The first time I put my hand on to that paper and opened my mind to

Olivia's soul, I felt the enormous rush of power begin to flow into me.

I quickly suppressed it, albeit with some reluctance. Even the power of one soul can be astronomically potent in the hands of a warlock. You see, in its natural form, the soul does quite a few important things for a person. Just Like your physical body, it has more than one thing to do at once. Magic is powered by its energy but a mage can't use the full potential of his own soul without destroying those important functions the soul provides. When you have a line into someone else's, then things become much less disagreeable. You can use it all up and drain them dry for an incredible amount of power.

Of course it leaves them soulless husks, and what's left of their existence is something not entirely unlike a waking coma.

Ny first experience with all that raw, useable power was when I touched

Olivia's soul for the first time. Another cool thing that happens in that moment is that you tend to gain a great deal of insight into the person who signed the contract. It's not like reading their thoughts, but more like you just understand them and who they are on a very basic level. Olivia tended to put up a very hard front to mask a great many insecurities. She had a great deal of drive and it made her soul very strong in spite of a troubled love life. It wasn't very dissimilar to what I expected to find but still, seeing her soul laid bare was quite an experience.

I Laid some of the bindings upon her that I would need if things turned nasty on our date. With a snap of my fingers I could command her to do anything I wanted. Oh, the power! Still, it wasn't anything that changed her psyche or who she was, so I was quite pleased with myself.

I considered plunging deeper and actually Listening to her thoughts, but that would make the entire exercise of dating her somewhat moot.

I spent about an hour practising some other stuff, just to see if I could do it. Once I was finished I did my usual routine of elemental magic before I turned to the more mundane chores of homework. When it was all finished, there was only one thing left to do. I opened the Nocturne Compendium and asked for an index of its entries regarding the alchemical art of transmutation.

Now, I'll be honest with you, turning lead into gold is not easy. Even with magic, you end up putting so much power into the reaction that it isn't even remotely economic. This is because gold isn't just a very

Valuable metal to regular folks like you, it's also a very useful substance in magical terms too. Many of the greatest potions require gold as a part of them and the metal is also one of the most potent enchantable materials. So using alchemy to turn anything into gold is somewhat difficult.

Having said all that, diamonds are easy as pie to create out of almost anything. So it's not Like we magical folk really have much of a problem attaining wealth. Money has never really been something I was all that bothered about. I figured with all my time spent learning things that money was eventually bound to pour in because I'd be an astrophysicist or a doctor by the time I was 30. I didn't just fill up my bank account and move to Hawaii when I was finally able to use magic because I still wanted to go to a university and spend at least the first year in the dorms.

ALL that didn't change the fact that right then I needed some extra money and I figured that it was as good a time as any to see if alchemy worked. Sufficed to say that by midnight that night I was the owner of five uncut diamonds the size of golf balls.

The next day, I did skip school. I took one of my diamonds to a Local jeweller I knew of who was a thrifty old bastard who hated anyone younger than 5@. I strolled in to his shop when it was empty and placed the fruit of my Labour on the glass counter. You should have seen the way his eyes bulged. The thing was worth well over a million pounds and he knew it. I hoped he had some savings put away for me.

I played stupid of course, I only wanted about £30,000 to open a bank account and give me a decent start at university. So I asked him for it and sure enough, a quick trip to the bank Later and I was considerably richer whilst the jeweller figured he'd taken me for the biggest idiot in the galaxy. I'd just taken him for some quick cash. With that, I quickly started spending on my date.

So, by the time 7:30 rolled around, I was dressed in a very expensive, tailored Armani suit and travelling in a hired Limousine. It was a very nice ride too, not one of those designed for hired parties with a phone number scrawled across the side. My driver for the night was a nice middle-aged gentleman named Vince who was slightly surprised when he drove through my estate to pick me up. This was mostly due to the fact that he didn't often pick up clients from places that didn't look like they'd been renovated since the blitz.

He'd been nice enough to only look somewhat taken aback and not to mention anything when he'd opened the door for me. Olivia dwelled within a nicer part of town in amongst a set of overpriced Luxury flats. I pulled up outside her window and saw her face looking down into the parking lot to see if I was coming. There was a short minute in which she just stood there gawping at my means of transportation before her head disappeared and I awaited her arrival.

She stepped out of the door of the apartment and it was my turn to gawp. I'd seen her dressed like a whore, I'd seen her dressed like a professional, plain-clothes cop but this was the first time I'd seen her dressed to impress. She certainly managed it. The strings of a smooth, little, black silk dress rested over her bare shoulders as the material fell down to her mid thigh. I was treated to the sight of an enticing hint of cleavage as her petite breasts were clearly braless in that Little number. Her Long Legs were left bare and she was wearing a classier pair of black open-toed high heels on her feet. A golden bracelet adorned her left wrist as the only jewellery she wore. That medium-Length auburn hair was freshly combed and fell smoothly about her face, to which she had applied a light layer of make-up.

I definitely approved.

“Hi.” I actually think I gulped somewhat audibly shortly after I said that.