Tea for . . . two?

[Tatum MacNamara]

Unread letters from home littered the tabletop as Tatum MacNamara stirred a cup of tea whose sugar had dissolved long before this egregious overagitating of the beverage had began. There was surely two months worth, the envelopes in the various hands of her brothers, and while a reminder that she was thought of and missed, they were more dear to her unopened. Without the benefit of reading them, her imaginative mind could construct all sorts of flowery prose to fill their pages, stories of her brothers' adventures, good news about the spouses and children that they had found and had while she remained in the realm of singlehood like a swimmer tirelessly treading water in a vast sea. When their seals were not broken, she could invent her own warm regards, her own wish you wells, and the self-created text was so satisfying there was no need for the genuine artifact.

Five years she had been in England, working at the hospital, for most long enough to establish roots, even if only shallow ones, but this slight witch still lay stubbornly upon the topsoil, even going as far as to move from one flat to the next ever few months. The trouble with travelling so much at an early age was that it made one's spirit wild, wanderlust being a far more addictive substance than any of the black market potions peddled in dark alleyways these days. Where most grew nauseous aboard a ship for many days, the Irish witch grew landsick, and the only way to keep from going green in the gills was to move, and move constantly. It was the only way to reconcile her dreams of making a positive contribution with her secret yearnings to throw it all away, decimate the meager savings her career had afforded her by the purchase of some schooner and leaving behind the dreary climes of London for greener, warmer shores.

It was those dreams her brothers, the ramshackle group of n'erdowells that they were, never fully comprehended, the dreams that they criticized again and again in their letters to her. How many when are you going to give up these childish notions andsee you when you give up this foolish rebellions hastily scrawled in Gaelic could a witch handle? How many times could she reply that this was who she was, that this was truly the life she wanted? And how many times would she need pen those words before even she believed them completely?

No, better to ignore the ruddy things, let them collect in a pile in her office, let them accumulate inside her letterbox. Better to write her own correspondence on the parchment of her fantasy. Better to take the whole lot up to the fifth floor at some Merlin forsaken hour when visitors were not permitted and the staff unfortunate enough to be burning the midnight oil would be busy making their rounds to make the evening pass more quickly. Better to draw her wand and with one muttered 'Incendio' watch the entire mess enflame and then die away.

Even if starting magical fires, even small ones, was most likely against some hospital policy.

As she watched the letters succumb to the last remains of the fire, she took up her tea cup finally, sipping and then making a face.

"This shite's right cold."

{wooo . . . that was really bad . . .sorry . . . I'll get better, I swear}

[Aimee Kensington]

Love it.
-Runs to type-

[Aimee Kensington]

Aimee knew enough about God to know that she was damned. In her twenty-nine years of life she had left only four of the Ten Commandments, one which was questionable, left untouched and intact. Perhaps when her time came, Aimee could use the lives she had saved as a bargaining chip. She saved lives, she didn’t have time to be an angel, she was simply too busy.

It was only out of guilt that Aimee’s parents had ushered their family to church of Sundays, irregularly the Priest had a tendency to add. Too young to understand the preaching Aimee had been handed downstairs with the younger children where they learnt about God through clapping had games, songs and colouring in pictures. Aimee never liked it downstairs. The children were weird and the people in the stories had weird names. They spoke funny too and the crayon box didn’t have a yellow. Yes, at the age of five life was truly peaking for young Miss Kensington and as she had listened wistfully to song, eyes only widening when lollies were awarded to the loudest voice, all the information concerning God had gone in one ear and out the other. Except what she learnt through Father Nathan’s stories. It was perhaps, the thing that all the children truly came for. While the parents mingled upstairs, discussing the topic of the day whilst sipping watery coffees, the children escaped downstairs, the firs true smiles of the day blossoming across their faces, cheeks flushed. It was in those infamous stories that Aimee had learnt about the Ten Commandments and it was now, fourteen years later as she sat head slouched forward, almost reaching her lap, body sunken into the old couches that she remembered.

Aimee was a walking sin. The girl that could stand in front of a church and be pointed at as an example, she was Eve, the temptress, the snake, the one who had drawn man and mans kind to its doom, demise and destruction. She was having an affair with a married man. She was wishing bad thoughts to his wife. She used the Lords name in vain, never kept the Sabbath day holy [hello, people didn’t stop dying juts because it was Sunday] and she was pretty sure at some point in her life she had stolen. Needless to say, things weren’t looking in her favour.

