Chapter 7 - NO WAY!

The next day after Molly left, Erevan turned himself human and followed after her to enact his plan. He needed to be sure he dropped the fake lottery ticket somewhere she would definitely find it.

He stood guard outside her school and used his magic to peer through the walls and locate her. She stood in front of a section of wall with writing on it and pointed to things that were written there while speaking to a group of rowdy children.

From her memories, he knew she was a teacher but it was interesting seeing her do it for himself. The demon realm didn't have schools like this.

The wealthy and powerful used private tutors, such as his former master. He was lucky enough to learn all the same things as the former crown prince's escort. Most demons had to learn through experience on their own.

Erevan waited until Molly brought her class outside to play and stood off to the side to supervise them. From there, it was simple to manipulate the wind and make the lottery ticket fly directly into her face. There was no way she could miss it.

"What the?!" she exclaimed as she carefully peeled it off as best she could with her thick mittens. She squinted at it in disbelief. "A lottery ticket? No way! Guess I should see if I won just for the sake of it."

This was the part that was going to take a bit of work. He had to set up a fake lottery winning website that had the numbers matching the fake ticket but looked like the real thing. The phone number there would end up reaching him and she could claim her prize without anyone being any the wiser. Then he would simply be able to create a check or automatically make the money appear in her bank account.

Erevan had this completely under control. He was simply going to have to follow her staying in human form for the rest of the day and be ready to answer the phone.

When she went back to teaching, he briefly took the opportunity to teleport himself inside the school's library and sneakily borrow a computer to manipulate the fake website. It needed to be ready to go in case Molly checked for the numbers sooner than he expected.

As soon as that was done, he teleported himself back out before anyone got suspicious about whether or not he was supposed to be inside the school. After that, he simply kept an eye on his mistress from the outside as he had been doing before.

Seeing how she spent her time when he wasn't around was strange since he was used to spending almost all of his time with his former master. They were hardly ever apart, which contributed to his shock at being betrayed. He had never seen it coming and it wasn't as if the demon king had much time to plan when he wasn't nearby.

Erevan shook those thoughts free. Thinking about that now was pointless. He had a new master that he was confident wouldn't do the same thing.

He continued watching Molly until she made it back to her apartment. Stealth magic was rather helpful here. She couldn't see him follow her inside in his human form as he watched to see if she was going to check the website he set up.

"Hey, pretty girl!" she greeted Stella, bending down to pet her before looking around. "I wonder where Casper got off to. He's normally here when I get home. Guess he's taking a nap somewhere."

Truthfully, he was standing within her line of sight. She simply couldn't see him because of the magic.

Once Molly changed out of her work clothes, she flopped onto the couch with the lottery ticket in one hand and her phone in the other to see if she won anything. When she saw the results she screamed and her phone and the ticket flew out of her hands as she leapt up.

"NO WAY!" she screeched.

Immediately diving for both fallen objects to double check, she stood back up with shaking knees. She whispered in a tone of complete shock, "I won. I won seventy million dollars."

Molly then began mumbling to herself incomprehensibly using words Erevan wasn't familiar with as she swayed before fainting. Erevan rushed forward to catch her, still hidden with his stealth magic, so Stella's fur stood on end and she began to hiss threateningly.

He supposed it would look strange for their mistress to seemingly be suspended in midair while unconscious. He made himself visible again. "Relax, Stella."

The cat did so immediately. "Oh. It's only you. You better change back into a cat before she wakes up or you're going to be in serious trouble. She'll think you broke into her house or something."

Surprisingly good advice for once. Erevan carefully set Molly down on the ground, knowing if he put her on the couch that she would realize something was off. He then morphed back into his cat form and began pawing at her face to wake her up.

"…why is she not waking up? She received no great wound that would cause such a thing. Is she ill?" he asked worriedly.

"I don't know. I've never seen her do this before," Stella admitted.

She began meowing loudly and that made Molly's eyelids flutter. "Ugh…did I pass out? I guess I forgot to breathe. This is a dream, right? I couldn't have actually won that much money from a lottery ticket I found by chance."

After a few moments, she groggily sat up and groped around on the floor for the ticket and her phone before looking at them both with a disbelieving moan. "Nope. Definitely not dreaming. This is completely crazy!"

Erevan was concerned about her reaction because all she could do was stare at either her phone or the lottery ticket either mumbling to herself or laughing hysterically for an indeterminate amount of time. Wasn't a lot of money supposed to be a good thing? Why was she reacting like this?

"Way to go; you broke her," Stella said disdainfully as she approached. "What exactly did you do, anyway?"

"I set up a fake lottery for her to win so she can be financially secure for the rest of her life and be able to afford anything she wants," he explained. "I'm not sure why she is reacting like this."

"Who knows? Humans are weird. I just hope she snaps out of it soon. I'm hungry."

Molly did snap out of it eventually and fed both of her attendants before continuing to mumble to herself. "I have to call Calvin…No, first I need to call the number on the site!"

Ah. This was the part that Erevan had to make himself scarce for. He disappeared into the bedroom before transforming back into a human and teleporting outside to answer the phone when she inevitably called.

The phone he bought earlier today with money he conjured began to ring and he steeled himself to begin his act. "Hello?"

"Hi," Molly's voice began faintly. "I'm calling because my ticket has the winning numbers for the jackpot posted on the site earlier today and I wanted to know how to redeem it."

"You have come to the right place! For verification, what were those numbers?"

"2, 28, 31, 44, 52, 18."

"Congratulations! Those were our jackpot numbers. You'll need to come down to our offices and fill out the paperwork to redeem your check," Erevan told her. "Do you have something to write down the address with?"

"No, hang on a minute," Molly requested.

When she said she was ready, he gave an address to an abandoned building he planned to temporarily take over. She thanked him and got the supposed office hours before hanging up. Now all he had to do was make sure he was there all day Monday and wait for her to come after she got off work.

He teleported back inside and transformed into a cat before trotting out to where his mistress was sitting on the couch in a daze. It took her a while to compose herself enough to call Calvin, who seemed every bit as shocked as she was based on the indecipherable screams coming through the other end of the phone.

"I take it your plan worked?" Stella asked curiously as she observed Molly gushing over the phone about everything she planned to do with the money.

Erevan was more than a little smug. "Perfectly. All Mistress Molly has to do now is pick up the check and fill out some fake paperwork I copied from the internet. I have accounted for every last detail. Now do you concede that I'm her greatest asset?"

"Not yet."

"What?!"

"I'll concede once she has everything she wants. Until then, I'll give you half credit," the cat said with an air of finality.

He was ready to strangle this haughty creature but acknowledged that he couldn't do that because it would upset his mistress. Like it or not, he was stuck with both her and the male human neither of them cared for.

"I'll show you," Erevan muttered crossly.

Stella seemed to be laughing at him. "Sure you will."