Chapter 1 #2
“They don’t want me, you know they don’t.
I’m considered defective. I can’t control what little magic I have.
” As he spoke, the trio of glass light fixtures that hung above the granite island countertop flickered, no doubt in response to Malcolm’s strained emotions.
His father waved a hand and the flickering stopped.
“You’ve never tried. Not since that broom dropped you onto that barbed wire fence when you were fourteen.”
They both knew that he’d dropped himself, a broom always channeled the magic of the rider to work and he didn’t have enough power to keep it steady.
“Can you blame me for wanting to leave magic behind?” Malcolm’s left palm flashed with an echo of pain at the memory.
He’d been riding well and had left Boston far behind him to explore the world around him on his first real broom ride without supervision.
The moon had been full, but storm clouds drifted overhead, blotting out much of the landscape.
He’d fought to control his broom as a storm picked up and pushed him farther from home than he’d intended.
When the wind forced him into an unexpected dive, he’d nearly been hit by a semi-truck on the highway.
The truck had swerved to miss him, and he’d been just able to force the broom to climb up into the clouds out of sight.
A few minutes later, his magic completely abandoned him, and the broom plummeted.
He’d been so startled that he lost control, falling, and he had grabbed the first thing nearby out of instinct…
which happened to be a tall barbed wire fence.
He had walked several hours to get home, tears rolling down his face, his broken broom in his right hand and clutching his bleeding left hand to his chest. When he showed his injured hand to his father, Reginald had ushered him into the kitchen and cleaned his wound, then worked his magic to heal it, but the scar on his palm itched whenever he thought about the accident.
By the time his mother got home, Reginald had smoothed over the incident as an ordinary magical accident, insisting everyone had a fall off a broom at one point or another.
Then he left the house, and didn’t return until after dawn.
That was when Malcolm knew he’d let his father down. That he was a disappointment.
Now his father was staring at him with those green eyes they shared and his brows lowered in a scowl. He harrumphed and crossed his arms over his chest.
“You let the past hold you back, Malcolm. Accidents happen. It’s a normal part of childhood. Even I had my moments when I was younger.” He chuckled, much to Malcolm’s surprise. “I set my charm professor’s hair on fire when I was twelve.”
As usual, his father had missed the point. “Dad, I don’t want this. Can’t you respect that? I’ve built a normal life for myself. I don’t need magic.”
His mother nudged Reginald in the ribs and cleared her throat. “Sweetheart, you promised you’d talk, not fight.” His father took the cup of espresso his mother offered and sipped it, eyeing Malcolm as he did.
A loud ring caused Malcolm to jolt, and Hades gave a sharp single bark of alarm.
“Sorry! That’s me.” His mother dug her phone out of her jeans pocket. “Hello?” The lights above the kitchen island began to flicker again.
“Hello?” she repeated. “Joe? Can you hear me? Hang on.” She gave Malcolm an apologetic smile.
“I’ve got to take this. I’ll go to my office.
I get less magical interference there,” He knew from his mother’s pointed glance between them that she suspected the tension between him and his father was causing that magical interference.
He gave his mother a nod, and she kissed his cheek with a whisper of “try to behave,” before she left the room.
Malcolm and his father were now alone. It did not make things easier.
“I put your name down on the Council scrolls the day you were born. I am bound by the promise I made for you to serve ten years.” He let out a sigh. “You must take your place by the end of the year.”
The “or else” was there, unspoken. Onyx paced along the counter, his slender black tail waving as he came to Reginald and brushed his furry cheek against his warlock’s shoulder as he purred.
The cat then gave a contemptuous glance at Malcolm’s familiar.
Hades stared at the cat with the intense focus of his breed.
Malcolm stroked the dog’s head, trying to break the tension.
Hades whined softly. The dog wanted to chase that cat down the hall, as he had when he was a puppy, but Onyx would swat him with those sharp claws.
“I can contact Serafina Batsford. Her husband has a talent for teaching magic to those who fall behind.”
“You mean Curtis Batsford? He works with kids, dad. I’m thirty.”
“All the more reason you need his help!” Reginald snapped. “If you hadn’t been so damned stubborn as a child, you would have learned to control your magic. Hell, you’d probably be witch-locked by now and already serving on the Council.”
“Witch-locked?” Malcolm scoffed. “You think getting married will solve this?”
“Of course! It’s a proven fact among our kind that falling in love increases the potency of one’s magic.”
Shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, Malcolm looked away.
“I don’t want the magic I already have, let alone make it more potent.
Besides, I can’t believe you’d fall for something like Madame Zengala’s Medicinal Love Potions, those are just quick booster spells to enhance power.
It’s not real.” He remembered those stupid ads in his father’s Warlocks Monthly magazine.
