Wizard for Hire

by Obert Skye

  “Why Burlington?” Sigi interrupted.

  “I don’t know; I’ve just always wanted to live there. Plus, it’s on the other side of the country, so we’re not giving our position away. We tell him we searched for his name and that he was the only Charles Plankdorf to come up. Since we’re so wealthy and don’t possess the good sense to spend our time wisely, we decided to take a trip and see if he was the one mentioned on the tape.”

  “It might work,” Ozzy said. “It’s an interesting story and maybe he’ll be intrigued enough to go along for a spell.”

  “I like your choice of words.”

  “Still,” Clark chirped. “I think showing me off would be better.”

  “You can ride on my shoulder like a metal parrot statue,” Rin suggested. “It will add to the oddity. Now, let’s work on our backstory so we don’t make any mistakes. For starters, I made my fortune in the diaper industry.”

  Ozzy shrugged. “Why not?”

  The four of them worked out their history and who they would be. By the time they got to Albuquerque, they had assumed their new roles and were ready to perform the charade.

  The city was spread out like a massive board game stitched together out of boards and pieces from every game in the closet. There were trees here and there and roads and freeways heading in every direction. In the distance the Sandia mountain range towered over the east horizon.

  “That mountain has the world’s longest tram on it,” Rin said. “There’s a restaurant up at the top. I remember that I didn’t like what I ordered.”

  “Was it breakfast food?” Ozzy asked.

  “Sadly no, but I once helped a woman in a castle here. She had trouble sleeping.”

  “Did you tell her some of your wizard-world stories?” Clark asked. “I know those make me sleepy.”

  Rin smiled. “Bird humor is so subtle. It wasn’t a very authentic castle and the woman was unhappy with the results.”

  Harken Corporation was just off the freeway in a large, misshapen building with metal front doors and small windows. Rin parked the car in the parking lot and turned it off.

  He looked at Ozzy and his daughter.

  “Ready, Salvin and Honi?”

  “Really?” Sigi said. “Am I Honi?”

  “Yes, it means ‘apple wedge’ in Quarfelt. Now, come on, you two.”

  “Yes, Father,” Ozzy said reluctantly.

  Clark hopped onto Rin’s right shoulder and they climbed out of the car.

  Lynette Tillman had worked for Charles Plankdorf and Harken Corporation for more than ten years. In all that time she had never seen a group of people quite like the three who had just walked in.

  The older man was wearing a short open robe over a black T-shirt and jeans. He had on a pointy felt hat and a long dark beard that was sprinkled with grey. On his shoulder was a fake bird. The boy was tall and strikingly handsome. He had grey eyes that looked as if they belonged to a much older and wiser person. And the girl beside him was beautiful, with dark skin and sincere brown eyes.

  “Goo day to you, madame?” Rin said using a fake accent that didn’t fit any known accent in the world. “How ah ew this fine afternoon?”

  “I am well,” Lynette said with a professional smile. “Welcome to Harken Corporation. May I help you?”

  “Yes, this is me son Salvin and a daughter, Honi. We three are hee to see a Meester Charles Plankdorf. Is he in?”

  “And your business?”

  “I’ve sold diapers the last wenty years.”

  “I see,” she said. “What I meant to ask is—what is your business with Mr. Plankdorf?”

  “Of course. Look at me bragging without needing to. We—my children und I, that is—have a question that we believes only Mr. Plankdorf can answer.”

  “Could you try the question out on me first?” Lynette asked, like the professional she was.

  “I ood tell you,” Rin said, trying desperately to keep up his weird fake accent. “But we . . . I . . . has traveled some deestance and we are very bit the eccentric beings we pears to be. What I try to say is we discovered a tape at an estate sale in Burlington, Vermont.”

  Rin paused for some unknown reason and Lynette just stared. “Have you ever been there?” he asked.

  “No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”

  “Nothing to be escared of, but if you get the chance you might put that on yis travel plans. Is a lovely town. The peoples is enchanting.”

  “I’m sure.” Lynette looked as if she was having some fun with the conversation. It was a quiet afternoon and these strangers were providing a good story she could tell her friends later that evening. “Go on.”

  “Thank you I will. We found this tape and apond listening to, discovered it mentions the name of one Charles Plankdorf. Not in a negative way, but in a way that made I want to drop what we are doing and search hims out.”

  “So, you traveled across the county to talk to a man who is mentioned on a tape you found in a box at a garage sale?”

  “Estate sale, but yes, is gist of it. Not to toot my own horn, but I am exceedingly well-off and my fortune gives me the freedom to act on impulse and whim.”

  Lynette was tempted to just send them on their way, but she knew very well that her boss dealt in secrets. If there was any chance the tape contained something that could either harm or benefit him, it was worth the time to find out.

  “Can you wait a moment?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  The assistant motioned to a waiting area with three handsome couches to the side of her desk.

  “Please, take a seat, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you,” Rin said.

  Lynette walked off and the wizard and his fake family sat on the couches and tried not to look nervous.

