Wizard for Hire

Every exit was covered by the police. Karen had thrown Felix under the bus, tracked his location by his phone and then called in all available nearby police cars to his whereabouts. This was getting serious, they were getting desperate for an arrest.

I looked up at Felix, as we stood in the centre of Trafalgar Square, he looked scared and worried. His eyes had glazed again like they did when he was thinking hard.

“Can’t you do some magic to get us out of this?” I cried, as the nearest police officers spotted us.

But Felix had frozen to the spot, like a rabbit caught in headlights. I mean I assumed he would know what to do, have some escape plan already. But now, here I was wondering if I should just run away without him—but then I would be evading police?

He stared intently at the stone ground as if he looking through the floor at something, eyes flickering up and down.

“Do some magic Felix!” I cried, giving him a hard shove, hoping it would prompt him into action.

He muttered something sarcastic to himself about just doing magic. I had given up hope when six police officers approached tentatively in a large circle. A small crowd had gathered, prompting the wizard to pull the baseball cap over his face. The police got so close I could see the nose hairs on the nearest, a bit of food in the teeth of another, her hand stroking a taser. I gulped.

Then, finally, the wizard acted.

“I’m sorry Nelson,” he said, for a moment I thought he was talking to me. But then, he pointed his wand up at Nelson’s Column, that huge stone monument at the centre of Trafalgar Square. Felix screwed his face up like he was lifting up a truck.

CRACK! Went the column. A long shard of cracked stone, right at the base. This caught the attention of the crowd and the police. With shouts of No! And, I couldn’t quite believe my own eyes, Nelson’s Column was about to fall!

The wizard was using the wand like a fishing line, pulling it back as far as he could. It was as if he had a rope around the top of the column and was toppling it single handedly.

“Woah! Go-go-GO!”

The policemen jumped out of the way, running for cover as the column tottered.

“Why are you pulling it towards us?” I said to Felix who wasn’t listening. Then in one moment of ominous silence, Felix relinquished his wand and effort. The Column poised, that odd stage, half between falling and not. “Felix?”

“RUN NORTON!” He called, already half-way across the Square!

“Christ!” he was a fucking maniac. And I had no choice but to follow the terrorist wizard. I sprinted as fast as I could after the wizard who was sprinting ungainly towards Charing Cross Underground on the edge of Trafalgar Square. What he didn’t see, was a policeman pelting towards him from his blind spot.

“Felix!” I cried. “Behind you!”

Felix just had long enough to the see the whites of the policeman’s eyes, as he tried to rugby-tackle Felix to the ground, before the wizard pointed the wand at him expelling him ten feet into the air.

I caught up to Felix who was stumbling and grabbed him by the jacket. “What do we do now?”

Hang on, in all the chaos, I hadn’t heard the crash of the column—I turned slowly around. And there, bold as brass was Nelson’s Column, untouched, no crack and still standing.

“How?” I said in a rather confused tone.

“I’ll explain later,” said the wizard, jumping down the stairs to the Underground three at time. It had got worse though, apart from the police doing anything they could to try and capture us, now rather brazen members of the public took it upon themselves to try and trip us up on the stairs.

“Can’t you do something about them?!”

Felix pushed a lady away, this was impeding us big-time. “I can’t think of anything without hurting them.” He said, as I had to shove an older man in the chest—I am not proud of it, but what choice did I have? “Thought of something!” said Felix triumphantly, pointing his wand at the stairs. Instantly, they smoothed into a slide. Everyone fell to their arse, and slid all the way into Charing Cross Underground terminal. This may sound pretty sadistic, but that was so much fun.

More sirens echoed behind us. “Armed response,” said Felix knowingly.

“What’s the plan then?”

“Escape!” he cried. “To be more precise, we get the 3:06pm train, which should be arriving any second now…”

When I asked where to, he shouted back: “Anywhere!”

Felix took up an enhanced rate of speed as we raced through the terminal, he jumped clean over the ticket barriers, to shouts of disapproval. But worse shouts echoed louder over them: “Armed police! STOP!”

Oh my god. I was running away from armed police. I had known the wizard for 2 days, and I was running away from armed-fucking-police!

Bursting through the tunnels as petrified Londoners stepped to the sides Felix said: “They won’t shoot us in here, too many pedestrians!” Oh that made me feel a lot better.

Three underground guards came looming into view at the end of the tunnel, they looked big and strong and primed themselves for a fight.

But Felix didn’t do magic. He whipped out his wallet from an inside pocket (I was as surprised as anyone to know he actually owned a wallet, he never used it), before screaming at them: “POLICE! Get out the way!”

That authoritative shout did enough, for their confidence dwindled and they made no attempt to catch us as we skidded onto the platform. The train was already there, doors about to shut. Felix grabbed me, yanking me forwards and throwing me into the carriage with him. Just as several heavy booted armed guards came storming onto the platform. But they were too late. The train had already pulled away.

Felix childishly gave them a wave as the rest of the passengers in the carriage looked at us in only that way a Londoner riding the Underground does: perplexed at seeing me being thrown through the doors, but no one actually saying a thing.

“That’s it,” Felix said. “Go back to your phones and devices.”

We took a seat. “Bloody zombies,” he muttered. I sat, sweaty, hot and frightened.

The train rumbled through the underground tunnels, with no idea where we were getting off or what the wizards plan was. He sat as quiet as I, contemplating what just happened.

“Are you going to tell me then?” I muttered in a rather small voice. “How you made Nelson’s Column look like it was falling?”

