Wizard for Hire

You know how when you are ill with the flu, or some other nasty, and you dream such vivid oddities? That’s what became of me last night, journeying through my tepid subconscious mind and all its ridiculous presentations, including flying across the Arctic on a giant Albatross. And others, of the like I won’t bore you with: dreams are like relationships, your very attached to your own, but it’s fucking boring hearing about other peoples.

I slept like I had been made to stay awake for a week, such were the tremendous events of yesterday. Around 5am I woke briefly, having a quiet think to myself, and I remember now, wondering if the whole day had, in fact, been a dream, or perhaps someone had put LSD in my drink, or a prank for a TV show.

Dozing peacefully as the sun beat it’s mid-morning Saturday vibes through my window, the soft flow of nearby traffic like the rise and fall of soft waves. Was all to be disturbed, very abruptly.

Fortunately, dreams of demons didn’t occur to my subconscious mind. But they did, in the real world. I had forgotten to lock the door to my room last night, being in the state I was.

I was in a comfortable mid-morning slumber, when my door flew open and hit the wall. It was like a gunshot going off.

“How do you make the fucking coffee machine work!” Screamed the wizard. “It’s broken!”

It smashed into the wall above me, with a terrific bang. My heart jumped into my throat and I had to clutch my chest like you do. Anger like only that of being rudely awoken coursed through me.

“It’s definitely broken now!” I said croaky voiced. “What do you think you’re doing storming in here like that?”

As he stood in my doorway, with his bottom lip curled down, I was reminded of a child throwing a tantrum because his playstation wouldn’t turn on. “I wanted to make coffee.” I told him to wait for me in the kitchen while I got ready, giving myself time to calm.

Saturday mornings were a strict routine for me, one which I enjoyed: read the weekend edition newspaper and talk about it, listen to Radio 4, drink lots of fresh coffee. In the afternoon, walk the mother-in-law’s dogs in the woods with Ginny. Since being alone I had adapted it, seeing as I had no one to talk to about the weeks news and no dogs to walk.

Placing my small battery operated radio on the kitchen table, I turned on the familiar dulcet tones. Ah, comfortable, normal, predictable. No magic, no wizards, and most of all, no demons.

A minute later that all went to pot. “Ergh!” said Felix walking in dressed in a long dressing gown and pointing at the radio. I asked what was the matter. “Radio 4, pretentious nonsense, faux-intellectual bull-crap for the middle-classes who think they understand the world better than anyone else. Most biased news station ever!” I couldn’t remember asking for his opinion. He grabbed a mug and poured himself a coffee from the percolator. “Fixed it then?” he said.

“Yes,” I said opening the Daily Telegraph.

“How?”

I fixed him a stare. “I plugged it in.”

It puzzled me how one so obviously talented could by so stupid, like all his brain power was used for his wizardry and none allocated towards normal daily tasks.

He sat opposite me gratefully sipping his coffee, watching me read the paper. The colour seemed to return to his face after this first mug, for when he first walked in he was whiter than Alister’s teeth.

I felt like he was about to say something about my precious Saturday morning routine, but he didn’t. Eventually after another three cups of coffee (he didn’t offer to top me up once), he did speak.

“Don’t you have that…” he struggled for the right words. “Place you have to go to?”

“You mean work?” I said, without looking up. “No, it’s a Saturday.”

This news seemed to come as a surprise to Felix. I wondered how much about the world he actually knew, for instance; that most people didn’t work the weekends.

“Look at this Norton.” I looked up long enough to see a newspaper appear in mid-air between his fingers. It was folded up to the correct page. “It made the papers. Don’t crease the page,” he said holding a pair of scissors, presumably he was going to cut it out and put it in his scrap book.

As I remarked on this, he frowned. “Scrap book indeed!” he said. “It’s a magical memento and wizarding news index.”

I read the article: ’Break in at Covent Garden has the Fuzz in a Muddle: A break in at a safety deposit bank in Covent Garden last night, where two security guards were killed is thought to be a highly efficient operation and took place at around 3:30am. The thieves gained entry to the bank, and the underground vaults via a sewer tunnel that ran parallel. Exploding their way in, they took over £1.5million worth of jewellery, bank notes and antiques. The investigation took an odd turn with the horrifying revelation that one of the security guards was murdered with what appeared to be a home-made weapon that according to sources ‘blew a hole straight through his chest’. It is not known who the criminal outfit are, but we are assured that the Police have now allocated extra officers to this case, after the second high profile bank robbery in 3 years.’

Felix snatched the paper back and started cutting it out. “All over social media too, I checked this morning. Some interesting comments on the news articles about it on Facebook—”

“Hang on,” I said stopping him. “You’re on Facebook?”

Felix looked slightly offended. “Of course, who isn’t?”

For some reason, my stereotype of a wizard was some kind of luddite who didn’t nor couldn’t handle modern technology.

“Christ sake Norton. We don’t all sit in caves making potions all day, we do have lives too.” He said passionately. I held my hands up in apology, I had obviously touched a nerve.

The wizard was getting anxious for attention, not allowing me to read the paper in peace without banging around the kitchen, or singing, or tapping. He had to always be doing something, even if it was inane. So I folded my paper away, there were a few rather pertinent questions I had to ask him that were at the forefront of my mind, and I felt reasonably eased into the day.

