The Wizard Returns: Book Three of the Wizard Born Series by Geof Johnson Page B

three-quarter mark, Jamie glanced at the time again. Forty-seven seconds. Amazing .
    Jamie stopped his watch the instant Rollie zipped by, and he read it aloud when Rollie slowed. “Sixty-nine seconds. A new world record in the Mile Run.” He repeated it over the phone to Bryce and Bryce whooped.
    “Wow,” Rollie said with an exaggerated nod. “Am I good or what?”
    “Do you think you can go any faster?”
    “Never know ’til you try, right?”
    Jamie put his phone near his mouth again. “Bryce, he’s coming your way. Get your watch ready.”
    Rollie took off running, quickly vanishing in the distance, and soon Bryce yelled through the phone, “Forty-one point six. That’s incredible!”
    Jamie could almost hear Rollie’s grin from a mile away.
    “He wants to try it one more time,” Bryce said. “He’s catching his breath. Get ready, Jamie.”
    “Got it.” Jamie reset his watch to all zeros and waited for Bryce’s signal. A few seconds later, he heard him yell “Go!” and Jamie pressed start and looked down the road.
    He picked out Rollie’s streaking form much sooner than before, and within moments, Rollie zipped past him.
    “Thirty-point-one seconds!” Jamie read the time aloud. “Did you hear that, Bryce? Thirty-point-one.”
    Jamie slapped hands with Rollie and heard Bryce cheering through the phone, “Rol-lie, Rol-lie, Rol-lie!”
    “Incredible, dude,” Jamie said. “Just incredible. That’s almost a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Can you believe that?”
    Rollie smiled and looked down at the asphalt for a moment, nodding his head gently. “Too bad I can’t tell my dad, huh?”
    “You can’t tell anybody . But still, that was impressive. Think you can go one more time.”
    “That’s enough for today. Let’s head back.”
    * * *
    Jamie looked up and smiled when Fred squeezed his shoulder and sat next to him at the big table in Jamie’s dining room. Jamie’s parents sat at either end, and John Paul was on the other side from Jamie, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “That was some fine cookin’, Rachel,” he said in his Louisiana accent. “Mighty fine. I love roast pork.”
    “I’m glad you enjoyed it. Is it hard to cook for yourself, since you’re a bachelor?”
    “I’m the Master of the Microwave,” he said proudly, as if it were a sought-after title that deserved a medal or a plaque.
    “You were married, weren’t you? What happened with that?”
    “My ex-wife couldn’t put up with my job. She thought she could handle it, but...you know. Late nights, sometimes. Long hours. Scumbags shooting at you.”
    Rachel looked across the table at Carl. “We know all about that.”
    Carl shrugged innocently and an awkward silence filled the room.
    Jamie felt Fred take his hand under the table, and when he glanced at her, she was fighting back a smile. He thought , This is a good time to change the subject . “So...what do you think about Rollie running a thirty-second mile? Pretty awesome, huh?”
    “That’s amazing,” Carl said. “I guess there’s no doubt that he has magic, now.”
    “No, there’s not, and I’m sure that he could do a few simple spells if he wanted to. But when I offered to teach him some, he got mad, like I was asking him to cut off his arm or something.”
    “Rollie’s in a tough spot, Jamie. His father won’t be able to accept the magic like we have.”
    “It’s too bad,” John Paul said. “We could use Rollie’s help dealing with this demon.”
    Jamie shook his head. “I don’t know what difference it would make. The demon is immune to magic.”
    “What if we just shot it with a high-powered rifle? I got a Remington .308 that’ll stop a rhino.”
    “The bullets would bounce right off, I think.”
    “What if you dropped a big boulder on it? You can do that, can’t you, with your magic?”
    “I could, but it’d probably just make him mad.”
    “So what do we do?”
    Jamie leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms loosely. “I