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"Were you expecting a witch, my dear?" Magnus raises an eyebrow. "I assure you, no witch could afford this location."
"I need you," the boy, very pretty, says, and Magnus raises his eyebrow further. "Catarina Loss, in the village. She says you're the only one who can help me."
"And with what?" Magnus asks. "Not that I'm disagreeing with my lovely friend Catarina's assessment of my abilities, but I should like to know what she thinks I can help you with that she cannot."
"Tea," Pretty Boy says, and, after consulting the words scrawled on his hand, "she said I need chamomile, lavender, and rose petal tea to cure me."
"And she had none?"
Pretty Boy shakes his head.
"She had plenty," he says. "But she said the tea wouldn't work unless I got it from you."
"I bet she did," Magnus says under his breath. But if Catarina's going to meddle in his lack of a love life, then at least she's been decent enough to send him someone who's easy on the eyes. "I suppose you'd better come in then…?"
"Alec," Pretty Boy supplies, and he's so damn well-mannered that he offers a hand for Magnus to shake. Magnus takes it, if only to see what kind of grip Alec's got. Turns out it's a strong one, and Magnus has to very forcefully push certain bedtime images out of his mind.
"I'm Magnus," he says, as Alec's following him inside the cottage. "But you know that already."
"They call you The Great Poison in the village," Alec says, and Magnus can't help but groan and roll his eyes.
"That was centuries ago," he says, moving toward his tea chest and studying the labels until he finds chamomile, lavender, and rose petal. He snaps his fingers, sending perfectly proportioned amounts of each flying into a nearby teacup. "It's been nothing but the straight and narrow for at least a decade now. Well, not so much straight…"
He looks back at Alec, who's got an expression on his face that's an odd cross of amused and hopeful, and that just answers whatever last question he had, doesn't it?
"You know you don't need this tea," he says, even as he's summoning the steaming water he'll need to steep it in. "You're fine just the way you are."
"My parents don't think so," Alec says, taking a seat at Magnus's table. "They want me to find a nice girl and marry her."
"What do you want?" Magnus asks, handing Alec his tea and taking a seat across from him.
Alec shrugs and taps a nail against his teacup. The sunset's coming in through the window behind him, lining his edges all in gold.
"You need to keep coming here to drink my tea until you find out?" Magnus asks, after a long pause, and it's getting darker every second, but he swears he sees Alec's face light up.
"You know," he says, saluting Magnus with his teacup, "I think I do."