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.
