“How?”
“Because I love her! I went to war against my family to be with her. I have no regrets in choosing her. Not for an instant.”
“Well, I love Calli,” Malcolm said. A moment later his own words caught up with him. He loved Calli. He wanted to bask in that revelation, but this wasn’t the time.
“Be sensible. You barely know the girl. Come home with me. The Council is waiting for you. Lady Batsford only has so much patience.”
The binding spell his father had cast on him before he left Boston prickled against his skin at the reminder that his father was trying to force him to return to Boston to join the Council. He shuddered, trying to shake the enchantment off, even though he knew it wouldn’t work.
“It’s not my destiny, dad.”
His father dragged a hand over his face as he let out a weary breath.
“But it is, Malcolm. The day you were born, a seer was in the hallway just outside where your mother and I were. She had a vision about you, just before you came into the world. You knocked out all the power in the hospital and half of Boston for a full five minutes. You came into this world quite simply exploding with magic.”
Malcolm stared at his father, a terrible sense of dread rising inside him. He had never known that about his birth.
“What did the seer say?” He finally asked, his voice quiet.
“She said you were a warlock of a new age. That you would someday lead the Council, that you would save magic at its source once you married a powerful witch. You and your witch would change magic forever.” His father cleared his throat. “I had hoped that if you got to know the witches from the best families, you would find that perfect match the witch the seer spoke of.” Malcolm had the sense his father wasn’t telling him everything, however.
“The point is,” Reginald continued. “You have a destiny beyond this little town. The Council made me promise you will take your place.”
“You shouldn’t have made that promise. You got to make your own choices and marry the woman you loved even though she wasn’t a part of your world, and yet you’d take away my freedom to do the same? I’m not going back to Boston,” Malcolm said. “So unless you want some of the coffee Calli offered, you can leave.”
Reginald’s green eyes betrayed his emotions, but only for an instant. He cleared his throat and tugged at the edge of suit again in an old nervous habit Malcolm knew he tried to hide.
“Very well.” He walked back through the hallway toward the front door, Malcolm right on his heels.
“Good night, Ms.Wynters,” he called over his shoulder. “I do apologize for the late night disturbance.”
Calli rushed out from the kitchen, smiling. “Please don’t be afraid to come back. I would love the chance to talk to you.”
Reginald offered her a polite smile, warmer than Malcolm expected, then his eyes turned to Malcolm and hardened again.
“Remember your duty, Malcolm. The more you fight a prophecy, the worse it becomes. Take me home.” Then he vanished, and a baseball rolled around on the wooden deck where he had been a second ago. A faint lacing of a spell covered its surface.
Calli bent to pick up the baseball. “What spell is that?”
“A traveling totem one. My father doesn’t like portals. Too messy and they tend to cause problems. He prefers to use random items instead. If I know him, he left this for me to get home, should I want to. All I have to do is pick it up, say take me home, and I’ll be transported right into my parents’ house. The baseball will stay here. There will be a matching totem wherever this will take you that can get you back here.”
“My grandmother had something similar. You know the archway into the back gardens?”
“The one covered with flowers?”
“That one.” Calli smiled. “If you tell it where you wish to go, it will do the same thing. You simply walk through it, and you are immediately in the other place.”
“I guess we aren’t that different, are we?”
She wrapped her free arm around his and held the baseball out to him. “No, we really aren’t.” He reluctantly accepted it and put it on the reading table by the couch.
“I’m sorry he was so rude to you.”
Calli turned to face him and hugged him. “He wasn’t.”
He wrapped his arms around her in return. God, it felt good just to hold her.
“What did he say to you? If you don’t mind me asking.”
