Chapter 8 began with Magatrix asking if Nicole couldsee her way clear to assisting her with a couple of benefitshows. Then, spurred on by John's insig...htful comment abouthow Nicole is not the only one who seems to take aninordinate amount of pleasure out of being a girl, themagician complies by graciously admitting that she did notstart off life as a female. She then continues on to tellher story of how she ended up turning herself into a womanin order to become a first class magic user.Chapter. "I'm too sore to be horny," she admitted."Bull," Jessica said, "you're just sore and horny, just like the rest of us."The teasing continued. Brenda began setting the table as Audrey put hash browns on a platter."Diana said she wanted us to spend the night with them tomorrow night," Carla said.Fred took mugs down for everyone, then stood waiting for the second pot to finish brewing. "We just returned from a trip. Did she have a particular reason for wanting us to stay over so soon after our. Companies like McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot, which would become the dominant companies in their industry, were just starting out. Companies like Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, and Dell were not even in existence yet. All would go on to become huge companies. I would need money to invest in those companies when the time came. I didn't want to become a financial tycoon; I just wanted to be rich enough so that Jack and my parents would always have someone to fall back to if times got. It must have satisfied her in some way, because she nodded once, though not at me in particular, and then went to the edge of the river. After turning her feet sideways to get better traction in the mud, she eased her way on down to the water. Once there, she began to gather up some more flowers for her basket. I felt a twinge of loss at her moving away. Within a few minutes, she had picked all of the purple petals and was making to walk on down the bank, away from me and my snotty nose and.