But at the moment none of that mattered, in fact it barely registered, dashing through her mind, past sleepless eyes, a half functioning brain. Right now all she could think of was coffee.

Dragging her sorry ass of the couch Aimee made to check her watch and then decided, she really just didn’t want to know. She knew enough to know she’d been working too long and if caught by a supervisor would be sent straight home. But there was nothing for at her at home. Nothing but the silence of another wasted night. Aimee wasted to be needed, she wanted to look after patients, she wanted- her caffeine fix.

Pressing the elevator button and waiting for the familiar Ping! Aimee shuffled inside. It was empty and with a yawn she scratched at her eye. Floor Number Five.

Aimee had walked this path too often to get lost, she could do it with her eyes closed, she could do it in her sleep. It was instinct for a caffeine addict to be able to locate the only place that would provide her with her anti-drug. Winding through the tables Aimee stepped behind the counter and stopped in front of a Muggle contraption.

“One espresso please, no sugar, no milk.”

She leant towards the machine and pushed the button. Something that claimed to be coffee poured from a spout into a paper cup beneath. Snatching it up Aimee took a sip and pulled a face. At the sound of a voice, she turned and blinked sleepy eyes at a woman.

“It tastes better with your eyes closed.”

[[Crummy post..Rawr.]]

[Tatum MacNamara]

Tatum looked up from the tea but only momentarily, her ice blue eyes quickly flicking back to the table to be sure there were no telltale remants of the letters-that-had-been.to incriminate her. And apart from a bit of dust, she seemed to be on the safe side. That decided, her gaze moved back to the woman standing before her, not one she recognized, but that was not surprising, the Irish witch usually remaining at the hospital only long enough to do her required work before slinking off to this pub or that. Even after five years, without the lime green robes, she might mistake a patient for a colleague. Except on the spell damage floor. Most of the poor sods there were a bit loony.

"Nil, ye lie," she smirked, shaking her head in refute. "I've tried it before, and it still tastes like shite."

With a bit of doing, she twisted her smirk into a more proper smile, doing her best to appear friendly, which she was, usually. There was always a bit of uneasiness, though, around her fellow witches, a sort of tightening in her jaw when they were nearby. She was wholly unfamiliar with her own sex, her mother having been just a spectre of the first few years of her life, a sour and recalcitrant woman who had seeped slowly from her life like the sun creeping in its endless arch over the horizon to nightfall. She had been the first person the Irish witch ever knew to have died. But there would be others. Two too many for her tastes.

But all of that had been in Ireland, in the past life that she had shook off like water collected in her chestnut locks after a long swim when she came to England. She had come here to reinvent herself and that included making friends amongst the fairer sex, now didn't it?

"I dinna think I've seen y'around before," she observed nodding slightly, and then shrugging, "But that does ni mean a damnaigh thing. I dinna know anyone here, really."

Taking another sip of the foul tasting tea, she forced herself to swallow, having imbibed far worse beverages in grizzly looking taverns and eateries wherever there ship had found itself docked. But there was something about having to drink a thing because there was nothing else, and forcing oneself to drink something that tasted faintly of dish detergent simply because they wasted a knut on it.

"Ye look like ye could stand te sit a spell, aye?" she questioned before gesturing to the free seat across from her. "Maybe ye can take me mind off the aftertaste." Giving a mischevious wink, she looked up at her colleague intently, waiting to see if she'd accept the invitation or give some excuse and be on her way.


{must be off for a few hours . . .shall post later . . . tata}

[Aimee Kensington]

“Aimee Kensington, I work on the fourth floor.”

Aimee took the seat offered and placed the paper cup in front of her, swirling the liquid. It didn’t look all that appetising but when you’ve worked so long the clock doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t really matter.

“But right now I’m not supposed to be working at all. In fact I’m not supposed to be anywhere inside this hospital.”

Aimee had been given strict instructions to go home, eat something, rest but she’d defied her superior like so many times before and had instead taken for cover in the staff lounge. There was nothing for Aimee to go home too. Sure, it wouldn’t be an empty house, there were the other three flatmates and now an extra three bodies. But right now Aimee just wasn’t up for facing that, just like her coffee, it didn’t look all that appetising.

