Wizard for Hire

For a moment, I thought that was it. We had been caught. Twenty police officers, mostly armed with heavy machine guns stared at us. My imagination started to run quickly through how I would survive a one year jail sentence for perjury, if that’s all I was charged for. But the wizard had a trick up his sleeve, and not the magical one I was expecting.

Felix started pointing frantically at them. “He’s down there!” he screamed in an authoritative voice. “Get after him!”

At once, the twenty police officers, charged down the way we had come from. Felix and I burst out of the bank and sprinted away as fast as we could. The fresh air hit my face and I felt like a free man. Except the extent of what we had done hadn’t quite hit me yet. But it was about to. The adrenaline coursed through my veins a moment longer as we cornered two roads and came to a jog down a cobblestone alley. And then my mind went into panic mode.

“Please tell me why we… just ran away… from the police!” I cried panting.

Felix did not look the least bit worried, as if he did this all the time. Mind you, he was just as unfit as I was, puffing and gasping for breath, which is pretty tricky in amongst the fumes and London smog.

Without saying a word, I think he just trying to recover after the run, I followed Felix like a good little boy. The choice was made for me, I had just seen the scariest thing of my life and had to stick with the wizard out of protection.

We walked along Embankment, where to, I didn’t know. It was on this rather silent walk, in which I suspected the wizard was thinking, for his brow was furrowed, that I remembered my car. Twas still parked at the multi-storey in Paddington Green. Shit. More money wasted.

Felix pushed the door open to: Sid’s Caff, just off Westminster, after a 30 minute walk. It was odd, but a cafe was the last place I expected him to go. Especially after coming face to face with a demon, lying and running away from the police. When I said this, he asked if I had a better suggestion than a fry-up and a strong tea. I had to agree.

The cafe itself was like a time warp from the 1960’s, a proper greasy spoon. The sound of a big fryer in the kitchen sizzling bacon and sausages mixed in with the television on the wall showing 24/7 news, and a light smattering of working class conversations across the half-full tables.

Felix took a table against the wall, something told me this was his usual spot. Nodding to a man behind the counter who I presumed was Sid, a middle aged bloke with a dusting of shaggy greying hair. A big protruding beer belly poked out under his apron, but at least he looked like he knew his way around tasty, unhealthy food.

Felix took his baseball cap off and ruffled his hair, lined with a layer of sweat from running. Sid, without a word, came over and poured two mugs of tea for us, from a large, well-used steel teapot. The tea was well stewed. But I was grateful for something warm, soothing and familiar. After the day I’d had.

“So,” I started. “You going to tell me what the flip just happened?”

Felix rubbed his eyes, slumping back against the wall, now he looked tired. “It was a demon.”

Now, I am a skeptical sort of person, I like to see proof that something is real. And I had seen that proof with my own eyes, but I couldn’t just drop everything and trust this man. “What do mean, a demon?”

“A worker-demon. To be more precise.”

“Oh that clears it up,” I said sarcastically. “Would you care to elucidate?”

Felix grinned. “Nice word, might use that myself. Elucidate.”

I let out a sigh and Felix must have recalled what I said earlier, in the car, about the book. For he sat up straight, and looking into his tea started to talk.

“A worker demon is something that has to be summoned by a wizard. It does the wizards bidding, when the wizard is either too busy, doesn’t want to be seen, or can’t fulfil that particular area of magic.”

I wondered if I should perhaps be taking notes. “So what was this particular worker-demon doing?”

“The wizard that broke into that bank and killed Brett the security guard, must have left in a mad panic, presumably because he saw the bank had already been broken into moments before. He was already spooked because he killed Brett, and forgot to destroy the evidence that showed he was there. He sent the worker-demon there when he realised that it was swarming with a police investigated, and by moi, and quickly acted getting the demon to set what we call a Purple Incandium — that’s the posh name for it — the purple fire doesn’t destroy the building, just any evidence you may have left. It’s like artificially intelligent fire.”

“Fascinating,” I said involuntarily. At this, the wizard seemed to puff-up. He was as open to praise as he was damaged by criticism.

Asking how he knew Karen Magdalen, he spoke with a newfound smile on his face. “Did some work for her, didn’t know she was police at the time. She contacted me out the blue one day, three years ago, said a friend passed her my details. This poltergeist was giving her bother, so I removed it. Rather tricky old bugger that was. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

He grinned a wry grin, recalling the experience. “Nearly killed me it did. Anyway, we became friends from there. And I’ve been trying to negotiate regular work with her side of the police ever since. London is teeming with magic Norton, there’s so much work!” he cried, slamming a fist on the table, some people behind him jumped and looked round. “She’s my only contact in the police. And for some reason, she seems to like me. Even though she pretends she doesn’t. And she’s a believer.”

