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Nate drank too. He took a large gulp and then set his mug down on the table with an audible clink. “You’re someone from the community, aren’t you? Did my mother send you? Are you here to tell us to stop?”

“No, no, and no.”

“Then why are you here?” Nate demanded.

“For one, I wanted to apologize. For another…” Noah turned to Nate and studied him with quiet intensity, gaze moving over Nate’s face and down to the hand around his mug. “I wanted to warn you.”

“About what?” Leo asked when Nate only stared.

“The tea,” Noah said. “You can’t keep taking it without also taking the remedy.”

A remedy? What remedy?

Nate looked down at his coffee.

That was enough to make Leo suspicious. “You know what he’s talking about?”

“My mother used to make another tea. For afterward.”

“Do you know what goes into it?”

“No. I don’t remember.”

Leo stared at him. “Then ask your mother.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

Nate gave him a look, and Leo understood. Asking his mother for the remedy meant admitting that he’d been taking the crossing tea. She would want to know how often, and why, and Nate didn’t want to tell her.

Leo could sympathize with that. He wouldn’t have wanted to discuss their nights together with Miriam either. But surely there was a way to have this conversation without giving her all the details.

“You could just tell her you’ve been using it to help me.”

“That would be true,” Noah supplied.

Nate looked at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Not this part, no.”

Something in his voice made Leo turn back toward him. “What does the remedy actually do?”

“It helps the body recover from crossing. Leaving it behind is a strain, even if you don’t feel that while you’re out of it.”

“Oh, I feel it afterward,” Nate muttered.

“Yes. I imagine you do.”

“I’ve been taking painkillers.”

“Those help with the headache. They don’t help with the rest.”

Leo didn’t like the sound of that. “What rest?”

Noah set his mug down. “Your body needs time to recover. If you keep crossing without the remedy, especially before you’ve recovered from the last time, you can make yourself ill.”

Nate frowned. He seemed to be taking this seriously now, which was both reassuring and rather alarming. Had he not known what he was doing to his body?