That morning Aimee had opened the door to find her sister Charlotte staring at her, a suitcase at her feet, car keys wrapped around her fingers, jingling at her hand shook before the doorknob. They had stood like statues for but a moment, taking it all in, her shaking sister who was normally so in control, her car parked on the curb, a pillow pressed against the back seat window, a sleeping child’s head in view. For the moments that chased each other like a fast-forwarding movie, Aimee had switched roles. She had gathered Charlotte into her arms, holding her frame as her body shook with sobs. Charday and Trevor had slept on through the brief exchange of words, had slept on through the crumbling of their world. Aimee knew that when they woke up, things would be different but she also knew that to children, five and three, this would be something unexplainable. Where’s daddy? Why isn’t he here? Why are we saying with Aunt Aimee? When will daddy join us? And since Aimee had discovered the ‘other woman’ of her sisters relationship she hadn’t been able to look at her honestly for when Aimee looked into her sisters eyes, looked at her heart- broken face of betrayal, she saw her own weakness, her own mistake.

Aimee hated herself. And so all day she had avoided Sean, cramming her day, constantly on the go. If she left the hospital she knew she’d hit the downward spiral, she knew she would see the same look in her sisters eyes that tormented her soul and right now Aimee didn’t need to feel like shit. She needed to feel like what she was doing was okay. That you could do something not so morally correct and still be a good person.

Resting her forehead on the tabletop Aimee groaned into her hands. Her company would no doubt thing she was odd and Aimee wouldn’t be able to convince her otherwise. After all, how could you convince someone of something when you didn’t even believe in it yourself?

Gathering all the dignity that she could muster Aimee pulled herself back into a seated position, tracing patterns on the table with her finger. She stopped suddenly and looked to the Irish woman. Her head tilted on instinct.

“Do you think you do bad things and still be a good person?”

Her eyes urged a response. She needed honesty but the same time there was one answer she was dying to hear.

And all the while she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

[Tatum MacNamara]

Aimee Kensington, I work on the fourth floor.

Never before had Tatum been felt so fortunate for tea that tasted so foul. Had she been drinking the good stuff, she might have lost an entire mouthful out her knows at the introduction of her colleague. As it was, she was able to steal her reaction to a gentle smile, inwardly marvelling at the chance to put a face to the reputation.

"Pleased te meet ye," she nodded, the smile growing easily as the words were not a lie.

Meeting Aimee was like having a mystery solved, like finally uncovering the identity of some superhero in the last scene of the film. Tatum had met Cassandra many times, knew the witch by sight, could conjure a sympathetic image of her when Sean went on about one of their fights. She was chartered territory, old news. But this Aimee Kensington, she was the one who had been like a phantom, never seen, only heard about, leaving Tatum to weave together her own images, draw her own conclusions, most of which were wrong.

For one thing Tatum had expected her to be a blonde. Why have an affair with a witch that had the same haircolor as the one you've left at home? In the throes of passion, there was a certain bit of anyonymity, hair falling across faces, positions assumed where eye contact was not even granted. How could one avoid confusing women? Calling out a wrong name? The thought baffled her, but that was nothing new.

The Irish witch severely doubted she would ever understand what the bloody Hell Sean was thinking, though this had begun long before she met Aimee Kensington. Just the idea that someone who was not naive and without the benefit of age would marry for any reason rather than accidental pregnancy was beyond her. And to compound the situation, why take a steady lover? It was like being at dock with two anchors. Redundant.

“Do you think you do bad things and still be a good person?”

A question thought provoking enough to draw her from her inner tirade on the subject of how Sean Andrews thought with his little head and not his big one, and Tatum's smile grew gentle once more as she looked to the younger witch

"I'm ni the best person t'ask a question like that, Aimee."

When she had been more idealistic, less aware of how the world worked, she had often posed the same inward questions, battled the same demons though for different reasons entirely. Nothing she had ever done was as benign as spreading her legs for a married man.

"But ye seem like ye need someone te talk te, so I'll answer ye anyway." She brought a hand to her forehead scratching it lightly as she pieced together how it was that she wanted to reply.

"There is ni such a thing as a good person or a bad person. People canna be good or bad. A thing can be, maybe, or an act, somethin we do that we know we should ni, but ni a person. Yer a collection o'the sum o'good an bad things ye do, an even the bad things ye do may not be done out o'spite or fer bad reasons. I think in the end, what matters is that ye were true to yerself, if everythin ye did seemed wrong, then maybe ye dinna live yer life the way ye should have. But what's really important is what ye leave behind. The people ye touch, the lives ye change. If ye leave at least one more person fer the better that ye leave marred by somethin ye did when ye leave this world, then I'd say ye did all ye could."

