Sad thing about engaging with magic out of desperation: it counted on you making mistakes. Missing things. Forgetting to ask the right questions.

Movement out of the window caught his eye when he turned. A flock of ducks landing near the water.

"If we're going to discuss open wounds in a nonprofessional sense, it might as well be a shared experience. Quid pro quo and all that." No sense in only one of them being uncomfortable. "But I've lived long enough to know many, the good and bad. Bad people don't carry a lot of guilt over hard decisions."