It's Just Magic Pt. 11-12

I was playing in a Holiday Poker Tournament and had worked my way to the finals. As we played I discovered that I could not read one of the players; he had magic and his shields were up. I had to beat him at poker. We were playing pretty evenly, then he called me on what I thought had been a good bluff. As the game went on he outplayed me a couple more times and he eventually won the evening.

After the game ended and we were alone he said, "You're pretty good, but you occasionally drop your shields when you are stressed, like that big bluff you were trying to pull."

I didn't know what to say. My Father had said that my shields would hold up against anything except an all out attack by a powerful mage. Yet this man was able to peak through when I was stressed. "Thank you for the information."

The next day I contacted Lori's father. I explained what had happened and asked if I could see him. We went over and he tried to test my shields, but couldn't find any weaknesses. "I would be happy to introduce you to my old Master. He's getting up in years, but I think that he would meet with you as a favor to me."

The next weekend we met Master Otto at his home. He appeared to be about 110 years old. But his mind was sharp and his magic was strong. He examined each of us.

"Who worked with you on your shields?"

"My Father, David _____," I replied.

"I should have known," Master Otto muttered to himself. Then, more clearly, he said, "Your father has something of a blemished record, I'm sorry to say."

"I have gathered that. How bad is the problem? "

"Now that it has been discovered, not too bad. He left a back door through your shields. He could enter your mind at will and you wouldn't know that he was there. It probably required many times the normal amount of magical energy to hold them in place like that. Fortunately, you seem to have that in abundance. We will have to rebuild your shields, but now that the problem has been identified, we can make short work of that."

"Would you check Lori as well?"

"Certainly. Now that we know what we are looking for, it should be easily found."

Within seconds Master Otto said, "Yes, the same opening. If you could return next Saturday morning, we can make short work of that."

On the drive home Lori asked if I was going to confront my father. "What's the point? It will be clear to him the first time that he touches either of our minds. He has given us a lot of training, but I will not get any more from him. He will know, we already know, we can leave it at that."

The next Saturday we met with Master Otto. He did make quick work of rebuilding our shields. He commented that each of us had unusually powerful abilities, and he asked if we would like to train with him. "I would consider it an honor to be able to work with two such powerful wizards," he said. "I can't do such long sessions any more, but I am a pretty good teacher."

We both were honored by his offer and happily accepted. We arranged for one Saturday morning a month.

We made love almost every night, sometimes several times.

The poker games were providing most of our income, which was far above our expenses. "While we are still making money on the poker games and probably will for quite a while, I fear that the time will come when I have won too much and I won't be invited so often. We enjoy our shows, but they can never be a livelihood. We each have years of school ahead. Do we have any other good sources of income?"

"What about the stock market, or the lottery. Winning at either of those should be easy when I can see the future," she said with a smile.

"So many people win the lottery, then blow all their winnings on wild living and end up right where they started or worse," I said.

Lori asked, "Can you claim the lottery winnings anonymously?"

"I think so using a lawyer as an agent. But if we're serious about this, we would need to get established with a lawyer and be sure. We ought to have our wills and other legal stuff done anyhow. We could use that to get established and ask the question as a part of the conversation," I said.

"That sounds good. What other things should we consider?"

"I think that it'd be a little suspicious for us to have never bought a ticket, then buy just one and win. They might still have to pay, but it would raise questions. So I think that we should buy a few tickets each week starting soon."

"I guess that makes sense," she said.

"I don't want to take the winnings away from someone who will really benefit from it and make a real difference in their lives. There are enough jerks in the world that we can win one of their jackpots."

"And how are you going to do that?"

"Well, I know this beautiful and talented young woman who will one day be the mother of my children, and she has an amazing talent."

"Oh, really," Lori smirked.

"Yes, she can see the future."

"Oh, really?"

"So she could pick one of the huge lotteries, like MegaMillions or something, and identify several of those huge jackpots, say over $1 billion. She could look at the life of each of those winners after another 5 or 10 years to see what it has done for them. If you find someone worse off than before winning, we will win it the week before."

"You make it sound so easy," she said.

"I know that it will take some work and research... "

"But it really won't be that hard," she said with a smile.

The next day Lori appeared with several sheets of paper. "I think that we have our candidate," she said as she sat down beside me. "In about three months a guy is going to win the MegaMillions for over $1 billion. He's going to go completely off the rails buying cars and yachts, surrounding himself with paid escorts and getting heavily into drugs. Less than a year after winning he will overdose and die."

"That sounds like exactly the situation we were looking for. We can make the appointment with the lawyer and start buying just a few tickets. In the process, we can try to save this guy from himself."

We put our plan in motion and waited for our jackpot to come around. We talked about how we could best use the money. "If we could find several companies that are on their way up, companies that could see their stock value multiply over the next 5 or 10 years, we could slowly invest in their stocks without disrupting the markets."

"That sounds good, but you can't do that with a billion dollars."

"True. Of course we would take the lump sum which is less than half of the published amount. We will have to pay the lawyer a hefty fee, we will want to have a healthy cash reserve to live on until we have graduated. I thought that we would buy a house. Not too extravagant but comfortable with four or five bedrooms."

