Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Calli stood in front of the island countertop in the center of her kitchen, facing Malcolm. Sweat beaded on his brow as magical energy charged between them. Calli could see him weaving spells above his head, trying to figure out how to tap into hedge magic.
“Concentrate…”
A potted plant of night blooming jasmine sat in the middle of the countertop. It hadn’t flowered yet and had only a few leafy stems.
Malcolm closed his eyes for a long moment. “What am I looking for? What does hedge magic feel like?” he asked.
Calli came around the counter and stood next to him. She grasped one of his hands and led it to the potted plant.
“Sometimes it helps to touch the soil or the stems. Hedge magic is about finding that connection. It’s not a source from within yourself, but a stretching outward toward something else.
You reach out to the world. And as you stretch, the world reaches toward you in return.
That’s where the magic appears, in that place of joining.
” She placed her fingers against the nearest leaves of the jasmine.
“Keep your eyes closed, but feel the leaves, feel the plant’s life force. Reach out to it.” She kept her fingers on top of his. She felt the moment he reached out toward the jasmine, because her own magic stirred awake and wanted to join with his.
Her grandmother Celestine had taught her that all witches and warlocks could access both elemental and blood magic but that each was born with a natural skill and stronger connection to one more than the other.
So Malcolm was capable of performing hedge magic, if only a little.
It was more a matter of learning a new set of basic skills.
The difference between learning to ride a bike versus learning to swim.
They were both simple activities, and taken for granted once you were an adult, but they could not be learned in the same way.
“I think I feel it.” Malcolm’s voice was low, soft and full of wonder. “I think I feel you… too,” he added more reverently. Her heart tightened in her chest.
She kept her hand on his head as she felt the enchantments weaving all around them.
“Ask it to bloom,” said Calli.
“Ask it?” He shot a glance at her.
“Yes,” Calli repeated. “Ask it to bloom. Hedge magic is about the connection, remember? You’re connecting to it, asking it, not commanding it.”
Because she was still touching him, she could feel the moment he connected to the jasmine.
Bloom for me.
She could feel his spell within her because of their connection, almost as if it was passing through her.
It was such a seductive request coming from him.
Calli’s body turned warm and hunger burned her womb as she felt what was requested of her.
The jasmine blossomed with slender trumpet-like white blooms that had small starburst shapes on the ends.
A sweet, intoxicating scent perfumed the air in the kitchen so strongly that it overwhelmed the apples and pumpkin that had filled it just a moment before.
Calli stared at the thickly blooming night jasmine with pride. She leaned in close to Malcolm’s ear and whispered, “Open your eyes.”
His dark lashes fanned up, then widened in shock as he gazed at the blooms. “I did that?”
“You sure did.”
Malcolm turned his hand over to grasp her hand in his and squeezed before raising it to his lips to kiss her fingertips.
He’d always been told that hedge magic drained the life out of the world around it, that it was lazy, taking from other sources.
He realized that the life he drew upon around him was freely shared, that the energy came from so many sources, it wasn’t depleted.
No creatures or living things were harmed, because it was about a connection, a sharing of power.
“No one ever told me how beautiful hedge magic could be. How it makes you feel to grow and create life. It feels pure.”
“That’s because it is. Plants have no evil within them. They live and bring more life before they pass. In the old days hedge witches were often called white witches because they rarely practiced magic that hurt anyone. They were healers, witches who wanted the world to grow and flower.”
A gleam of deep understanding reflected in Malcolm’s green eyes.
“You make everything sound beautiful,” he whispered. “I didn’t realize how much I’d shut out the beauty of this world until I met you.”
Calli ducked her head. His words were affecting her more than she wanted to admit. She had spent the last decade closing herself off, pretending she didn’t want or need any more than she already had, convincing herself she was content.
When Malcolm had crashed into her life, she had gotten a taste of the larger world. Rather than withdraw, she wanted to see more.
In a way, she had been like the night jasmine, not blooming until Malcolm had reached for her. The appearance of Persephone was proof that something was changing inside her. She couldn’t help but wonder what else might change the more time she spent around Malcolm.
