I know,I can smell it, too.

The plain truth is that the period I study is the 16th century, and they were absolutely obsessed with witches and spiritual beings.

The king just sits there, moving one square at a time. The queen can move so freely. I suppose I’d rather lose the game than forfeit her freedom.

We kissed each other, long and deep, while my legs opened like the covers of a book.

Matthew kept hinting that his desire - for blood, chiefly- was so strong that it put everything else at risk. But vampires weren’t the only creatures who had to manage such strong impulses. Much of what qualified as magic was simply desire in action. Witchcraft was different- that took spells and rituals. But magic? A wish, a need, a hunger too strong to be denied- these could turn into deeds when they cross a witch’s mind.

I wanted to know how humans came up with a view of the world that had so little magic in it. I needed to understand how they convinced themselves that magic wasn’t important.

It was a brutal picture, a tug-of-war between two equal but opposing impulses. It had the ring of truth, however.