Her shoulder shrugged, "So I'd ask ye, leannan, are ye doin all ye can?"

in case you're curious, leannan means sweetheart in Gaelic ^^

[Aimee Kensington]

It was common knowledge to anyone that had ever had the pleasure of sharing a bed with Aimee that you didn’t disturb her in her morning. Aimee treasured sleep like you did oxygen, like the men dying of dehydration in the desert, did water. But what those fortune individuals did not know about sleeping beauty was why she valued her dreams over reality.

Naturally there was the aspect that one could physically fly in their dreams without the use of an air-o-plane or broomstick but for Aimee it was more than a time where hidden lusts were dwelt on and the heart teased. Though like all good dreams, it was too. Aimee craved those five seconds when a person first woke up with a clean mind. Those five seconds when light slithered between eyelids and got caught in eyelashes, where glazed over eyes blinked heavy at the dawn of a new day with a mouth so even, so neutral and a head that felt light with forget. There was not always a smile but rarely there was a frown. When Aimee awoke she awoke to an entirely different world, one that was without her whacked complications and the complex ties of her love life, or rather to everyone else, non-existent. When Aimee awoke each morning her mind rested, the clarity of reality weaving and piecing itself back together again, there was no affair, there was no Sean, no heartbreak, no marriage, no accident with her mother, no ‘other woman’ for her sister, no rape, no disease. When Aimee awoke for the first five seconds, when her eyes opened and she blinked at the world with new eyes, pure eyes, she was the closest she could ever remember being to sane. And then, like the opening of floodgates everything hit her, drowned her, consumed her.

Aimee craved the forget, the five second delay where she could breathe easy without feeling the guilt press in around her lungs and catch her short. The lying suffocated her; holding fast to her lungs and straining every breath between parted lips. Aimee was not proud for all decisions, and confusion still tormented her in the dark but she found comfort in those five seconds and it was enough to keep her sleeping at night, enough to keep her waking up the next morning.

Sean was unexplainable. She struggled even to comprehend the full effects of what she was doing even though it had been physical, spoken between two mouths close together, for almost a month. Aimee personally had not told a soul and this talk with the Irish woman, was probably the closest thing she had come to. Not once had she ever spoken it out loud within another’s earshot.

I am Aimee Kensington and I am, somewhat pathetically in love with a married man.

Love? Was that what it was? Was love meant to drive her crazy, make her fume and ache all at the same time? Did love truly make you want to pull away and hold a person close all at the same time? Aimee knew love made people do insane things but to defy logic, to defy what was right? If that fell in the definition then what they had had to be love, for surely no one could deny that sleeping with a married man was not a ‘right thing.’

Sometimes she could hear the echo of his wedding ring clink on the bedpost.

“I work in a hospital don’t I?”

She smiled and shook her head, picking up the paper cup and swirling the liquid, which had now turned cold. She didn’t look up as she pressed her lips together and spoke once more.

“I’m starting to question my sanity.” She paused and then as if word and thought consumed her swallowed and attempted something a little different.

“My eldest sister Charlotte was left by her husband. She has two children, a five-year-old and a three-year-old and he just left. It makes you wonder why people leave perfection, why they turn their backs on the world just to glimpse hell.”

Aimee would never admit to it but she envied Cassandra more than she had ever envied anyone before. The woman was class, frozen perfection with her silky red hair, her smile, her intellect and beauty a combined force. Her legs went up to there and Aimee’s only went up to here. It made her question Sean’s sanity to know that he had turned from his wife, the woman who had it all in one dynamo combo to her, Aimee Kensington. The girl who grumbled the entire day if she put her left shoe on before her right, the girl who relied on a paperclip to bring her good luck, the weird crazy insane girl who could drown tequila like it was water. The stupid girl who did stupid things. Why her? A thousand times, why her? What mental impediment had turned Sean from his wife, the wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, successful, well-known Cassandra with bloody legs till there.

Aimee’s hands released the paper cup and her face slipped into her hands. She was too tired for this, too crazy, too sober. And she, Aimee Kensington the girl who kept mostly to herself, was spilling thoughts to a stranger.

Get me the hell out of wonderland. I don’t want to be Alice any more.

She moaned into her hands and shaking brown hair from her face, looked to the older woman.