“I’m not talking about some silly potion. I’m talking about your heritage. You come from a long line of power, you can’t turn your back on that.”
“I absolutely can.”
“You don’t mean that,” his father said. “Your magic is a gift.”
“Maybe for you. For me, it’s a curse.” They stared at one another for a long, tense moment.
“Malcolm, regardless of what you feel, your duty has been determined and your fate is set.”
“You made that promise. You never let me have a choice in the matter. So you can deal with telling the council I’m not coming.”
“You will take your place on the Council, and that is the end of the matter.” His father’s voice was punctuated by the flashing brightness of the lights in the room. Silky tendrils of a binding enchantment began to swirl around Malcolm, tightening around him.
Malcolm glared at his father. “You would spellbind your own son?”
Reginald matched his angry tone. “If I must.” The spell continued to sizzle against Malcolm’s body, green sparks shot off as he resisted.
It wasn’t a strong spell, not yet, but it would grow stronger over the coming months, forcing Malcolm to do exactly what his father wished.
But it was forbidden to spellbind anyone except in very rare circumstances.
“Remove it now,” Malcolm growled. He wasn’t a kid anymore, standing in awe of his father’s spellwork.
“I cannot,” Reginald said, icy as a northern sea. “I have orders from the council to make you comply by the end of the year.”
Malcolm wasn’t staying. His father had crossed a line to spellbind his own son. He turned and left the room.
His father shouted after him. “Malcolm, you have until December thirty-first.”
“Let’s go, Hades.” Malcolm whistled, and his familiar rushed after him as he strode toward the front door.
The eyes of his ancestors in the portraits followed him.
As he stormed through the house, a few doors slammed in response to the discordant magic.
Malcolm didn’t care. He was going back to New York, back to his life.
Screw magic. He’d chain himself to his desk if he had to.
Or he’d find some other way to circumvent a binding spell.
He crossed the street to his motorcycle and shoved on his helmet.
Hades leapt into the sidecar as Malcolm gunned the bike to life.
The pair shot into the street, but as they circled around to pass by the house, Malcolm saw his father’s face in a second floor window, watching him, that disapproving scowl visible a mile off.
Rage surged within his chest as he drove off. The magic he so despised inside him came roaring to the surface in response to his father’s spell.
Just then, a portal of bright light flashed in front of Malcolm. Before he could stop his bike, he and Hades shot through the light straight into a witch wormhole.
Malcolm shouted as he tried to turn the bike around, but it was no use.
It careened through time and space, every color imaginable blowing past him, some only visible to those sensitive to magic.
A symphony of sound deafened his ears as he tried to find some way to escape the portal, which seemed to stretch into forever.
Just as suddenly as he’d entered it…the portal vanished, spilling him and Hades out with his engine still at full throttle.
The motorcycle tore across fields, crashed into fences and plowed through a dozen massive pumpkins in a large patch, completely obliterating the hapless orange fruit, sending pumpkin purée everywhere.
Malcolm choked on pumpkin guts as he tried to wipe his eyes.
The bike finally crashed into a flowery archway, and Malcolm was thrown headfirst into a patch of creeping, crawling pumpkin vines.
The earth beneath him rumbled as though the earth was quaking, or perhaps that was just his body reacting to being flung through a portal?
At first he didn’t move. He just lay there in the dark, wondering if he was dead. Then he dared to open his eyes and breathed in a loamy aroma, its earthy scent both awakening and oddly soothing at the same time.
I’m not dead. But I’m covered in pumpkin guts…
With a groan, he lay still, taking stock of his injuries. Nothing felt broken, but he was going to hurt like hell once the shock wore off.
“Hades?” he called out as he took his helmet off. “You okay?”
Vines rustled as the black giant schnauzer shot out of the garden. When he reached him, he snuffled and then licked the pumpkin shrapnel off Malcolm’s face. Then barked, wanting Malcolm to get up.
“Give me a minute.”
Finally, he sat up, wiping the pumpkin off his leather motorcycle jacket and stared around the vine patch he’d landed in. This wasn’t anywhere near New York or Boston as far as he could tell.
A massive garden sprawled out all around him, filled with flowers and vegetables.
The pumpkins had been destroyed, his motorcycle having left a swath of destruction through them.
But the rest of the garden was untouched.
Shimmering golden pebbles created a winding path that led to a white Victorian house in the distance.
Hades settled down beside Malcolm as they stared at the sandy gold walkway glowing with a faint illuminating spell, enough to see by on a dark night.
He could feel magic all around him, but it wasn’t blood magic like he had.
This was earth magic, elemental. And it was everywhere.
Even the vines seemed to shimmer with the fresh dew of enchantments on their leaves.
A witch lived here. That much was obvious. Malcolm climbed to his feet and patted his familiar’s black furry head.
“Hades, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” he muttered.