Shavi-no one ever found out his full name-was certainly the most well balanced of the five. An Asian who grew up in a strictly Muslim family, he was eventually cut off by his father when he refused to accept his religion and traditional ways. A lifetime of searching followed, during which Shavi dabbled in every religion and explored every occult and New Age byway. It left him a deeply philosophical and spiritual man, and the solid moral core of the group. He was a neo-hippie, enjoying his mind-expanding drugs, espousing free love with men or women. Like the others, however, there was a darkness in his life. As he left a London gay club with his boyfriend, Lee, he was attacked by someone he couldn't identify in the dark. Lee was brutally murdered.

And then there was Ryan Veitch, a hard-bodied, hard-minded thug who grew up in a South London family of petty criminals. His childhood had been troubled by vivid dreams that he'd only been able to exorcise by having their images tattooed on his body. His mother died when he was young, leaving him and his brothers to make up for a father so traumatized by his wife's death he was unable to keep a job and barely able to hold the family together. It was hardly surprising that he viewed crime as the only option to survive. But then the young Witches made the mistake of bungling a building society robbery. In the confusion Ryan fired his shotgun and an innocent man died-Ruth's uncle, one of the many coincidences that are thrown up in this new age. But, as we all know, there are no coincidences. Growing up under different circumstances, Ryan might have been a very different person. He showed great remorse for the murder, and from then on, every waking moment was spent trying to make up for his crimes, "to do the right thing" as he constantly told everyone. More than any of them he wanted to be a hero, to get the girl, the acclaim. To be good.

But that was their lives before. In the cauldron of hardship that came after the world changed they all found what their true characters really were.