Tea and Empathy

CW: References to past, implied violence, cult activity, and monster violence.

“Are you really going to try and fix this with a cup of tea? I think this is beyond that as a remedy,” Blake grumbled from his seat behind the small table as he watched Candace set the kettle on the small stove in the kitchenette of her hotel suite. “And can the goon squad member in black give us some space to breathe?” he asked, his eye on the Secret Service agent standing by the doorway with a look that could curdle milk.

“Blake, be nice to Roarke. He might return the favor,” Candace replied, with a tiny smirk. She nodded to Roarke. “Give us some privacy?” The agent nodded and stepped into the next room, his shadow angling across the open doorway.

“If he wanted to punish me, he should simply stand there and stare at me. I might enjoy it if he manhandled me,” Blake replied. “Besides, I doubt he’d really harm me, even if you ordered him to do that.”

She turned the front burner to medium. “I wouldn’t say tea fixes everything, but it certainly can warm you up on a cold night. That might clear your head.” She searched the cabinet beside the stove, rummaging among the tea boxes there. “I have Earl Grey, green, and black; Cora has her chai and red roobios.”

He eyed her around the edges of the frames of his eyeglasses. “Do you have Red Rose?”

She smiled. “The kind with the little ceramic animal figurines? I’ve got black tea, which is what’s in Red Rose.”

He folded his black half-gloved hands under his chin, resting his elbows on the tabletop. “But is there a ceramic squirrel or rhino in the box?”

She took out the box, taking out two tea bags. “Unfortunately, no, but if this were the right brand, I’d give you the figurine to refocus on.”

“Trying to distract me?”

“Trying to give you something else to think about.” She took down two mugs with the hotel logo on them and set them on the tabletop before him, dropping a teabag into each. “My grandmother had a curio cabinet with a shelf full of Red Rose figurines.

“So did mine, on my father’s side. So did a lot of New England grandmothers.” He stopped, his pale eyes on the mugs. “How did you end up with an oilman from Texas?”

“You mean, how did a romance writer from Massachusetts end up with a rough rider like Clifton Kincade? Simple: my father was a mineralogist when he wasn’t looking after his father’s fish cannery in Arkham. He ended up getting work for an oil company. He and my mother separated and I ended up going back and forth between Texas and Massachusetts. I met Clifton during a weekend when I was considering colleges. He swept me off my feet with that Southern charm of his and pressured me to marry him, promising me I’d always have time and space to write. That I’d never have to worry about housing or money to pay my bills. Till I realized he wanted someone who looked good on his arm at galas and for photo ops when he wasn’t gallivanting around the country, trying to add depth to his good ol’ boy image.”

“Till he ended up in Long Island, with a cult trying to summon an eldritch entity,” Blake said. “Except the cult also served as a diversion for bored people with too much money and too much time on their hands to misuse and abuse the often much-younger household staff, resulting in several deaths.” He regarded her askance.

She perched herself on the edge of the table, close to him. “I heard rumors of those things. Clifton denied them, but… he’d lied to me so much, I’d lost track of his half-truths and quarter-truths. Or so I told myself.” She looked down at Blake. “Does it have something to do with something Clifton got himself into before what happened the day of his concession speech, when that thing came out of the ocean?”

Blake looked up at her, lowering his clasped hands to the tabletop. “I hate to inform you, but since the investigation is still… ongoing, that’s something I can’t elaborate on.”

She leaned closer to him. “I could always use some of my influence as a former First Lady and oblige you to elaborate.”

He sat up straighter, his pale eyes narrowed as he looked up at her. “My oath to uphold and defend the Constitution tells us both otherwise.”

She leaned back to her original position. “I should have expected that. But could you tell me what you can?”

“That would push the limits of my oath.”

The chuffing in the kettle grew more obvious. “What if you told it to me as a story?”

His pale eyebrows slid up his high forehead. “As a story?”

“Of course. It’s what we all need as part of our history – l’histoire. It’s not just for literature.”

He scoffed softly. “All right. I’ll tell you a story.

“Once upon a time, there were three rich brothers who lived on Long Island. They wanted what any rich and powerful person wants when they are possessed by their possession: more riches and power. One of them, who had a knack for collecting occult texts, acquired a small library from a collector in Louisiana, close to East Texas, after its owner vanished under the proverbial mysterious circumstances. In that library, he found what he took for a treasure map in the back of one text, till he realized it was a star chart for a specific alignment of starts in a particular spot in the sky. They fancied, in their hubris, that it would work most anywhere. And so they planned to enact the rites contained in that book, at the Long Island estate belonging to the eldest brother. Rumors of a cult gathering on Long Island started to fly, but no one could substantiate them.

“Then the body of a local young person turned up in the dunes down the coast from that house. And so the wisest and most stealthy scouts were sent to infiltrate the household staff of the eldest brother, posing as servants. Because too often, rich people will speak their secrets out loud in full hearing of their your servants. The scouts witnessed terrible things and some experienced even worse. One in particular suffered in the worst way this side of death, at the hands of one prince who plotted to be king. And so the scouts spread the word up the chain of command to the warriors. However, as so often happens, the powerful managed to buy the silence of some or downplay their guilt of they did not outright deny it. One they tried to declare mad. I won’t bore you with the rest of the particulars.”

The kettle went from soft chuffing to a precursor to whistling. She rose and took the kettle off the burner, filling the mugs.

“Honey? Sugar? Milk? Lemon?”

“Lemon, no milk.”

“No animal products?”

“No flesh meat, but… I don’t like milk in tea. It’s a matter of texture.”