“Tell me it gets better than this.”

Or at least tell me the directions to the closest possible bar.

[Tatum MacNamara]

Tatum felt a stab of conscience as she looked on at Aimee, a slight guilt over knowing more of the witch than she knew. Inwardly, she deliberated coming out with all of it, cleansing the weight that had settled firmly on her stomach with the washing waves of truth. But the part of her with more sense and the strength of rationality pervailed. To tell her would not only breech Sean's trust, but it would also no doubt damage the young lady. Knowing that others knew of your sin only made them all the harder to bare within yourself.

I work in a hospital don’t I?

"Ye dinna need te convince me, Aimee. Its yerself that ye need te settle with." With an added smirk, she continued, "An besides I'm almost lousy with fergiveness, if it were up te me the whole o'Hell would be space fer rent an all the sinners would be carousin inside the pearly gates."

The words were meant solely as a joke, though there was a bit of truth in the marrow of it. She did not believe in either Heaven and Hell, both concepts denied along with the whole of Muggle religion. Her family were Druids, the lot of them, and though she was not devout as the rest of them, she considered herself one as well, and the tenants of Muggle faiths conflicted mostly with what she had been taught to believe was immortal truth. The honesty was in her statement on forgiveness. It seemed no matter how many times she was struck, her face turned so the other cheek could be abused. It defied good sense in most cases, but it was core of her nature too engrained to uproot, not at her age at any rate.

It makes you wonder why people leave perfection, why they turn their backs on the world just to glimpse hell

Tatum's eyes darkened some before lowering to the table, "Ye canna ni know another man's Hell. That is only his te say."

Toying with her cup, her mind retreated through the annals of time, coming to settle over a decade before to a brown cottage that was nestled in a hollow of a hill, a hill that when climbed gave a clear view of the sea, a sea that had swallowed everything in those days and left only bones in its wake.

"I left a man once. He might o'been the one I was meant to spend all me days with. I canna be sure." And though it tasted foul, she brought the cup to her lips and took a sip, needing the pause to rally herself into continuing.

"When I look back on it now, I see that I had been gone long befer I left him. Leavin's ni the only way te go." Shrugging her shoulders, she gave the witch a reassuring smile, "Yer sister is more'n likely better off without him. An she'll come te see that." Her smile faltered slightly, though it did somehow manage to persist, "I'm sure he did once I was gone long enough."

She hoped her words were easing Aimee some, though secretly she doubted it was possible to give the woman any peace. The role of 'other woman' was a one that afforded none. It would be her own cross to bare or burry, and nothing the Irish witch could say would change that. But words seemed kinder than silence, and so she pressed on, bringing a small hand to cup the woman's shoulder.

Tell me it gets better than this.

"There's an old Gaelic sayin' 'beatha tá beatha.' 'Life is life.' It means that life is what i'tis. It does ni get better or worse. It just goes on. An we go with it. But if ye dinna like the direction it carries y'in, ye change directions, swim against the current te bring yerself to another stream te follow. If the times seem hard now, maybe ye need te do that, leannan. Or maybe y'already have an yer makin yer way toward somethin better. I dinna ken. But ye do. Somewhere inside ye'."

Still toying with the cup, she quirked a brow, "This is over a man, aye? Bastards, the lot o'them." Sighingly, she continued, letting her hand fall away and come to rest on her own side of the table "There's a reason why love is a four letter word."

And then a sly smile came to her features, "Maybe ye've had yer fill o'Irish wisdom fer the day, but jus let me tell ye somethin me Gran told me. I like te remember it when some Paddy or Michael or William makes me blue. She would always tell me, 'Two tears in a bucket, then fuck it."

A pregnant pause.

"She was a very wise woman, aye?"

[Aimee Kensington]

She listened to Tatum in silence, acknowledging the treasures she was being shared. Just like her, she presumed the woman not to be much of an open shell, not the type to spill everything when asked. The hardest thing Aimee had always presumed was to be left, now perhaps, in light of new events she considered. Was it perhaps harder to leave someone then be left? Or were they not too very different?

