Felix spelled the dressing cabinet and the bed against the door too. “That should hold them off for a minute. Mind you, I think Ms McCall might charge me extra for rent this month.”
Felix made a motion for me to go out the window first. “You’re not suggesting I climb out of this window, are you?!”
“You either climb out, or I throw you out.”
“What kind of a choice is that?”
He could clearly see I was unmovable on this, so forcibly grabbed me. The self preservation chemicals in my brain instinctively reacted and fought back. But he pinned me to the edge of the window until most of my body was hanging out. “Trust me!” he said.
“It’s really hard to trust you when you are pushing me out a windowwwwww!”
I screamed. The air rushed out of my lungs. Free falling through the air I saw the concrete patio beneath me and wondered how on earth I was to avoid being horribly mangled.
But I needn’t have worried. The next second, the nearest tree, swooped its entire trunk down towards me. I landed upon its sharp, prickly branches, a somewhat soft landing considering the alternative. The wizard kept his wand pointed at the tree as he leapt out the window too. The tree caught him, with far more dignity than I, and he was up and running in a flash.
Sprinting to the back of the unkempt garden we jumped over the fence. Felix turned at this point, and watched as the Police smashed through Ms McCall’s furniture and entered her room. Her screams of fright continued to fill the air, as we leapt cleanly over numerous garden fences, to a few neighbours amazement. Until, at last, we found ourselves on a main road.
“That was utterly ridiculous!” I said panting and feeling a stitch burn in my side. I couldn’t remember the last time I had one of those.
Felix gave a loud whistle. A black taxi that happened to be passing, indicated and pulled over. “Got any cash?” he said.
I hesitated. “Haven’t you?”
The cabby grinned at us as we got in. “What ya’ all out’ a bref’ for? Ya’ both panting like dogs.”
Felix pulled his notebook out of his pocket and flicked to Kriston’s notes. “Number 12 Fieldway Crescent, Islington.”
“No worries,” he flicked the meter on and set off. It was nice to have escaped. And just sit down for a bit after all that running. Felix still looked charged, he was not going to let anything get in the way of him finishing this job and getting paid. I had to admire his professionalism, if I wasn’t so shocked and worried about evading the police, AGAIN!
I wondered what my criminal record would look like now; perjury, evading police capture, accessory to the crime. Christ, they could throw the book at me, send me away for years!
Felix had his eyes closed, probably silently memorising the street names. “What’s up?” I said. “You thinking?”
“No, travel sickness, after all that potion.”
Felix insisted we get out a slight way from the house, jumping out and leaving me to pay the bill. The cabby drove off, we were in a pleasant, well maintained street, lined with trees and pretty townhouses. It was empty too, not a sign of life anywhere.
“Hang on, I’ve just realised!” I said. “You’ve got a pocket full of cash!”
Felix walked up the path to number 12, ignoring me, running a finger along the fence and iron gate. It was just at that moment, that we both realised, the front door was slightly ajar.
I mean, you know it’s never going to be good if a front door is slightly ajar. Especially in London, you fear the worst. However, maybe he was expecting our arrival and left the door open for us, I thought, optimistically.
Felix bit his lip, before marching ahead, pushing the door open and going into the house.
I stood in the hallway while Felix was in the living room and felt that strange static tingle run down my spine again, coupled with that odd, otherworldly metallic taste in the air. I knew instinctively what was around the corner but my logical mind told me it couldn’t be so, more out of wishful thinking than anything.
Felix stood, cold and stiff as stone, peering down. I moved further into the room, against my better judgement.
The bile rose fast in my throat causing me to wretch. Swallowing it and taking a deep breath, I stood next to Felix who was just standing and looking at the body of Kriston, laying very dead in the middle of his living room. The cream carpet was stained brown. Red blood glistened in several patches. I would say this murder was relatively recent, I deduced.