His ears pricked up when I started talking. “What did Alister mean when he said you were a criminal?”

This may not have been the question that Felix wanted to receive, but it bugged me that Felix had admitted in the car last night that Alister was: the good guy.

Felix put the spoon down that he was using to tap on the mugs with. “I started working a year ago, opening up myself to independent work.”

“Like a PI?” I said.

“No, I couldn’t get a license. And the git Alister wouldn’t let me get away with doing it without one. So, I just did odd jobs. It just so happened that some of the people who needed my help and expertise, also happened to be connected with the criminal underworld. And I got sort of… sucked in.”

“So you helped criminals?”

Felix weighed up the question, rolling his head from side to side. “Kind of. I mean, I had little choice. I was desperate for money.” He pleaded. “My mother’s inheritance ran out.”

I felt that awkward pull in my stomach when someone mentions a dead relative. “I’m sorry,” I muttered.

“I tried to go straight, but you don’t understand how hard that is. I can’t get a PI license…”

I asked what held him back from getting one, to which he replied coyly that he was involved in a court case, he would never get one while that continued.

“The free time that money bought me was incredible,” said Felix, sitting back down at the table with a fresh mug. “Studying magic so intensively, deepening my knowledge, meeting mentors and teachers around the world, collecting magical old relics, deciphering forgotten books.” His eyes sparkled with passion as he spoke, something I wished I could borrow a fraction of.

“They think I killed my own mother Norton.” He sighed. “How could they think that? And now all this,” he pointed at the article he had cut out. “That demon made it look like I made the fire.”

He drew his hands through his hair, before massaging his temples. “If I don’t prove my innocence I could go to magical jail.” He looked me full in the face with his grey-speckled eyes. “And trust me when I say this… I would rather die.”

Downing the rest of his coffee, he put the mug in the sink and looked out the window. “But worse than that, if I don’t start getting some work through soon I will have to get a normal job.” He shivered. “Given the choice between a normal job or magical jail, I think I’d choose magical jail.”

I didn’t know what to say. So I kept silent. He was opening up to me. Only knowing him one full day, this felt slightly premature, but in hindsight, I suppose we had been through more in our one day together than most people would in their entire lives.

“This course case I mentioned,” said Felix standing stiff at the sink, still looking outside. “It’s only fair that you should know, what with you writing a book about me… that er…”

He stopped, for another man appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. Dave Parry was his name, another housemate who lived in the room opposite mine. “Oh good morning,” he said coming into the kitchen. “And what time did some of us arrive home last night?” he had a really condescending voice, and looked, with his beady beetle eyes at Felix and I.

Dave Parry was middle-aged, with no hair on the top of his head. He worked in IT, had silly little glasses, and a flabby little belly. “I’ve told Ms McCall that I’m not happy about it.” His voice was exactly the same as a kid in school who would say: I’m telling the teacher. I bet he was bullied.

Felix and I left the kitchen shortly after, leaving Dave Parry, the most annoying house-mate in the world to an empty kitchen. Getting dressed and wondering what to do with the rest of my day, it wasn’t long before the wizard was back, to decide that for me. Halfway through dressing, I heard Ms McCall calling his name and stomping around the house for him.

He opened my door and slid inside, closing it quietly behind him. Ms McCalls voice carried upstairs: “Have you paid your rent yet? It’s overdue!”

“Shit!” Felix mouthed, trying to peer through the keyhole.

After few more moments of silence, he came to sit at the end of my bed. Before looking around at my room. “Hm,” he nodded. “Minimalist.”

“My ex-girlfriend kept all the stuff we had. The rest I sold. Reminded me of her.”

“You have a bed, a desk, clothes, a laptop and an Arsenal mug. How can you survive with so few possessions?”

It wasn’t a question, he was genuinely curious. But then his mind switched back to whatever he was thinking about before. He got his iPhone out, after flicking around for a minute started tutting. “No work, nothing, nada, not a bean!” he huffed. “See this is the sort of stupidity I have to deal with… people sending me emails asking about Harry Potter trivia, or how to do a card trick.”

He slammed the phone down on my bed.

Ms McCalls voice echoed around the house once again. “I know you’re still in the house Felix Freeman!”

“If she finds you in here, she’ll chuck us both out!”

“Oh stop worrying your tiny-mind. Let’s go get breakfast before she checks your room. Probably best if we find another cafe, avoid Sid for a bit, til he calms down. We’ll have to sneak out, so Ms McCall doesn’t see us,” said Felix peering through the keyhole again.

“This was not how I planned my weekend.”

“No? What did you have planned exactly? Walk around all lonely, pining after your stupid ex-girlfriend, feeling sorry for yourself?”

I thought how wicked I would be if called for Ms McCall, that would teach the know-it-all wizard not to talk about my ex-girlfriend like that. But my retort was interrupted by Felix’s phone suddenly making loud ding — he had a message.

Looking at it for a moment wondering why it had made such a noise, perhaps he did not get many messages, he snatched it up and read.

His face dropped and went white as a sheet. “What is is?” I said.

After a long pause, he looked up. “We have to go. NOW.”

9