Heather's Library

Meredith Gentry Series #5: Mistral's Kiss
by Laurell K. Hamilton
p.5 A woman stood behind me, so close that when the wind blew through the dead trees her hooded cloak brushed against the hem of my gown. I formed my lips to say, Who? but never finished the word. She held out a hand that was wrinkled and colored with age, but it was a small, slender hand, still lovely, still full of quiet strength. Not full of the remnants of youthful strength, but full of the strength that comes only with age. A strength born of knowledge accumulated, wisdom pondered over many a winter's night. Here was someone who held the knowledge of a lifetime--no, several lifetimes.
     The crone, the hag, has been vilified as ugly and weak. But that is not what the true crone aspect of the Goddess is, and it was not what I saw. She smiled at me, and that smile held all the warmth you would ever need. It was a smile that held a thousand fireside chats, a hundred dozen questions asked and answered, endless lifetimes of knowledge collected and remembered. There was nothing she would not know, if only I could think of the questions to ask.

p.32 "None of us has told the younger ones, Queen Andais," Doyle said. "Everyone knows that out followers painted themselves with symbols and went into battle with only those symbols to shield them."
     "The eventually learned to wear armor," Andais said. Her arm had lowered enough for Mistral to be comfortable on his knees again.
     "Yes, and only the last few fanatical tribes kept trying to seek our favor and blessing. They died for that devotion," Doyle said.
     "What are you talking about?" I asked.
     "Once we, the sidhe, their gods, were painted with symbols that were signs of blessing from the Goddess and the God. But as our power faded, so did the marks upon our bodies." Doyle said it all in his thick-as-molasses voice."
     "It is faint and incomplete," the queen said from the far wall.
     "Yes." Rhys nodded and looked at her. "But it is a beginning."

p.47 Mistral raised his mouth from mine and half whispered, half groaned, "Fuck her, fuck her, fucker, please," and the last word was drawn out into a long sigh that ended in something close to a scream.
     Abeloec pushed himself inside me, and only then did he begin to throb with power. It was almost like some huge vibrator, except this vibrator was warm and alive, and had a mind and a body behind it.

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Meredith Gentry series #3: Seduced by Moonlight
by Laurell K. Hamilton
p.99 "Most things are logical when they're explained."

p.148 I felt the bed move a moment before I felt Nicca's presence behind me. He wasn't a burning heat now, but it was if he was t he warmth of the earth itself. The warmth that lives down in the rich brown soil, and keeps all the seeds, and all the creatures safe and warm through the winter. When his hands touched my shoulders, it was like being wrapped up in the warmest, softest blanket in the world. So safe, so warm, as if you snuggle down and sleep for months, and wake refreshed, whole, and the earth would be made new again. The magic of spring itself was in the touch of his hands.

p.176 I hugged him. When I pulled away, he was smiling. "For that look in your eyes, I would slay armies. What is a little emotion, to that?"
     Anyone who thought that slaying armies was easier than fixing your own internal emotional mess hadn't had enough therapy.
     But I didn't say that out loud, either.

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Meredith Gentry Series #1: A Kiss of Shadows
by Laurell K. Hamilton
p.6 I stared at him, and finally understood. "You know we should walk away from this one, but you can't bring yourself to pass judgment on them. You can't bring yourself to condemn them to death."
     He nodded. "Yes."
     "What makes you think that I can do it, if you can't?"
     "I'm hoping one of us is sane enough not to be this stupid."
     "I won't get you all killed for the sake of strangers, Jeremy, so be prepared to walk away from this one." Even to me, my voice sounded thin, hard, cold.
     He smiled again. "That's my little cold-hearted bitch."

p.9-10 Some days I was better at it than this. Some days I was worse. I could have tried to get the measure of her psychically, to see if she had more than bone structure going for her, but it was impolite to read another person's magical ability at first introduction. Among the sidhe it's considered an open challenge, an insult that you don't believe that the other person can shield himself from your most casual magic. Naomi probably wouldn't have taken it as an insult, but her ignorance was no reason for me to be rude.

