping Tedros, crisscrossed with bloody scratches, blue shirt shredded away.“Had a feeling Sophie was getting in through the Woods,” he panted, hauling her up into slashed arms before she could protest. “So Professor Dovey gave me permission to take some fairies and stakeout the outer gates. Should have known you’d be here trying to catch her yourself.”Agatha gaped at him dumbly.“Stupid idea for a princess to take on witches alone,” Tedros said, dripping sweat on her pink dress.“Where is she?” Agatha croaked. “Is she safe?”“Not a good idea for princesses to worry about witches either,” Tedros said, hands gripping her waist. Her stomach exploded with butterflies.“Put me down,” she sputtered— “More bad ideas from the princess.”“Put me down!”Tedros obeyed and Agatha pulled away.“I’m not a princess!” she snapped, fixing her collar.“If you say so,” the prince said, eyes drifting downward.Agatha followed them to her gashed legs, waterfalls of brilliant blood. She saw blood blurring— Tedros smiled. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”She fainted in his arms.“Definitely a princess,” he said.