witches

Everyone said they were witches. I desperately wanted to believe it.

She clambered to the shoreline. Numb and shaken, she began to dress. It wasn__ easy as she fumbled with slick fingers to put dry clothes over wet skin. She instantly regretted her naked swim. She pulled on her long-sleeved white chemise first. She faced the forest, away from her rescuer. He quietly splashed to shore. His lifeblood burned into her back. He wasn__ far behind, but he stopped. She refused to look at him until she was fully clothed, not out of embarrassment of her nudity, but for what had just happened. He released a groan and mumbled under his breath about wet boots. His voice was not one of her father__ soldiers. When she put the last garment on, her brown wool work kirtle, she squeezed out her sopping hair and swept her hands through the knotty mess. She fastened her belt and tied the lacings up the front of the kirtle. Blood returned to her fingertips, and she regained her composure. Belated awareness struck her, and she leaned down and searched through her bag for her dagger. She spun around. She gasped as she saw the man sitting on the stone-covered shoreline, his wet boots off. Confusion and the hint of a scowl filled his strong-featured face. She staggered back, caught her heel on a stone, and fell, dropping the dagger. Dirt and pebbles stuck to her wet hands and feet, and she instinctively scrambled away from him. His glower, iridescent dark blue eyes, and disheveled black hair were not unfamiliar. Staring at her was the man she had seen in her dream _ it was the man from the wood.

Glen Shiel, Socttish Highlands, 1296Strife abounds. King Edward of England has invaded the southern strongholds of Scotland and is pressuring King John of Scotland to abdicate. Several Scottish nobles, called Claimants, vie for his throne. The Cause divides the country, as each clan must choose and support a Claimant. Many contenders seek fortune and power, but a few seek Scotland__ independence. Only by a great force can this be achieved. However, the road to independence is fraught with those that wish to see the Cause crushed, at any cost.

Are you sure about this?" Rowan asked."No," Lily shouted over the whipping wind. Her voice came out choked as it tried to get around her stomach, which was now lodged in her throat. "But it's the only way."Rowan looked over the side, his face serene as he timed it. Lily saw his willstone pulse as every sense in him sharpened, and he pulled her tightly against his body and launched them off the drake's neck into thin air.Lily shrieked uncontrollably, clutching at Rowan desperately as they fell.

Only one word describes a woman widowed for the second time on her wedding night _ cursed.

Enemy," hiss the bushes all around. The rest of the Pride glided forward, surrounding Lily, Rowan, and Spike.

Hubert's wife, Mindy, was a tiny powerhouse of a woman with a halo of wild blond hair and eye makeup so complex it took me a while to locate her pupils. She was clearly the brains of the operation, such as she was.

But witchy magic doesn__ listen to please and pretty please, and anyway, I didn__ really care. I only pretended to care because not caring makes me a monster.

There is an odd quirk in the human mind that makes a fearful man prefer to go quietly to a wicked-looking, gnarled "witch" for a countercharm than to a respectable licensed sorcerer or an accredited priest of the Church.

Wait until you meet my family. At Thanksgiving, we kill everything we can find, put it into a pot, and call it 'holiday gumbo'.

Without asking, he moved behind her and brushed her hair over her shoulder. Drawing the necklace around her neck, he fastened the clasp. The amber felt cool against her sweltering skin. Lifting it, she rotated the pendant, watching as it caught the light. "It's lovely." Before she could change her mind, she dug into her pocket and shoved the rest of the coins into his hand.

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)

Slicker than snot on a door handle.

She was the one person he__ hoped to avoid as much as possible when he__ taken his place as Sheriff of Maxville. It wasn__ that he disliked her, that was the problem. Despite his better judgment and a glutton for punishment, he still cared too damn much for the woman.

He had golden-brown hair, the most vivid baby-blue eyes, and a body that belonged on the cover of Men__ Health magazine. Her gaze roamed over his broad shoulders and down his chest.

His hand came out and captured her by the chin. She froze, finding it hard to breathe as he gently raised her face to meet his gaze.

Her blond hair hung loose, cascading around her shoulders, and stopping over her breasts. She turned toward him, violet eyes meeting his gaze. For a moment, he lost all coherent thought.

I'm looking forward to the noose. Nothing better than a good hanging.