He caught her chin with his hand and lifted her face up to his.
Those bewitching green eyes cast spells that ran like quicksilver beneath her skin.
Part of her warned that this sexual intensity between them was just because they were so close to witch-locking, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care enough to stay away.
She wanted to touch him, to unburden her soul to him, and she wanted more than anything to kiss him.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he growled. He lowered his head and kissed her.
His lips moved over hers slowly, his sensual, warm breath was like the cinnamon in the hot cocoa they’d made after the hike.
How was this man so damn addictive? She loved how tall and warm and hard he was.
She wanted to tuck herself against his chest and burrow into him.
His hands grasped her hips as they kissed for a long, wonderful few minutes.
A sudden bark distracted them, and they jerked apart.
Hades stood in the doorway, the little kitten perched on his shoulders. Both of their familiars were watching them.
“I need to feed him,” Malcolm chuckled as he nuzzled Calli’s ear. “You get the cream for Persephone.”
“Okay. Sephie probably should have a bit of meat too,” Calli replied, still half-lost in the hazy warmth of this man’s kiss.
“Sephie?” Malcolm kissed the corner of her mouth.
“I thought sometimes Persephone can be a bit of a mouthful. She should have a nickname.”
“Sephie’s cute,” he agreed.
The kitten let out an insistent little meow, and Calli could feel the kitten’s hunger through the familiar bond.
Malcolm’s hands dropped from her body, and Calli had to hold in a sigh of regret.
With the moment gone, Calli retrieved some cold chicken from the fridge and poured a little bowl of cream, then passed them to Malcolm to lay out.
“I was thinking of making some snickerdoodles. You want to help?” she asked.
Malcolm straightened, having set Persephone’s cream somewhere where Hades couldn’t take it all in one big lap. “Definitely. Just tell me what to do.”
Calli got her grandmother’s recipe book out and set it on the counter, then found the right page. She started finding the ingredients and laying them on the counter, telling Malcolm how to combine them and in what proportions.
Calli turned back to the fridge to get the eggs, only for the hairs on the back of her neck to rise as she sensed magic being performed.
Curious, she turned around.
Malcolm had cast a levitating spell on the bag of flour.
The bag tilted on its side toward a levitating measuring cup, but a second later she saw his mistake.
He’d tightened the spell too much. The bag of flour simply exploded.
White powder covered the room and every surface, like a ninja had set off a smoke bomb.
Calli coughed out a lungful of flour and blinked, then wiped her bone-white hands as she tried to get the dusting off her eyelashes.
Malcolm choked out a curse, causing flour to puff in the air like smoke, making him look like a dragon.
“Well…” Calli cleared her throat, still tasting the chalkiness of the flour.
“I don’t recommend levitating flour bags until you practice more.
The trick is that you have to concentrate the spell on the flour within the bag or it will collapse and lose its shape, causing it to explode like it just did. ”
“Ahh.” Malcolm brushed hands over his shirt, creating more billowing clouds of flour in the air. “There’s a lot more science and logic to magic than I realized.”
A tiny ghost suddenly leapt up onto the counter and padded over to her, mewling.
“Persephone?” Calli scooped up the kitten, who sneezed and batted at her head with one paw. She rubbed the kitten’s fur to try and remove the flour, but it seemed to be settling in.
Malcolm reached over and picked the kitten out of her hands. “How about you bake the cookies? I’ll go clean Sephie up.” He glanced down at Hades, who was also as white as a ghost. “And him.”
Calli bit her lip to keep from laughing as he led the animals out of the room, leaving white footprints in the hallway.
Torn between shaking her head and laughing, Calli focused on the flour-covered surface of the kitchen.
She tried to avoid magic when it came to general cleaning—some things were just better with that personal touch—but this was a time when having magic was very much appreciated.
She closed her eyes and began a restoration incantation.
The flour lifted into the air from every surface and came toward the remnants of the exploded bag.
The flour formed into a pack shape, and the bag knit itself back together.
It took only a minute, and the kitchen looked like nothing had happened.
She grinned. Perfect. Now it was time to bake those cookies.
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