3. Damian

Chapter three

Damian

I t had been a weird-ass day—from the moment the fog appeared, the woman in my car disappearing, the strange store with the weird guy reading cards, and not to mention getting the ring. Now, here I sat in a lawyer's office, which I tended to avoid if possible. Lawyers were nothing but trouble. Advice my dad gave me, and I'd always considered useful.

The problem was I'd seen a vision of this particular lawyer in the weird magic shop. I hadn't recognized him until he took my hand, but now I knew it was definitely the same guy.

"So," he finally said after we stared at each other for a moment. "I, um, I'm going to read you the will, like you know, that's what we do," he added, but I could tell he was as nervous as me.

I listened as he read the will, and my eyes bugged when he listed the assets. "No way," I said. "This is a joke, some kind of weird prank, right? "

He shook his head and shrugged. "I'm going to have Cary call the partners. I'm sorry, I don't quite understand."

I nodded and read the will again after the guy, Owen, I think his name was, handed it over, then got up to talk to the little twink who'd met me when I first came in. He was on the phone with someone for several minutes before he came back, his face flushed. "Okay, so I just talked to my boss. The will is legal, I guess, but we have some forms you have to sign," he said, fumbling through the folder until he came to a bunch of papers held together with a paper clip.

He quickly read them and handed them to me to sign. "I need to see your license. The partners want me to put a copy in your file. You need to fill these out, then it's all yours."

"This is crazy. I didn't even know this guy."

"Listen, this isn't a small amount of money or assets. I'd sign while you can. I'll work with my boss tomorrow and figure out anything we might've missed, but you should jump on this now," he said.

I couldn't disagree. It was a dream come true, even if it was really weird. I gave him my license and read and signed the forms making me a fucking millionaire. Surely, it wouldn't be this easy, I thought. The other shoe would drop, but at least it was a fun dream. Even if I ended up on some reality TV show, maybe they'd pay me for that. Millions of dollars? Probably not, but at least it might be enough that I could stop driving passengers as much and maybe finish my degree .

Owen returned a few moments later, talking on his phone. "Yes, sir, of course, yes, I can do that. I don't need to do anything else, maybe before…" He paused and looked at me, confusion crossing his face, but he nodded. "Okay, just take him to the house and give him the key that's in the file. Yes, you want me to escort him there, okay. Yes, I… Yes, sir, I can do that too."

He hung up and shook his head. "This has been by far the strangest thing I've ever been through, and I worked for my mother five years while going to law school." He took the documents I'd signed, examined them, made me initial something I'd missed, and then took the forms to the guy Cary, who made copies. "The partners want me to escort you to your new home. You'll need to come back tomorrow so they can help you make all the right moves to keep the Internal Revenue Service happy, but according to them, it's all yours now."

Cary came back smiling and even winked at me, which was almost the straw that broke the camel's back. But he disappeared again fast enough, thank goodness. "Okay, well, here's the address. I'm afraid I'll have to take a ride service over. Did you drive?" he asked.

Just then, my phone dinged, and I knew even before I checked that I was his ride. I'd turned the damned service off. I knew that for a fact, and had I not, I would've gotten several calls to drive at this time of day in downtown Seattle, especially with the weather turning bad .

I laughed when I saw I was supposed to pick him up. Okay, more weird, way too much weird in one day. I turned my phone to show him. "I am a professional driver, and just so you know, that was turned off. Apparently, someone wants me to drive you there."

He shook his head and studied me a long time before sighing. "If you kill me, Cary has seen your face, and we have your license on file. So, this better not be some weird murder thing."

I laughed. "Some weird murder thing? I think you've been watching too much true crime."

The guy chuckled. "New town, new life, I admit it. TV is my boyfriend at the moment."

Did he just tell me he's gay? Of course, if this wasn't a reality TV show, and some guy didn't pop out to tell me it had been a hoax, I had just become a millionaire. I was now prime real estate.

I'll admit Owen didn't seem like the type to care that much. You could always tell the players; at least, I could after driving professionally all these years, and before that, riding in the taxi with my dad. People were usually easy to read, and this guy seemed like one of the good ones.

Of course, I could be high on something, and this was all just some hallucination. Either way, I'd be storing this guy's number in my phone. Something I never did, but on this occasion, I was going to make an exception.