“I assume a believer is your word for someone that is open to the possibility that magic is real?”

“Of course. Problem is, her husband is higher up in the police, and he hates me. Thinks I’m a charlatan.”

Sid brought two plates of food over. A full english breakfast. Not one jot did I care that it was 5pm in the afternoon and it was starting to get dark, so hungry was I, that I didn’t care to moan about eating a breakfast this late.

Sadly, when Sid lowered the plates, his brown stained cloth that hung over his shoulder dipped into my baked beans. I thought he might take it back and get me another plate, but he didn’t. I was too cowardly to say anything.

Even the wizards eating habits were strange. With one slice of bread, he put one piece of everything on his plate; beans, sausage, egg, bacon, black pudding, hash brown, mushrooms. The ingredients in this breakfast-mixture-sandwich, split the bread and fell out. But that didn’t stop him eating it anyway as it all fell in a big mess back onto his plate. He tried to say he had not eaten all day, hence his rabid appetite, but it just came out as a garbled mass of barely comprehensible words.

Half way through his food, he took a break, wiping his mouth incessantly with a paper napkin. “So, now they think it’s me what dunnit’. Don’t blame them. I’d come to the same conclusion. Actually no I wouldn’t.”

“Why did they arrest you this morning in the first place?”

“Because they wanted some free advice from a working wizard. They know I used to be involved in shady-goings-on, and think I know every magical criminal in this wonderful cess pit of a town. I didn’t have to let them take me to the station, they don’t have anything to constrain a wizard, handcuffs won’t work,” he giggled taking a glug of tea. “But I let them arrest me, because then they reveal all this lovely information in their questioning.”

“You let them arrest you, so you can find out what’s going on?”

“Yep. It’s imperative to my work that I know what’s happening in the underworld of London crime.”

I pointed a finger. “What about that witness that saw you chucking jewellery out your pockets?”

“That witness saw someone of my description,” he corrected. “Anyway, that witness is a good friend.”

“You arranged it!” I cried flabbergasted, coming to understand. “They had just enough evidence to arrest you, but not enough to take it further, reveal all the useful information to you, and then ask for your help,” I said, sitting back in amazement at the sheer balls required to do something like that. It was unbelievable.

He shrugged taking a bite of toast. “Gotta do what ya’ gotta do.”

After our plates were taken away and the light outside had turned to black, or as black as it can in central London, the wizard enclosed his fingers together and fixed me with a stare. “You will need to learn self-defence if you plan on sticking around with me,” he said matter of factly. “I suggest Krav Maga, it’s the most useful and quickest to learn. There’s an intensive class up the road from our house, go 3 times a week—”

“Hang on, hang on,” I said waving a hand. “Who said anything about me sticking around with you?”

The wizard grinned. “Course you are going to. Today has been the most exciting day in your boring little life. You write a book about me, I will show you excitement, wonder and magic.”

“Who says I want exciting?”

“Your eyes have looked alive in the last hour. When I first met you they were dull, little grey things, lifeless, bored. Your posture hung like a damp flannel. You spoke like an undertaker. Look at you now, scared shitless, but the adrenaline pumping through your veins is better than any drug, you look pumped like a body builder after a heavy workout. You look alive.”

It was hard to argue with such a charismatic, well meaning statement. It was also true, I did feel alive for the first time in a long time. I wish at the time I had said yes, but for how much longer will I be alive?

“London is teeming with magic,” he said with a flurry. “You can feel it. More than all other cities. London is built on an energetic centre, a crossing of huge ley-lines. Which has made this city the energetic capital of the world. Thus, that energy attracts all sorts of strange and weird people, like a moth to light.”

“Why me?” I said after a few seconds pause. “I mean, there’s plenty of other people out there, far better than I, who would write a book about you, I mean you’re a wizard for fuck sake.”

“It has to be you Norton.”

I sighed and sat back in the chair. “One part of me wants to just go home, back to my old house and forget this ever happened.”

“Too late now.”

“Why?” I barked.

Felix rolled his tongue. “The demon has seen you. It will report you back to its master. I am 99% certain it will come back for us.”

“99% is not certain,” I muttered, feeling a wrench that my old, comfortable life was dying a quick death.

“I suggest staying close to me, if you want to stay alive,” he mopped up some bean juice with his bread. A second later the doors to the cafe swung wide open, in stepped a tall serious looking man in a long grey mac and a trilby. Felix cursed, straight to anger at the sight of him, turning his face to the wall in some pathetic attempt at hiding.

The man spotted him and barked: “Felix Freeman, you are under arrest!”

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