  “What accent are you trying to do?” Clark asked while standing perfectly still on Rin’s shoulder.

  “It’s from the north hills of Quarfelt. Wizards are very adept at speech. In a way, we need to speak and understand every language there is. Magic does not have an official language.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s really awful, Dad,” Sigi said.

  Lynette came back out.

  “Mr. Plankdorf will see you,” she announced as if they should be extremely grateful for the honor.

  “Excellent,” Rin said, standing up.

  “May I take your . . . robe and hat?”

  “Not on your life,” Rin told her. “The robe is my blanket of security. I have brokered countless deals in this garment and I can see no reason to remove it now. And the hat hides a scar.”

  “Then please keep them on.”

  Lynette led them through the double doors behind her desk and down a long white hallway. At the last door on the left she stopped. Before opening it, she spoke.

  “Mr. Plankdorf is a busy man. If you are wasting his time, he will sniff it out and ask you to leave immediately. And remember—there are cameras everywhere. We take security and order seriously at Harken Corporation.”

  “As one must,” Rin said.

  Lynette opened the door and walked into the room. Ozzy, Sigi, and Rin followed. The office was large and sterile looking. There was a glass desk, a few new books on a tall bookcase, and some modern furniture. Sitting behind the desk was Charles.

  “Mr. Plankdorf, this is . . . I don’t believe I got your name,” she said to Rin.

  “Sirius,” he replied. “Sirius Knight.”

  “Sirius Knight and his son, Salvin, and daughter, Honi,” Lynette announced.

  Charles didn’t stand up from his chair, but he did speak.

  “Come in and have a seat. You have three minutes to tell me what you came to say.”

  “We will only need two,” Rin said with a smile.

  Lynette left the office and closed the door behind he
r. The trio walked towards the desk and sat in the chairs that were facing it.

  Charles Plankdorf looked just like the picture they had seen online. He had a nice head of dark hair and puffy cheeks. His eyes were brown and his nostrils flared as he pinched his lips together.

  “You say you have a tape?”

  “We do,” Ozzy said. “But before we tell you what’s on it, can I ask you a question?”

  “Fine.”

  “Do you know a Dr. Emmitt and Dr. Mia Toffy?”

  The reaction in Charles’s brown eyes and pale face was subtle but strong. There was no doubt that the names he’d heard meant something to him.

  He pinched his lips tighter and then spoke.

  “I may have known those individuals a lifetime ago.”

  “Well,” Rin said. “Then what we have to say may be of interest to you.”

  Charles Plankdorf sat in his big fancy chair behind his desk and listened to every word that Ozzy and Rin and Sigi told him. He made no comments and kept his expression neutral.

  His cellphone beeped a couple of times but he ignored it.

  The story the trio gave was well rehearsed and sounded almost plausible. Ozzy wanted to drop the facade and just tell the truth, but he knew there was reason to be cautious. His parents had been taken, and somewhere in all the mystery there was an evil element that had enough dark in its heart to steal his parents and leave him for dead. They didn’t show him the tape or attempt to play it, but they recited word for word what Mia had said at the end.

  “So you see,” Rin said, “we’re just curious as to the fate of this woman on the tape. It seems as if her last words were in regard to you. When we searched for her online we found no information past the point when she and her husband quickly left New York.”

  Charles finally spoke.

  “It is almost unbelievable to think that you and your children would travel across the country just to find out about what one woman said on the end of a recording that was probably made years ago.”

  “Well, as I mentioned . . . we are eccentrics.”

  “Yes, you mentioned that. Four times, I believe. I’m not sure a true eccentric would even realize that they are one.”

  “Fair point,” Rin said, smiling. “I suppose I am more normal than I give myself credit.”

  “And shouldn’t your children be in school somewhere?”

  “We are privately tutored,” Sigi said.

  “The other children gave them grief about their importance,” Rin continued to lie. “So I pulled them both out.”

  “And you say you made your fortune in diapers?”

  “Ah, yes, but not wearing them—selling them. Now, do you know more about this woman or did we come all this way just to find out this is a dead end?”

  Charles cleared his throat but didn’t speak.

  “May I ask you what your business here is?” Rin said. “This appears to be a very important and strange building. And there doesn’t seem to be much about your company online.”

  “I deal in information,” Charles said.

  The wizard smiled. “That’s good, because it’s information we want.”

  Charles stood up.

  There was no way for him to know that this moment had begun years ago. That the questions he was being asked had been formulating throughout Ozzy’s entire life. He was unaware that what he was about to say would have any real impact on the three strangers that had interrupted his day in the most surprising of ways. He didn’t know the weight his words carried, but he tossed them out anyway.

  “I suppose it does no harm to inform you that Emmitt was my half-brother. His mother was my mother.”

  “Is he still alive?” Ozzy couldn’t stop himself from asking.

  Charles stared at the boy. His brown eyes connected with Ozzy’s grey. For a moment it seemed as if he saw something new in Ozzy. He blinked and rubbed his chin while he continued to stare.

  “Are you okay?” Rin asked.