There was a time before the accident and the drink and the too much to say that it choked their throats and pulled them apart for the sake of awkwardness and dignity, where the Kensington family moved as one. Two parents, four daughters, a house full of warmth, laughter, reality where each member joked and fought and lived. There was a time when silences weren’t strained and conversations weren’t forced. There was a time when even an ocean away was tiny and that a single moment shared after years apart could bring them together. Family was everything to Aimee. It was her inspiration, her support, her outlet. When she fell down it was there to pick her up, when she needed that little more to pull through it was there, always and forever they stuck by one and another. But then it had slowly dwindled away and Aimee was left feeling a little less complete, a little more lost and as though she was wandering a pathway blindly without a flashlight and no sense of direction.

It was somewhere after the drink and the accident that Aimee fell for Sean. She couldn’t honestly remember working with him in the hospital and not thinking about him, right from the very first moment. He was her weakness, her vulnerability and what she hoped, her future. And then sometime shortly after the disguised staring sessions and fantasising games she found out he was married and the moon, stars, sun and clouds all fell from the sky. Sean had never been a game with Aimee. He hadn’t been some prize, a piece of proof, the result of too many drinks or feeling a little lonely. He certainly wasn’t a regret like people imagined. He was Sean. And he wasn’t hers. He was Sean. An untouchable, married man that had left his mark on her a long time ago. It was almost too late to go back.

That’s what people didn’t get, wouldn’t get if they knew. He’s married, they would say. And their minds would never reach past that fact, would never process anything else. The thing was a cigarette could kill you and people still smoked. They watched people die, saw the ads, read the stories and warnings and still they did it. The only difference was smoking didn’t directly affect others unless you were blowing it into their lives.

Aimee knew that if one thing were every true it would be this;

Men were too complicated.

“A man. Yes.”

Aimee nestled herself into the back of her chair. It was uncomfortable but so would the chairs be in Hell, she had better get used it.

“They have to be some kind of test. I mean really, I know what I’m doing, what I’m going to say, what I value and then wham, everything changes. They’re like bloody potholes in a road.”

Her voice rose and spiralled, passion and confusion and question with a touch of annoyance poisoned her tones bringing her mind to life. Aimee sighed. The worst thing about what she was doing was knowing straight off it was wrong but giving in anyhow and even when you knew it was wrong and you knew you should stop, refusing not to. She was knowingly hurting other people when that was the furthermost thing she ever wanted. In that regard she was selfish but if you didn’t take what you wanted and cared about yourself, then who else would?

Between where Tatum spoke and Aimee replied a pause dragged out. She allowed her eyes to raise, gathering with it enough…courage?

“Wise…”

Aimee let the word role across her tongue like a foreign delicacy.

“But there has to be something worth fighting for in this world.”

And if not love, or what she thought/presumed/hoped/was mistaken was love, then what?

[Tatum MacNamara]

Tatum watched Aimee with a slight glimmer of amusement in her eyes. For a moment, she was reminded of herself at the witch's age, full of idealism and spirit. In her younger days, she had believed in love, not perhaps for herself, but for others. She had been willing to concede the point that there was a possibility of the thing, that perhaps there truly was someone for everyone out there. And though it was not something she wished for herself, not caring for the notion of having a person weigh her down and confine her to one spot for the rest of her days, she sincerely hoped that those who could not be complete without another woud find what they were looking for.

But many years had come and gone since those wide-eyed optimistic days, and Tatum now scoffed at the word love the way most did terms like 'boogeyman' and 'easter bunny' and 'honest barrister.' She had come to see love as a euphesmism, something people called an emotion they'd rather not confess to so as not to be discovered for the people that they truly were. Lust disguised as love. Neediness disguised as love. Fear of being alone disguised as love. The stoking of one's ego disguised as love and so on. Love was a clever turn of verbiage and nothing more.

And the days when she ever felt otherwise felt as if a distant dream that someone else had experienced during an evening slumber.

"Aye, there are plenty o'things te fight fer. But yer best bet is te wage war fer yerself."

She sipped the dish water tea and then sighed, "I've ken enough men in me days te know a few things about them. They dinna believe in love. Ni the way witches do. They're either lookin fer a good time, a meal ticket or someone te replace their mother if ni all three at once. And most importantly, they never, ever leave their wives."

There was a faint knowing look in Tatum's eyes that lingered for a moment before dying away, sinking into the depths of her ice blue orbs.

"But I suppose yer laddy could be different. About love, I mean, an the other bits. What's he's lookin fer and what have ye. I'm sure he's worth fighting for."

Despite her words, however, there was a faint sign in Tatum's voice that she was speaking far more to reassure Aimee than to actually relay any shred of truth.