Page 20 of Enslaved By Magic

“Money,” was the prompt response. It was always money. In all her years of granting wishes, money had only ever been superseded by wishes she’d been unable to grant like love, health in most circumstances, and immortality. When she’d denied those, it always reverted to money.

“Really? Always? That seems sort of boring and predictable.” He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he dried the dishes, and she pretended not to notice.

“Humans are predictable, and yes, always. To be fair, it’s not a bad wish. Once you have money, it limits the other things you need, so it makes the other wishes easier,” she said with a laugh. The coil of tension in her stomach began to loosen as the domestic scene relaxed her. She washed and rinsed each dish; he dried and put them away. It was comfortable.

“Guess I should follow the trend then. Money would solve a lot of my problems. I mean, I planned to be rich someday, I just thought it was going to take a lot longer to get there.” He paused, dish towel held loosely in one hand. “How would it work though—I mean I can’t just suddenly have a ton of money with no explanation of how I got it.”

She handed him a glass, the last one, and let the water out of the sink as she answered, “What do you mean? People usually just say it’s an inheritance or something, I think, but you already told your uncle about me, so why do you need to say anything?”

“Right, but I’m not worried about my family; I’m worried about explaining it to the IRS,” he said. He gave the glass a quick dry and placed it in the cabinet before turning to give her his full attention. “They kind of frown on mysterious money.”

She was confused, shaking her head. “I don’t understand, but then I usually just grant the wishes. Often people would move away and start a new life and pretend they always had money. That’s what Janvier did. When I granted his wish for great wealth, he immigrated to the United States with it. That would have been in—” She paused, looking thoughtful as she tried to do the math in her head.

Almost thirty years locked away, but at least ten years with him before he finally made his second wish and then ordered her into the bottle for the last time. It was hard for her to keep track of the dates when the days and months blurred together as they did. “Early 1970s I think, or maybe the 1960s. Have things really changed so much that your government counts every penny you have?” she asked, surprise clear in her voice. She’d thought the United States was built on personal freedom, but apparently things were different now.

“Yeah, something happened in the 90s that… well, it changed things. They keep pretty close track of money, and in order to bring in mystery money, you have to have some kind of a way to explain having it. I guarantee if millions of dollars just appear in my bank account tomorrow, the Feds will be here within hours demanding to know where it came from,” he said with complete assurance.

“Oh.” She sighed, of course things were getting more difficult as the world got smaller. “Well, that makes things a little harder, but I’m sure there’s a way around it. What if I just arrange for you to find some buried treasure?” she suggested.

Luke brightened and then frowned, “I’m not sure how that works legally. I think whoever owns the property might have a claim, or insurance companies might get involved so it would have to be something really old.”

“Maybe some lost Incan gold? I’m sure it would be worth a lot and you could sell—”

He interrupted, “Uh, no. That’s kind of frowned on now. It’s considered a cultural treasure, so it would belong to museums in South America. It would be almost impossible to keep any of it.”

She just stared at him. “Seriously? Okay, fine. It’s fine; we’ll think of something,” she said. None of her past experiences in a less regulated world had prepared her for this, neither had the many books on genies she’d read over the years. Though maybe she could find some new books in the library that would give her some ideas.

“Wait! I’ve got it… I think,” he said excitedly. “Lottery! I can win one of those big lotteries where the winner gets millions.”

She squinted, tilting her head. “The what?”

“The lottery—people buy tickets with numbers on them, and whoever has the ticket with all the right numbers wins a bunch of money,” he explained.

“The only lotteries I’ve heard of before were—not good things, but if you think it will work, we can try it. How would I grant this wish?” she asked.

“Do you need to know how something works to make it happen? I mean do you have to know everything about it or will just my asking for what I need be enough?”

“The bottle usually sorts out a way to make it happen,” she said, explaining it nonchalantly. She often didn’t even know what the things being wished for were, but the bottle always seemed to be able to do it anyway, using her as a conduit for the magic. “If it can’t do it, then the wish won’t count anyway, so you might as well try it.”

“Okay, then this is my wish: I want—wait, one second,” he said, interrupting himself. “I’ll be right back!”

To her surprise he grabbed his wallet off the counter and dashed out the door. She stared after him in confusion and eventually settled on the couch to wait. She had no idea what he was doing, but as long as he was working on making his first wish, she didn’t care.

Fifteen minutes later he was back, waving a scrap of paper in front of her face. “This is it!” he said.

“That is paper, yes,” she agreed, none the wiser. She reached out and took it, looking down at it curiously. There was a long row of numbers, with the last one in a circle. “I don’t know what this means,” she said, shooting a questioning glance at him.

He dropped down on the couch and leaned in to point. “This is a lottery ticket. It costs a couple bucks and all the tickets they sell go into a big pot of money. Then they pull the numbers out randomly and the person who gets all of these numbers in this order wins the whole pot of money. If more than one person gets them right, they have to share, but it’s usually still a lot.”

The explanation made sense, and she nodded. “Okay, so now you have this ticket, what happens?” she asked.

“Now, I get to make my wish.” He gave her a grin and rubbed his hands together dramatically while she waited with a look of patient exasperation for him to continue.

He took a minute, as if planning his words and then spoke. “This is my wish: I wish for this ticket to be the one and only grand prize winner in this lottery drawing on this Friday night,” he said. He put so much emphasis on the specifics that it was obvious he was still worried she might try to trick him. She couldn’t really blame him; she knew the same stories he did.

When he was finished, he looked at her uncertainly. “Can—can you do that? Will that work? It has to be these exact numbers and the number in the circle has to be the last number picked, it’s important,” he explained.

“Yes, yes I think so!” She felt a little thrill of excitement run through her as she reached for her connection to the bottle. She could feel it reaching back, stroking with the familiar mental caress that said it was ready, and she could barely control her excitement. This was it! This was his first wish!

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