p.20 "If you're powerful enough, you can put a spell on an ad so that the ad brings you what you truly desire, not necessarily what the ad says you want. It's why I ran the ad that Ms. Gentry answered. Only people with magical ability would have noticed the spell on the ad, and only people with exceptional gifts would have been able to see through to the true writing underneath. The true writing listed a different phone number than the ad. I know that anyone who called that number was capable of the job."

p.26 For a building to be warded, not just an apartment, but a whole building, meant that the protective spells had to be put into the foundation of a building. The wards had to be poured with the concrete, riveted into place with steel beams. It took a coven of witches, or several covens. No single practitioner could do it. It was not a cheap process. Only the most expensive high-rises or homes could boast of it.

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Rebel Angels
by Libba Bray

p.374-375 "You trained dog to English?" He points at me with the dagger. He makes a barking sound that tumbles into more laughter and then a terrible coughing fit that leaves blood on his hand.
     "The English." He spits. "They give us this life. We are their dogs, you and I. Dogs. What they promise you cannot trust. But Chin-Chin's opium makes the whole world sweet. Smoke, my friend, and you forget what they do. Forget that you are a dog. That you will always be a dog."

     He points the tip of his dagger into the sticky black ball of opium, ready to smoke his troubles away and float into an oblivion where he is no one's inferior. Kartik and I move on through the smoky haze. The Chinaman leads us to a tiny room and bids us wait a moment while he disappears behind the rags over the door. Kartik's jaw remains clenched.
     "What that man said..." I stop, unsure of how to continue. "What I mean is, I hope you know that I do not feel that way."
     Kartik's face hardens. "I am not like those men. I am Rakshana. A higher caste."
     "But you are also Indian. They are your countrymen, are they not?"
     Kartik shakes his head. "Fate determines your caste. You must accept it and live according to the rules."
     "You can't really believe that!"
     "I do believe it. That man's misfortune is that he cannot accept his caste, his fate."
     "I know that the Indians wear their caste as a mark upon their foreheads for all to see. I know that in England, we have our own unacknowledged caste system. A laborer will never hold a seat in Parliament. Neither will a woman. I don't think I've ever questioned such things until this moment.

p.443 "No use crying over spilled blood."

Circle of Three #15: Initiation

by Isobel Bird

p.61 "brillig"

p.101 Asatru -- the Norse religion

p.189 east = air ; north = earth ; south = fire ; west = water

Having summoned the four elements of the directions, it was time to complete the circle. This fell to Cooper, who picked up a stick and pressed the end into the sand.
   "In the sand I draw the circle," she said as she walked around the fire, inscribing a circle with the stick. "In the circle magic dwells. All who enter are protected, here to weave our magic spells."

p.193 We all come from the Goddess
And to her we shall return
Like a drop of rain flowing to the ocean."

NAMES: Siobhan, Decklin, Cerridwen

Circle of Three #13: And it Harm None
by Isobel Bird

p.5-6 They had learned that one of the principles of magic was that you should always remember to thank the universe for helping you achieve your intentions.

p.9 "Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again. The circle is open but unbroken."
p.93 It was a sugar cookie, delicately iced with pretty pink frosting, and written across it in red icing were the words BITE ME.

p.110 "He's just a guy," Becka replied. "Guys are easy to talk to. You just have to think of them as big, stupid dogs who want you to like them. Then it's easy."

p.115 "I was just thinking about how sometimes everything seems like a total accident, said Annie. "But then other times it's like I can see these patterns happening, making sense of everything. Only usually when I start thinking that maybe there is a pattern or a plan or whatever something happens to totally blow my theory apart."
   "My dad says writing books is sort of like that," Becka told her. "Sometimes he'll start off with this really great idea, and he'll plan every single step of the book. Then he starts writing and the characters decide to do something else that has nothing to do with his plan."

p.174 "We are the weavers," she sang as she walked, thinking of the words to a chant they had sung in class once, "we are the web. We are the spiders, we are the thread."