“Understandable.” She found a small bottle of lemon in the back of the fridge and added a generous squeeze to his mug before she gently slid it to him. He accepted it, wrapping his hands about it, holding it to his chest as if letting it warm him.

“So there’s no way you can tell me the particulars of this case, what my possibly late husband’s circle were up to?”

He took a small sip from his mug, then breathed deeply from the steam. “Unfortunately, absolutely not. And don’t try to charm or order it out of me.”

“National security and all that.” She sipped her own cup, feeling it warm her insides. “You told me a story, can you tell me another?”

He glared over the rim of the mug. “Now you’re hedging. Nothing annoys me more than hedging.”

“If I promised you immunity, could you tell me?”

“I’m going to abstain from responding to that.” He took another sip from the cup, sighing through his nostrils. “There is a scientific reason why tea works as well as it does.”

“Oh? Let me hear about it.”

“If I stop getting long-winded, stop me.”

“I don’t mind your getting long-winded.”

He drew in a breath. “Very well, to start with, tea hydrates you, Forget what people say about caffeine having a diuretic effect; unless you’re drinking quarts of tea, the caffeine content won’t have that effect. It has little to no calories, outside of what you add to it. Black tea contains antioxidants linked to lowered cholesterol levels and a balanced blood sugar level. Green tea as well as black contain polyphenols, which show promise in preventing or slowing the growth of cancer cells. The only downside might be the amount of caffeine, but most tea contains less than coffee, certainly less than espresso does. Unless you’re stewing the devil out of the tea and consuming cup after cup of that consistency, its unlikely to induce the jitters you find in people who fairly mainline coffee. Or those dreadful energy drinks.”

“Says the guy I’ve seen drinking G-Fuel.”

He glared, but a smirk pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Only on long nights and I only drink a part of a can per night. You won’t find the back of a surveillance van I’ve been in littered with empty cans.”

“That didn’t sound long-winded. It sounded passionate.”

“Are you telling me what you feel or are you being kind?”

“Both. It’s both.” She reached and put her hand on the flat of his shoulder before she leaned in ti kiss his cheek. He set aside his cup and shifted his head just enough to let her catch the corner of his mouth. He reached behind her head and gently cupped the back in his gloved palm just as she kissed his lips.

She pulled away slightly, leaning her forehead against his. “This is starting to get serious very quickly.

“Much like it did between sessions of trying to recover your late, but not lamented husband from that thing he and his circle thought they could control,” Blake said, dryly but with a husk of desire in his throat.

She fingered his collar. “How did that happen anyway?”

“Proximity. And empathy. And probably a lot of transference.”

“If I remember rightly, you were explaining transference while I sobbed on your shoulder.”

“I didn’t make much of a move to push you away, to my annoyance with myself.”

“You don’t have to reassure me. I remember that night. I remember it well.”

He smirked, looking at her sidelong. “You offered me something a lot stronger than tea.”

“And you turned me down.”

“I couldn’t accept, given the circumstances. I don’t do that with married people. I did so with a fight going on in my soul.”

“Given what happened in the end, you could have accepted my offer.”

“We didn’t know if we could redeem him the thing that had consumed him. I didn’t want to take chances. You weren’t exactly in the most stable frame of mind.”

“In retrospect, you’re right. I look back and can’t help shaking my head at myself. I was practically acting out some romantic tropes straight from my early works, my old sins if you will.” She looked aside, then looked back at him. “You don’t think those...things were controlling me?”

“There’s one entity who might have nudged those thoughts into the front of your mind. Rest assured, even That One can’t make you do anything you don’t always possess an inclination toward. Your mind and will are your own unless you allow something to overtake you and them by extension.”

She leaned her face against the angle of his neck. “Thank you for a reassurance I hadn’t expected or thought I’d need.”

He glanced toward the table and laid one hand on her back between her shoulder blades. “Our tea will get cold, and it’s cold out.”

She leaned herself against him. “Of course I can think of other ways we can warm up, if you’re up for it.”

“Admittedly, I’m partway in the mood and partway not,” he replied.

She let him go and taking up his mug, placed it in his hands. “And I’m not about to try nudging you toward something you possess an inclination toward, but which you aren’t in the mood for.”

“What were we even at sixes and sevens about when you diverted me with tea?” he asked and took a sip from the mug.

She picked up her own mug, holding it against her own chest. “Our relationship and where to go with it.

“And what your adoring fans make of your whirlwind relationship with the mysterious blond man in a black suit?”

“They think he’s part of my security detail. Others think he’s some jilted lover I reconnected and reconciled with after the death of my husband.”

“No one’s suspected he had anything to do with attempting to rescue your late, not-so-lamented husband?”

“No. Not yet anyway. We’ve managed to keep that from the public. But they might get suspicious when they read the paranormal romances I’ve jotted down, if the books go to press.”

He sighed, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling for a moment. “Please tell me it the typical girl meets vampire, boy meets werewolf, girl meets witch, boy meets demon hunter type of story which proliferates on the spec-fic shelves at Barnes & Noble?”

“More like law enforcement officer meets survivor of a cult that had harnessed actual eldritch entities and rescues that survivor.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve an FBI agent. If it does...may I read the manuscript to critique it for accuracy.”

“Of course, but let’s keep in mind that sometimes telling a good story is more important than portraying the cold facts?”

“The age-old ‘not letting the facts get in the way of a good story’? Don’t be surprised if I grumble and nit-pick. Consider this your only warning.”

She grinned. “If you didn’t, I’d worry that a shoggoth may have replaced you.”

“Perish that thought.” He smirked down at his mug, taking the last sip from it. “Whatever we were at right angles about, it hardly matters now.”

“See, I was right to make some tea. It does fix everything.”