"Why so many...? Oh. Just how many kids were you thinking about?"

"Maybe three?" I asked tentatively.

Lori smiled. "We can talk about that. I guess it's not out of the question."

"And I'd like to buy the biggest, sparkliest diamond ring I could find to put on your left hand."

Lori launched into my arms at that, and covered me with kisses. "I really do like that idea. Maybe we could get married sooner rather than later?"

"You would have to promise to finish school and have your parents approval. I don't want us to let the money short circuit our basic life plans. I hope that we can have a modest but comfortable life. If your parents needed assistance in their later years, we would certainly be able to help. When we are established, we could contribute to chaities that we would like to support. We would establish a substantial trust for our children and their children. But in all of this, we would not go crazy."

"I will definitely finish college, and probably start teaching. I can't sit around doing magic all day, although I might see whether historical research would interest me now that I would have more direct insights. Would we tell our parents?"

"I'm not sure that my parents deserve to know. I don't want anyone to know how much we won, but we could tell your parents if we can downplay the amount. That might relieve some concerns about our getting married sooner."

"I like the part about a modest but comfortable life. I have never been comfortable around people who have lots of money and seem to flaunt it. And I really like the part about the diamond!" Then she kissed me again.

"I still think that I want to work as a prosecutor. My ability to hear a witness's thoughts would be invaluable. I want to protect the innocent and prosecute the guilty. But that might leave you doing a lot of the money management. With your insights, you are probably better equipped to handle that anyhow."

Lori quipped, "How much work could handling a measly half-billion dollars be anyhow?"

Over the next few weeks we spent nearly every free minute reviewing companies today and five and ten years into the future, except for the time we spent making love. The near assurance of having a huge nest egg to rely on relieved any financial stresses. In reality, if we lived anything except the most extravagant lifestyle, we could never spend the whole amount in our lifetime.

In general we put our plan in place. I began buying a few lottery tickets each week. We met with a well regarded lawyer to have our wills, medical power of attorney, and other important documents created. I asked whether a lottery winner could claim their prize anonymously, and she said yes, if you create a special trust. She asked, "Are you planning to win the lottery? It's a real long shot."

I laughed and said, "Well somebody's going to win, it might as well be us." And we all laughed.

In our sessions with Master Otto he asked about our spell-casting abilities. Lori and I both sat bewildered. Spell-casting abilities? We had never heard anything about spell casting. But as I thought about it, that was probably the 'charms' that my father had been referring to.

"We have no idea what abilities we may have in casting spells. We have absolutely no training in that," I said.

"Well, given your other abilities, I would expect that each of you would have good ability to cast spells. Do you want to learn? It will take some work, but I think that it will be worth it."

Lori asked, "What kinds of things are we talking about?"

"There are thousands of spells, maybe millions. Some of the more common are protective and warding spells that protect a place or person from intrusion or harm. Some might be trivial, like the umbrella spell that keeps the rain off of you. There's probably a spell for almost anything you can imagine. Some require powerful magic to create. There are spells that duplicate some of your natural powers, like Invisibility or mind reading, but the spell usually takes much more magic flow and is less effective than the natural power."

"Where would be a good place to start?" I asked. "Possibly a spell that would protect our home from intruders?"

"Maybe we should start with something a little simpler. There is a simple spell that causes plants to grow extremely rapidly. Let's try that.

"Each spell has it's own command or incantation. You need to learn the words, but also how to connect the words to your magic.

"The command for grow is Crescere and the name of the plant you want to grow. I happen to have some tomato plants that I have started in my window the traditional way. Of course all of the other elements required for the growth must also be present; food, water, etc. And if there are multiple plants, and you don't want to difuse your magic over them all, you will have to focus on the specific plant or plants you want to affect."

Lori looked at a plant, closed her eyes to focus what she wanted to happen, said Crescere and the plant started to visibility grow. In seconds it was a foot tall. "You did it." I exclaimed.

"Very good," said Master Otto. "You gave it just enough. First timers either don't use enough magic and nothing happens, or they overdo it and the plant grows so much that it runs out of food or water and it grows and dies."

I tried and the plant grew to over three feet, then wilted and died. "Too much, too fast," I said before anyone else had a chance.

"Yes, but you connected your spell with your magic and that's often the most difficult thing. So it wasn't a total failure."

"Master Otto, the binding of magic and removal of the binding, is that also spell magic?"

"Placing the binding is a spell that is not too difficult to learn, although it requires a good amount of care. Removing a binding that you placed is only slightly harder, although it gets harder the longer it is in place. Removing a binding that someone else placed is very much more difficult."

We worked on several simple spells and made good progress. "Whenever you think we are ready, we would like to learn how to cast protective spells on our home."

"Protection against magic or against physical intrusion?"

"Actually both. My relationship with my father has deteriorated somewhat, so I want that protection. But mostly I'm thinking about typical physical protection."