Kriston’s face had terror blitzed across it. His eyes were wide open and frozen demonstrably at the point of death. But what was most disturbing, was the fact that he had a football sized hole blasted through the middle of his chest. The fibre ends of his shirt were burnt and singed around the hole, as if a ball of fire had gone clean through him.
Felix was frozen to the spot. I had no idea what he was doing. Perhaps he was in shock, doing something magical or maybe, he was just plain pissed off. I found the breath to be rather short in my chest and had to turn away.
At this moment, the wizard shook himself from his gaze and appeared stoked and alert. He walked to the front door—for a second I imagined him sprinting away—he slammed it shut, then came back in and looked at me.
“What do I do?” he said, in a tight, constricted voice.
“Check his pulse?” I offered.
He gave me the disappointed look. “I think we can safely say he’s dead Norton.” He sighed. “You are kind of right. I am going to… touch him.”
“Okayyyy,” I said, slightly worried by this announcement. “What do mean touch him?”
Felix bent down next to Kriston’s body. “I’ve still got some potion going round my body, third eye still open, if I touch him I will perhaps see some of his last moments… just be ready in case anything bad happens.”
Before I could reply, asking him to expand on what he meant by anything bad, he lent down and touched Kriston’s hand.
At once, Felix’s head flew back like a rocket and he screamed at the ceiling. I stumbled back in shock as the whites of his eyes turned black and he sucked in air like a vacuum. Before returning to relative normal, closing his eyes and seeing, he read out what he saw.
“He was killed by magic,” said the wizard, fingers still perched atop Kriston’s limp hand. “A man was here earlier… I can’t see him, he’s shrouded himself in dark magic… clouding himself from the memories of the dead… AH! He came here for… the ring… and when Kriston told him he didn’t have it anymore, he killed him. Just as Kriston is falling back into death… I can see… the dog… it disappears! No… it teleports! Then the man, this horrible creep, screams… he knows now that it’s in the dog.”
Felix pulled his hand away and crawled back on the carpet, gasping for breath as the whites of his eyes returned.
“Oh christ,” he said. “I think I am starting to understand everything. It’s all connected.” Then he started muttering that the universe doesn’t make mistakes, that the universe isn’t so lazy as to conjure up a coincidence of this magnitude. His eyes darted about for a moment, in deep contemplation, darting through hundreds of thoughts.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know but asked nevertheless. “What do you mean?”
He took a breath. “Kriston was killed the same way as the security guard; a hole through the chest. This Creep, the man who killed them both, was after Kriston’s ring. Can you remember what Karen told us?”
“That all this thief took from the robberies were rings.”
“Exactly! He’s been looking for one very specific ring, something that would perhaps magically teleport the wearer?” I raised an objection, but Felix was quick to continue. “I saw the dog teleport, Norton, the ring is inside the dog. It didn’t do it willingly, but at the point of highest emotion, seeing his owner die.” He ruffled his hair and placed his cap back on. “That’s what this Creep is after. A Ring of Power.”
Felix stood, and looked again at the dead body. “But it also begs an another alarming
question… how did Kriston get it?”
“We need to search for clues,” said Felix. “We need to find out what he was up to.”
“Felix,” I dug my heels in on this one. “You do realise that if we are caught here, with that,” I pointed at the dead body. “It will really not look great.”
“Help me search!” he cried. “There’s nothing to link us here, so we just get the money and leave.”
“Money?”
“I meant… clues, of course.”
Search for clues? The cheeky sod just wanted to find his money. I had a vested interest, you could say, I would quite like him to find that money too seeing as he owed me a fair whack.
“Perhaps it was the demon that killed Kriston?” I said as I rifled along his mantelpiece.
Felix snorted, obviously finding my lack of demon knowledge funny. “A demon can’t kill like that. A demon rips it’s enemy apart.”
Oh good, glad that’s cleared up then.
For the next ten minutes, Felix charged about the large, well-kept house getting angrier and angrier—for there was no wad or envelope of cash anywhere to be seen. It was a few minutes later, while both upstairs in the man’s study, which was a lovely room looking out onto a perfectly landscaped garden, that Felix’s mood turned from anger to fright.
