The last part of the instructions Felix had written down were easy in comparison (or so I thought); drive straight to Paddington Green Police Station and wait, engine running, on the corner.
So that is what I did. Trundling through Saturday traffic, I now understood the expression “jelly-legged” for that's exactly how my legs felt. My nerves were shot to bits, my hands shook and a feeling that I could accidentally evacuate my bowels at any moment loomed over me. The latter was made all the more insidious seeing as it had happened to me before, when I was a kid in school. I won’t go into the details now. But ever since, I had been terrified of the incident repeating. And in this terrifying situation, I was most at risk.
I parked the car where I was told, around the back of the police station. Signs stood reading NO PARKING everywhere. As I was early, I whipped my iPhone out to look busy, tapping on Google, I input: Zoey Dylan.
Up she popped straight away…
Zoey Dylan is a member of parliament for the Labour Party of United Kingdom and outspoken backbencher. Credited for her work in bringing peace to a London gang estate, she is nicknamed by some as the ‘Cameron Diaz of Westminster.’
Christ, she’s an MP as well!
Felix had written in his letter that I was to be ready at 3:33pm (why so specific, I don’t know). But 3:33pm came and went, 5 minutes past and I started to worry.
3:38pm.
By 3:45pm, I was full blown panicking. If Felix had said be ready by 3:33pm, then that’s when he should have been here, something must be wrong. Had I performed the ceremony correctly? Perhaps, I had messed up some part of it and the demon hadn’t fulfilled his part of the bargain?
At peak of panic, there was a knock on my car window.
“Oi mate?” came a man’s voice, he had authority, but was plain clothed which told me he was, perhaps, an off duty policeman. “You can’t park there. Why have you stopped?”
SHIT.
My mind went blank, no credible excuse presented itself. I slowly wound the window down. “Yeah I know, but I’m er… waiting for someone.”
He gave me a perplexed expression. “This is a private road for police cars only, you’ll get more than a parking ticket for waiting here. I will have to ask you to move on…” he took a step back from the car, and gave me a fixed expression.
It was time to start getting good at lying. “You don’t understand,” I said in a meaningful voice. “I was invited here. I am secret service. Now do yourself a favour and leave.”
I saw a moment where he almost believed me. But things took a worse turn…
He whipped a badge out and flashed it at me. “Can you step out of the car please sir,” he said, I think he actually thought I was a terrorist. “Nice and slowly.”
Sighing, I clicked open the car door. “I don’t know what you think this is, but you’re making a mistake.” I said.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Obviously he had himself down as a ‘have a go hero’. “On your knees,” he said, taking a step towards me. I heard handcuffs being pulled out of a back pocket. I couldn’t let this happen, I had to do something.
Thankfully, I didn’t need to attack to the poor off duty policeman, because something else happened…
BOOM!
A bomb blast exploded terrifically close. My ears popped and all I could hear was a high pitched ringing noise. The blast was strong enough to throw the policeman back and off his feet. Plumes of dust and plaster rained down like confetti around us. I jumped back in the car and turned the headlights on, coughing against the vile acrid dust. The sound of car alarms, panicked screaming and sirens filled the air. It was like a war scene.
When Felix said in his letter that the demon would break him out, I didn’t think he would be bombing his way out. I assumed it would unlock the cell or something. A second later I saw the billowing coat of Felix running through the dust. By his side a running black shape. Felix jumped into the front seat, bringing a cloud of debris with him. “GO GO GO!” he screamed.
Zagakowski the demon, was holding onto the door. “My payment?” he said.
“Piss off Zagakowski!” Felix cried, just as the off duty policeman was rising. “Floor it Norton!”
With not a second to lose, I put my foot down and sped away.
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.
I was panicking. I was terrified. The streets were cluttered with drivers manically trying to get away and others stopping to see what was happening.
“Was it really a good idea telling a demon to piss off like that?” I cried. “It did just break you out of jail!”
Felix rolled his head. “That’s the least of my problems.”
“You didn’t tell me the demon was going to bomb you out of there?! Christ sake Felix, they’re going to be treating this as terror-related now, and you’ve got me involved. Christ, I’m your getaway driver. And it was terrifying!”
