magic

I__ pulled my unruly blond hair out of its usual ponytail for the occasion, loaded on some makeup to play up my teal eyes, and poured myself into a little black skirt, short enough to show off my legs while not offending Lafitte__ nineteenth-century sensibilities. It must have worked, because the pirate was giving me that head-to-toe appraisal guys do on instinct, like they__e assessing a juicy slab of beef and deciding whether they want it rare, medium, or well-done. __ou really are lovely, Drusilla._ The timbre of Lafitte__ voice shivered down my spine, and I fought the urge to check out the biceps underneath that linen shirt. Holy crap. This was just wrong. I should not be absorbing his lust.

Ferocity is a trait highly regarded amongst us.

What's the point of all this magic, if no one really knows how to use it? But I guess the same could be said about life. Which is another form of magic, only less showy.

You are only as touched my the magic of this life as you want to be.

He kissed me tenderly as my heart thumped out of control. My fingers slipped into his thick, black hair and held tightly. He paused, not wanting to pull away. I didn__ let him. I was going to say goodbye properly. I held tightly, pressing my lips to his, soft at first then hard with desire.

Beck stabbed a hand through his hair and continued.

The audience knows the truth, the world is simple. It's miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you got to see something really special.

Evil surrounds everyone, but not everyone is able to confront it.

He could be distracted, still, by beauty, by the wonder of a stroke of sunlight. Perhaps at such times he made himself open to wizardry-or conversely, was as warded and safe at such moments as Ynefel at its strongest. Perhaps threats simply slid past his attention and he made himself immune.

The world was fucking awful. It was a wretched, desolate place, a desert of meaninglessness, a heartless wasteland, where horrific things happened all the time for no reason and nothing good lasted for long.He'd been right about the world, but he was wrong about himself. The world was a desert, but he was a magician, and to be a magician was to be a secret spring - a moving oasis. He wasn't desolate, and he wasn't empty. He was full of emotion, full of feelings, bursting with them, and when it came down to it, that's what being a magician was. They weren't ordinary feelings - they weren't the tame, domesticated kind. Magic was wild feelings, the kind that escaped out of you and into the world and changed things. There was a lot of skill to it, and a lot of learning, and a lot of work, but that was where the power began: the power to enchant the world.

Prestidigitation? You've got to be joking. No one says that.

It isn't really magic, except that it is. It's not magic that reaches into the world ands changes things. It's all inside my body. I thought, sitting there, that everything is magic. Using things connects them to you, being in the world connects you to the world, the sun streams down magic and people and animals and plants grow from sunlight and the world turns and everything is magic.

The fight wasn__ over,_ I said through gritted teeth. ____ have won it._ Probably. __ight,_ he said. __nd something just flew past your window. It was oinking.

The most fundamental, basic need in magick, is the development of the will. The magus says, __ will, and not heaven nor hell can stop me._ It is in this forming and growing, creating, of the will, where heaven and hell learns to follow the will of the magus. A person who wants to develop the soul must never say, __aybe_ or __f I see a sign_ because the master creates his own signs. If you need a star to align in front of a tree because that to you would be a sign, then you make the star align with the tree, if not in this world, in the other worlds and in the other dimensions. There are no __fs_ and there are no __aybes_ there are only __ wills._ This is the basic platform of magick, and most people never get past it, because not all can.

Every magician knows there is no such thing as magic. They are masters of making things possible out of a situation that seems impossible. The key to getting what you want in life is to know that the only reason why something is, is because it was made possible. It can only be if it is possible for it to be. Make it possible and let it be.

They call it music, but it's just this side of magic.

I grabbed a shard of glass and spun around, brandishing it in front of me. It was a pretty, stippled blue piece, nice and sharp.__old on, tiger. I give up.__ bear of a man stood in front of me, hands raised in mock surrender_ well, except for the shotgun in his right hand. He towered well over six feet and was shaped like a linebacker, one who__ gone a little too long between haircuts. Dark curls hugged the collar of a basic black T-shirt that almost camouflaged a black shoulder holster holding some type of nasty-looking black handgun. It all matched his black jeans and boots. He looked like the poster child for an upscale GQ mercenary. The only shred of color on him was his eyes, and they were dark brown. Mr. Monochromatic.He laid the shotgun on the table near the door and stepped back, hands up, watching me from beneath hooded lids. A lesser woman would have noticed the thick muscles moving under his tanned skin when he raised his arms, or the T-shirt that fit just snugly enough to send a girl__ thoughts to the Promised Land. Good thing I don__ notice stuff like that.__f you want to search me for more weapons, I__ game.__y eyes shot back to his, and I felt my cheeks flush, hot and bothered on the way to angry. Leave it to a guy to open his mouth and ruin a perfectly good moment.

Never interrupt a faerie circle ceremony. And, if a faerie has appeared to you, visually, do not speak to it until it has spoken to you. These two transgressions are considered so rude, that the faeries may literally attack you, on the spot.