His phone made an odd noise, like the sound of a radar blip. When he got it out and had a look, his face dropped. Turning it round to show me, the screen read:
YOUR LOCATION IS BEING USED
Shit!
13
A Demon in the Disabled Toilets
Felix grabbed his wand, aimed it at the sim-card holder, until it popped open. Pocketing the sim-card, he then turned the phone off. For a moment, I thought he might smash it to bits.
“So…” he said. “If I am right in thinking, they just used my device to track my location, which means they can now place us both here, at this house, with a dead body, that was killed by magic, exactly the same way as the other murder they think I did.”
A torrent of swear words my Grandma would be proud of, streamed forth from my filthy mouth.
“So we’re fucked then?!” I cried. “That’s it, 30 years in jail where—” I was about to list all the horrible things that would happen to me, before Felix grabbed me by the shoulders and shook.
“Snap out of it Norton!” he screamed in my face. That was one way of doing it. “Now, more than ever, it’s imperative we find some sort of evidence in this house that will find us innocent.”
“And how do we do that?”
“We find out anything we can about this Creep who actually did murder Kriston, but also find anything that links Kriston to that ring and why he had it.”
I took on this new challenge with gusto, the alternative weighing heavy. Prison had always terrified me and I vowed to do everything in my life to avoid it; be a good boy, follow the rules, do the right thing.
Scanning round the house, the wizard called at me from the study that we had around 10 minutes maximum. I felt terrible rifling through Kriston’s possessions, it was terribly uncouth to rummage around a dead man’s things. But needs must.
After a few minutes of frantic searching, not knowing what I was looking for, I started feeling panic creep in: tight chest, wobbly stomach, feeling of helplessness.
“What was that?” said Felix, tip-toeing down the stairs, finger pointing at the front door.
“What was what?”
“I heard a noise. Quick, look out the window.”
I moved to the living room’s large bay window and peeked out. An old lady next door was tending to her garden. “Just the neighbour,” I said.
“Phew,” said Felix darting back upstairs.
Leaving the bottom of the house and re-joining Felix on the second floor, I opened a door to a spare room. Well kept, but very empty, it was perhaps used as a spare room or office. A small camp bed stood folded in the corner to my right. Gentle breeze drifted through the net curtains from a window left slightly ajar. A large desk stood nearest it, with well ordered papers. Slotting between wall and hearth was an old bureau. Glancing out the window to see if there were any police in the street below, and glad to see it empty, I opened the bureau door and peered inside. It was full to bursting with half-open letters, envelopes, stacks of papers, amongst an array of other assorted correspondences. Pulling out letters and having a quick read, nothing struck me as vital evidence to prove our innocence.
I was about to shut the door and leave it when a glint of silver reflected off a stream of sunshine. Further inside, atop one of the small shelves was a small round disc.
Written upon it was:
Vitalie’s Casino
£5000
VIP
I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it was the only thing I found that struck me as interesting and didn’t want to return to the wizard empty handed. Also, we could always cash it in and get paid, I think £5000 would just about cover the fee for finding out where the ring was, and the trauma for the intervening time spent evading the police who would wrongly accuse of us of double-murder.
“NORTON!” Felix cried. “Help me wipe down.”
I pocketed the poker chip and jogged downstairs, where the wizard was guiding four dusters with his wand, wiping the surfaces of fingerprints.
“Did you touch anything that I haven’t wiped?”
“Err,” I thought quickly, but didn’t have time to answer. Felix bolted upright, the cloths fell to the floor.
Sound: the squeal of tyres driving fast round a bend. The police had just turned into the road.
“Let’s go,” said Felix turning towards the backdoor. Obviously we were going to run through gardens again. Oh joy. In that adrenaline filled moment, a thought struck Felix. “Hang on…”
He quickly rattled off his idea: if he still had some third-eye potion floating round him which he used to see what happened to Kriston. Then, perhaps he could find out where the dog Harry was, by touching his dog lead.