  “Fine. I’m fine,” Charles said, shaking his pensive look away. “I don’t know if Mia and Emmitt are alive or dead. They disappeared and no one ever heard from them again. It haunts me to hear of them now.”

  “What were they like?” Ozzy asked, trying his hardest to act uninterested.

  “They were brilliant. Actually, too smart for their own good. Emmitt could build anything. No problem was too large and no obstacle stopped him. He was obsessed with the mind and people’s free will.”

  Ozzy knew most of the information Charles was giving them thanks to the tapes he had listened to for years.

  “Mia was beautiful,” Charles continued. “Her understanding of the human condition was second to none. I only knew her the short year before they disappeared. They had a child when they left New York, a son. He would probably be about your age now, Salvin. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” Ozzy lied.

  “Well, he would be a little younger.”

  “And they just decided to leave New York and move elsewhere?”

  “What they decided was to leave everyone who loved them and not say a word.”

  “Sorry,” Rin said.

  “You played no part in that, so the apology isn’t necessary. I moved away from New York shortly after that and I don’t believe a single person has heard from them since.”

  “Other people’s lives,” Rin said reflectively. “It never ceases to amaze me how the world is filled with so many souls and each one of us has a catalog of stories to tell.”

  “Did these people have other family?” Ozzy wanted more information. “What about your and his mother?”

  “My mother died about two years before they left New York, and I believe his father had passed away before that. We had no other siblings. I’m not one hundred percent sure about Mia. I never heard her talk about her parents or siblings. You’d think after so many years that would have come up.”

  Ozzy stared at Charles.

  “You said you only knew her a year,” the boy pointed out.

  Charles momentarily looked at a loss for words.

  “Well, a year’s a slight figure of speech,” he explained. “I saw them every other week and they held dinner parties once a month. We had a lot of interaction, even if it was a bit more than a year that I knew them.”

  Ozzy smiled and pretended that he was okay with the answer. But his chest tightened and he realized he no longer wanted to tell his half-uncle the whole truth.

  There was a knock on the office door and a short man wearing a uniform of some sort entered.

  “Come in, Eric,” Charles said briskly. “I’m with visitors.”

  Eric walked up to Charles and handed him a folder. As Charles studied the folder, Eric looked at Rin and gave a friendly nod. He looked at Ozzy and froze. His eyes locked with the boy’s and his hands began to tremble slightly. He glanced down to get a better look at Ozzy’s hand.

  “Thanks, Eric,” Charles said. “You can go.”

  Eric continued to stare at Ozzy’s eyes.

  “You can go,” Charles snapped. “Leave us.”

  “Yes . . . yes, of course.”

  Eric shook off whatever he was feeling and left.

  “Now,” Charles said to Rin once the door was closed, “how about you let me see that tape and I’ll get someone to track down a way to listen to it?”

  “No,” Ozzy said suddenly, “I mean . . . we can’t. We don’t have it with us. We left it at the hotel.”

  “Oh,” Charles said sounding suspicious. “What hotel?”

  “The Marriott,” Rin said, catching on to the fact that Ozzy now felt a need to keep the secret a bit longer. “What’s up with this town not having a more upscale place for us to stay?”

  “Well, I would like to hear it,” Charles said. “After all, it’s my half-brother’s wife talki
ng about me.”

  “No problem,” Rin said. “We were going to go back and get it once we realized we’d left it at the hotel, but we figured we’d make sure you were truly connected to the Toffys first.”

  “I see.”

  “We’ll run get it now,” Ozzy said. “Will you be here the rest of the day?”

  “How about I follow you to your hotel? You can grab the tape and then we’ll have a late lunch or an early dinner together.”

  “That’s very generous,” Rin said. “But I’m eccentric and I don’t like people following me. So we’ll retrieve the tape and return later this afternoon.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Ozzy said.

  “Well, I would have loved to get something to eat with you three, but it might be best for me to keep working.”

  “Excellent,” Rin said. “Just one last question: Why do you think Mia wanted anyone listening to that tape to talk to you?”

  “I can’t imagine. Maybe she knew I had a connection with her husband.”

  “Sure, that’s probably it,” Rin said, slapping his wizard forehead with his right palm.

  “Now . . . can I ask you a last question?” Charles said.

  Rin nodded.

  “Why do you have a bird on your shoulder?”

  “First of all, I appreciate your noticing. Second of all, it’s to let others know I’m eccentric before I even open my mouth.”

  “Mission accomplished,” Charles said. “I’m not a huge fan of birds, but it works for you. Now, have my secretary give you my personal number and be sure to leave yours. That way if there’s a change of plans on either side we can notify one another.”

  “We will,” Ozzy said, standing up.

  Charles stared at the boy’s eyes again.

  “What color would you say your eyes are, Salvin?”

  “I’m afraid you already asked your last question for the moment,” Rin said in a friendly tone. “Your words, not mine. Save it for later.”

  Rin stood and followed Ozzy and Sigi out of the office.

  As soon as Rin and Ozzy had left the office and the door was closed, Charles picked up his phone and dialed a number.