“Not as terrifying as the alternative,” he grinned, completely oblivious to the chaos he had caused. We passed several police cars, armed response units, ambulances and fire engines going the other way.
“Not to mention the fact that this will probably make prime time news! And we’re the main suspects!”
I tried to calm my breathing as we drove sullenly through the traffic, away from the danger. “What now?” I said.
“I’ll think of something,” he said calmly.
“This might help,” I passed him Vitalies poker chip that I had found at Kriston’s house. “I put it all together, I know who the Creep is. That’s what I came to tell you the other night when you were taken by the Magic Government.”
“Council,” he corrected.
“Yeah, but they—“ I stopped mid-sentence. My heart dropped in my stomach, we had company.
“Oh-oh,” said Felix spotting it too. Flashing blue lights. Directly behind us. Lots of them.
“They’ve found us. Can’t you do some magic or something?” I cried desperately. “To hide us or whatever?”
“It’s all at home!” he said.
“What about your emergency magic bag in my boot?”
“Used it all.”
Great. So the wizard had no magic. We had just bombed a police station. And five police cars were flashing me to pull over. I took a deep breath, I knew what I had to do, and it would take all of my character to pull this off.
19
The Sanctuary’s Sibling Scuffle
One often thinks back to school with fond memories. You would be forgiven for thinking upon seeing me now with my limpness, that I was perhaps, bullied in school. But that was not so. I was short and scrawny, but plucky and feisty (I don’t know where it all went). I belonged to a great, adventurous and loyal group of friends. There was Gonzo, Siclops and Rooster. I was called Shrimpy, on account of my being the shortest of the bunch.
Gonzo was my best friend, we called him Gonzo because he had a big nose that he liked to poke into other peoples business and always seemed to provide good gossip on account of his well connected mother.
We called Siclops that because he only had one eye, owed to an accident when he was a baby. His real name was Simon, it was a kind of play on word between Simon and the one-eyed monster—Cyclops.
And Rooster was so called because his last name was Cock, we thought Rooster was far more dignified than the alternatives.
But to the point of this meander; we had an arch nemesis gang led by Jimmy Jones, a little shit. They were pretty similar to us in academic and sporting aptitude, neither top of the class nor bottom. But for some reason, since we were 14 years old, we had a mutual hatred of each other and at every opportunity we would seek to undermine, mock or belittle one another.
One day, during one heated feud, Jimmy and his friends managed to rile up the majority of the rugby team into thinking we had said nasty things about them, or some such lie. The rugby team squared up to us on the school field, their natural environment. Our mutual enemies stood nearby, watching and giggling. We tried to
reason with them, but fourteen year old boys, are not known for their diplomacy. There was a stand-off between us and them, before they charged at us like stampeding buffalo. My friends ran, but like a deer caught in headlights, I froze.
For a moment, I thought about my poor mother receiving my mangled body. Were it not for Gonzo, grabbing my collar and yanking me after them, I would have been trampled by the heavy footed rugby team. We ran, the rugby team became riled, running about the school looking for us. We hid in the last place they’d ever think of looking—the sports hall.
But why am I telling you this?
Well, experiences when we’re children often come back to us when in similar situations. Like now, it felt eerily similar; being chased by the police for something that we had not done, orchestrated by an arch-enemy.
And I was all but frozen with fright in my seat.
I pulled my attention back the situation at hand. Glares and sharp looks flew at us from inside nearby cars, who pulled over, only to see the wizard and I continue. My right foot hovered over the accelerator. The picture in front of me came into sharper focus. Felix kept glancing worriedly at me, holding onto the roof handle for support.
“You’ve got to do something soon Norton, there’s traffic up ahead.”
I took a deep breath, one last glance in the rear view mirror at the ten flashing blue police cars, and floored it.
The car squealed and took off. Up ahead were three lanes of cars, and the lights had turned red. With teeth gritted, I swerved the car onto the pavement. “Hold on!” I cried as we sped over the crossing with cars coming the other way.
There was a cacophony of beeping horns and car brakes screeching to a halt as I sped across a six lane crossing!
But… we made it!
It was the most dangerous thing I had ever done. Quickly glancing in the rear view mirror, the police cars were caught up in the chaos and I sped away, taking the first turning off, turning right, then left, to make sure the evasion was complete. I stopped the car in a dark passage under a bridge, like they do in films.