It didn’t make any sense to me. “Why do you want to find the dog?”
At this, Felix snapped his fingers and grinned. “Knew you’d come in handy,” he said charging towards the front door, as flashing blue lights shone through the window.
“Felix?!” I called nervously. “They’re here.”
Next to the front door was a coat stand, Felix plucked a black leather dog lead from it. Instantly, upon touching it, his head flew back, eyes went black and he started talking. I wanted to interrupt and say we didn’t have time; police were coming up the pathway!
“I am the dog, I can see what he saw… the door creaks open… Kriston is scared… I am scared… the Creep is after the ring, we know that… then he kills Kriston… and…”
BANG! “Open up. POLICE!”
Felix continued regardless: “… I feel a rush of pain at seeing my owner hurt… but I am too scared to do anything… the Creep sees me and realises the ring is in me… I feel a strange swelling inside my stomach… BLAM! I’ve teleported. I’m in a park… I recognise it…”
I gave Felix a hard shove. “Snap out of it!” I cried, pulling him up. The black left his eyes and he stood, jelly-legged. Seeing the police already at the door, snapped him into escape mode.
We turned and ran.
Sticky weed and nettles covered my trousers, and I had a soaking wet foot, where I had trod in a pond. Felix of course was bone dry. We exited the garden’s onto a quiet residential street, still the sound of police sirens were easily heard a few blocks away.
“We’ve got to find that dog Norton. It could be our get out of jail free card.”
I struggled to see how it could be such a thing, but what other choice did we have?
The wizard made me call for an Uber, so we could go back to Trafalgar Square and get my car. At first I thought how nice of him to think of me for once, but I was soon to realise that this apparent altruism was not solely for my purpose.
I did as he asked and we got
into the Prius, heading back to Trafalgar.
“Is this such a good idea?” I said. “Going back there?”
“Maybe not, but we need your car.”
I sighed. “It’s probably been clamped by now anyway.”
Felix still had the dog lead in his pocket and kept touching it very slightly.
We got out, thanking the taxi driver, and snuck slyly across the street. “Walk normally,” said Felix. “Don’t attract attention.”
“What like blowing up Nelson’s Column? Yeah, I’ll try my best.”
I stopped creeping, as per the wizards wishes, and walked casually. Passing the cafe we were in earlier and turning the corner, Felix stopped sharp. He saw something of danger ahead. I looked about to see if I could identify what he had seen. The road was packed with people; shoppers and tourists. My car was still there, thank god, the only silver one in a line of 10 black and navy cars.
There was a man standing opposite my car, leaning against the wall smoking and checking his phone. Felix had him in his sights. He took the small flask of potion we filled earlier and took a swig. His eyes almost went into the back of his head. “Ergh!” he went, gagging against the taste. “Wait here.”
Gladly, I watched as Felix nonchalantly passed the man, who didn’t even look up. Felix turned back and pretended to know the man, I heard him say: “How the devil are you? Long time, no see!”
Felix reached a hand out for the man to shake, he looked confused for a second but went along with it and they shook. The wizard’s eyes went slightly funny as he tried to contain what he was seeing, and pretended to have a coughing fit, bending down so the man couldn’t see him.
“Take care of yourself!” said Felix, standing a second later.
Felix walked back towards me and pushed me back around the corner out of sight. “He’s undercover police. I just had to make sure. They’ve got him watching your car.”
“How come he didn’t recognise you?”
“Made a facial overlay of myself,” Felix demonstrated it, his face changing to that of an older gentleman, completely different from his own. I looked around nervously in case any one just saw that. “These sheeple don’t see anything,” he said. “Anyway, I can only keep it going a few seconds, the wand isn’t powerful enough to sustain a holographic overlay that long. And it hurts my face.” He said rubbing it.
Wizard for Hire Page 9