"Who do you want to have access? How dou want to to allow visitors? You will need to think this through. For magical protection, is all magic prohibited? Just you and Lori? Again, there are many things to think through. I don't think that you are ready to try something like that quite yet, but we will work on it before too long."

Over the coming weeks we met with Master Otto every week. We played in some poker tournaments and did some shows so money was still coming in. Finally, it was the week for 'our' lottery.

As always, we bought several tickets, including the winning numbers. We actually watched the drawings, and we won. (Surprise.)

The next day we met with our attorney. She laughed and said, "Well, you said that somebody will win, it might as well be you."

We had her prepare the paperwork. She will need to be involved in many of the financial transactions to qualify this as a blind trust. The immediate payout was $622 million and she would handle all of that. We provided a list of 30 companies that we wanted to invest in, and an investment schedule. We had selected 100 banks across the state that we would deposit the maximum insured amount. The investments with the banks and the high growth companies would total $200 million. And then she recommended temporary places to put the bulk of the money until we develop a plan for that.

We had talked about buying or building a house, but decided to wait until after graduation. We continued to perform the magic shows and play poker tournaments, but much less frequently. The school year came to an end; during the break we spent more time working on our magical abilities and spells. We met with Master Otto every week and he was training us how to develop an perfect our own unique spells for special uses.

We decided to wait until after graduation to get married, but we bought a 2 carat, colorless, near perfect clarity diamond solitaire ring for Lori. And we practiced for our wedding night nearly every day, sometimes several times.

Our life unfolded much as we had hoped. Our financial windfall from the lottery remained anonymous. We continued to study hard and each of us was on a path to graduate with honors.

We planned a small wedding with just a few family and friends. I invited my parents and my sister. They all came and were even civil to each other. Celine was gorgeous (of course), and she and Lori got along beautifully. But no one was as beautiful as my bride. We were thrilled that Master Otto was able to attend.

We allowed ourselves a small extravagance and chartered a sailing yacht for a two week cruise around the Caribbean with an all female crew. We intended it to be largely a nude cruise except when we were in port, and Lori thought that she would be more comfortable with a female crew.

Lori's future looks into the stock market allowed our portfolio to earn over 50% in just over two years.

Master Otto was physically frail, but mentally sharp. I asked him if he knew of a spell that would prevent another person from intentionality lying. Of course someone could be mistaken, but I was planning to become a prosecutor and having a spell like that would be a great tool. We researched numerous spell books that he had and came up with nothing. There were a few potions and serums that had to be ingesting, but no spells.

Master Otto suggested that we were three fairly powerful wizards, and we should be able to devise such a spell. We met with Master Otto and learned a great deal more about spell making. It took us several weeks until we finally had a spell that did not require esoteric incantations or special rituals. But we finally developed a spell that I could cast quietly. The target could not lie; he was not forced to tell the truth, but he could not lie. If he tried to lie, it would be as if he had something caught in his throat. He would cough and sputter, but he could not speak the words of the lie.

Law school was an absolute grind, but we followed our tried and true schedule: no sex until studies are done. Lori was working on her Masters program. The second year she was teaching in a local junior high school. She was the favorite of all the boys in school. She was beautiful and they all wanted to be in her class. 7th - 9th grade boys have more hormones than water on their blood at that age. Her Enhanced Hearing and Vision were a great help as well. And she was able to prevent various problems and incidents with her Precognition.

I applied for a position in the County Prosecutor's Office, and began as an associate, the lowest professional level. I was mostly writing briefs for the more experienced lawyers. But I had studied hard, and was able to read their minds, so I could give them briefs that they wanted ... but better than they could have done themselves. And I never had any work thrown back at me for not having understood what the senior attorney wanted.

I was making exceptional progress in the office. Soon I was allowed to go to court with other attorneys as 'second chair', mostly to carry papers and hand the senior attorney the papers he needed. Occasionally I would jot a question or comment for the senior attorney to consider. Because I had been reading a witness's thoughts, my suggestions were often very useful.

The office was extremely busy and we had two major cases going simultaneously. I had been in the office for nearly a year, therefore I was sitting second chair on a very high profile arson case. A local business had mysteriously burned to the ground. The accused was a competitor of that company and the next scheduled witness had said that he had seen the competitor carrying a 5 gallon container of fuel in the vicinity of the burned building. The owner had a questionable reputation, as did the accused competitor.

I listened to the mind of the up coming witness. It was all over the place, rehearsing what he would say, worrying about his wife and two daughters, and thinking about a wad of cash. He seemed to have been practicing his testimony with someone, but he was a prosecution witness, so any practice would have been with us. It didn't make sense. And the Assistant Prosecutor had not yet arrived.

The link between Lori's and my mind had grown stronger and stronger, so that I could connect to her from almost anywhere. I reached out to her and asked her to trace this witness's family. She could see both the past and future of anything or anyone she chose. In a few moments she placed an image of a woman and two small girls being forced into a van. Then she showed me the house where they had been taken. She also showed me the owner of the building that was burned handing my witness a large envelope of cash and giving him a warning to answer the questions 'right'.