“I couldn’t honestly blow it up for real could I?” said the wizard. “They’d have me up on charges of treason or something. I just made a holographic overlay, and projected it,” he said like he was explaining how to make a cup of tea. “The rest was just acting. My wand will have run out of charge now!” He said, rolling his eyes and tapping the wand.

Out of charge? I wondered, imagining him plugging it into the mains like an iPhone.

“Big holograms like that are very magically intensive, they will fool the general public, but not a wizard or psychic.”

The person next to me got off, leaving his newspaper. I picked up The Metro, the front page read: Gas Explosion Blamed for Fire at Broken Into Bank.

It’s thought that the recent break in at Covent Garden Security Vaults, was done by highly trained operatives. A fire broke out at the bank the next day, while police were searching the area. The fire all but destroyed any remaining evidence. It broke out at around 2:30pm and raged for 30 minutes, then quite suddenly before the fire brigade arrived, stopped. One witness even claimed that the fire was purple, a fact that one source in the police even confirmed. Police now think that this gang accidentally broke a gas pipe in their way in, which caused the explosion. Investigations are ongoing.

My brain hurt.

As the train stopped in Camden, I remembered my car — I had only paid for an hour’s parking. That car was becoming a complete money pit. How many parking tickets would it collect before I was able to get back to it? I wondered.

“Thing is,” said Felix out the blue. “I would never kill anyone. I could break into a bank vault easily yeah, but I’d never kill anyone. I suppose people just don’t like me.”

“Don’t be silly, it’s not about being liked. It’s politics.” I said. “Karen and Bob are under pressure to get a result because of the media’s pressure.” I flashed him the Metro Newspaper.

“It’s all turning to shit,” he said. “If I can just find Kriston’s ring, I’ll have enough…”

We changed a couple of stops, Felix’s knowing the map without having to look. And ended up getting out at Covent Garden. Following the wizard, I think we both felt quite weary, but he seemed charged up with the original mission of finding Kristons ring, no less because of the huge reward it offered.

It was a ten minute walk from Covent Garden, I was reminded of coming here yesterday (which felt like years ago now) and investigating the bank break in with Felix.

Now, as we walked, I felt exposed, every passerby that caught my eye could be the person that captured us. An undercover policeman, a general bystander who knew who we were, or even another wizard who ran a Private Investigation firm who had a grudge.

ATLANTIS OCCULT

Read the shop sign, painted in golden leaf, on a sky blue background with lots of tiny pentagrams and other odd markings in black I didn’t understand. It stood on Museum Street, which led on from Drury Lane.

The bookshop made by no attempt to hide the fact that its main wares where magical. A big poster in the windows said: for all your wizardry needs. A businessman walked past us, saw the poster and laughed to himself.

“That sums up the attitude of the normies.”

“The what?” I said.

He looked blankly at me, like he did when he expected me to work something out instead of just asking him. “Normies, you know really-normal people. Like you. Normie Norton,” he grinned, before pushing open the door to the shop.

I stood annoyed at being called Normie Norton for a moment. That businessman would have been me two days ago.

The inside of the shop smelt like dust, antique books, tobacco, leather, and a bit of, unless I was mistaken Nag-Champa incense. It looked like it had not been decorated in, and I am trying to be polite: over 50 years. It was small and cramped with bookshelves full to the brim of books covering all sides of the four walls. As well as a table in the middle of the floor covered in specially chosen books. A comfortable desk at the back of the room, with a large lady sat in a chair reading. As she looked up over the book, saw Felix and smiled. She had an air of serene understanding about her, like she knew exactly what you were thinking, what you had done and where you had been. It was like she knew you instantly just by looking at you.

“Claudette my good lady,” said Felix collapsing on the desk in front of her. “We’ve had quite the day.”

“I can see.” She said with canny clear-sightedness, if you made me guess, I’d say she was one of those psychics. Hec, I didn’t even believe in them yesterday, but now I’d seen the wizard do what he had—impossible things—and it was like a whole new world of weirdness had opened up to me. I think she sensed it, for her eyes fell on me, with a sorry look. “This one is struggling.”

“He’s new to it all,” said Felix leaning back on the desk. “Blown his tiny mind wide open so fast he’s lucky he doesn’t have magical whiplash.”

Claudette laughed, then to me: “You’ll be fine, if you feel a bit rough, that’s okay. It’s just your old paradigm dying.” Back to Felix: “So how can I help you?”

“You already know.”

“Of course I do.”

Felix grinned at me and pointed at Claudette. “She can see things, she knows what we’ve been doing. She’s seen it all.”

“Then you know we’re innocent?” I said. “You can tell the police.”

Felix and Claudette laughed like hyenas.

“Sorry Will,” she said at my scorned face before reaching down and lifting a big cardboard box onto the counter. “These are all the bits you should need to do the searching spell.”

I snuck a small look inside the box, but all I saw was bubble wrapped glass bottles containing different coloured contents, I couldn’t see the rest, nor did I get a chance because Felix had snatched the box up. “Wonderful!” he cried, searching through it in private. “Excellent. I would never have thought of adding that,” he said happily.

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a wad of notes.

“This is most peculiar,” said Claudette dryly. “You are actually paying for your items today?”

Felix smiled. “A change in fortunes.”

“Long may it continue,” she said snatching up the notes gratefully, before holding them to the light. “And good god, they’re real too!”

Then, Claudette suddenly stopped, her eyes glazing over. Face turning ashen white. “You don’t have long. They are coming for you. They know where you are!”

The sound of a siren and screeching tyre’s filled the air as a police car came racing round the corner.

“But how did they know we were here?”

“I have no charge left on my wand!” Felix cried.

“Go NOW!” Claudette screamed.

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