“Well,” said Felix. “I did not think you had it in you. But that was inspiring.”
Resting my head upon the steering wheel, I took great lungfuls of air to calm myself. “I’m a criminal.”
Felix patted me on the back. “Yes.”
Felix’s usual bubbling energy had subsided, his demeanour sour and quiet. He sat, dull and silent, as grey in personality as the concrete bridge above us. At this point I would usually expect the wizard to come up with something, a plan, a direction, an idea. But he just sat as cars passed us by and a soft shower of rain began to fall.
“So what now?” I said, unsure if I wanted to hear the answer.
He made a small noise, sighed and didn’t meet my gaze. “I’m sorry for sucking you into all this Norton.”
His face sagged under the weight of the challenge ahead, perhaps too, the lack of sleep. I didn’t know what to say or suggest, it flummoxed me seeing him so… well, different. He was, in that moment, like a normal depressed person. Half expecting him to burst into tears at any moment, for which I really didn’t want to be burdened with, I went on. “There’s always something to be done!”
He shook his head. “The Magic Council wants the ring back in…” he looked at the clock on the dashboard. “4 hours. That’s impossible.”
The repercussions of not doing as The Magic Council asked of him seemed to be a bad thing, much worse than anything else and the highest of priorities.
“But you have the ring.”
He rolled his eyes. “I put Harry in a void. To make sure he couldn’t be taken. It’s complicated magical stuff you won’t understand so there’s no point trying…” he said, as I awaited an explanation for what a void was (but didn’t get one). “The special instrument to unlock a void is extremely expensive, there’s
no way I can afford it.”
“Why put the dog in a void if you wouldn’t be able to get it out again?”
“It’s the only thing that would stop the Creep finding it.”
In the adrenaline fuelled car chase, I rather spectacularly forgot the one detail that would spring the wizard from his funk. So billed with excitement was I at relaying my information that I rather tripped over my words.
“Slow down and speak normally,” said Felix eyeing me with curiosity at this uncommon sight.
“I know who the Creep is!” he turned to face me as I explained in rather unorthodox fashion that the poker chip he was still holding for Vitalies Casino, was found at Kriston’s house. That the Creep had been spotted at the same Casino having a disagreement with management. And, that Kriston was an undercover policeman investigating Jonnie Reed’s gang, whose main hub of operations was run from that casino.
“You mean to say,” said Felix life drawing back into his face. “That the Creep is Edward Rappaport?!”
“Yeah, do you know him?”
“No.”
I sighed, but buoyed by his resurgence in energy, got my iPhone out and searched his name. Felix snatched it off me and scrolled. “Source?” he said to a puzzled face. “Who was your source?!”
“Oh, it was an old friend,” I said.
He screamed at me. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before!”
“I didn’t have chance! When I’d worked it all out you were being taken by the Magic Government—”
“Council!” he corrected.
“Whatever! And then, you were in police custody. So what chance did I possible have?”
He bit his lip. “You could have told Zoey.”
“Oh yeah,” I cried. “Thanks for telling me you have a sister!”
Felix looked around for some imaginary audience as if to prove his incredulity. “Why should I need to tell you that? Anyway, she’s a half-sister. We share a mother.”
The memories of Karen and Bob’s voices rang about my head for a moment. Bob had smoothly reminded me that my memory of being with Felix at the time of the robbery could have been a carefully staged hallucination—as good and real as that of Nelson’s Column appearing to fall. Unsure where the frustration at the wizard had suddenly arisen, I blurted out: “Did you have anything to do with the robbery in Covent Garden?”
His eyes swam up to mine. “You wearing a wire?”
“Don’t be fucking stupid. I just want to know the truth, if you had something to do with it, then it affects me!”
He sighed softly. “It’s what they do, put doubt in your tiny mind about me! Get it to all make sense that I was there stealing jewels and rubies. That is NOT my style. I don’t steal. Nor am I in cahoots with any gangs. But if you don’t trust me, there isn’t much I can do—”
“Of course I don’t trust you. I never have!”
It was true. How could you fully trust someone that could make you see whatever they wanted you to?
Felix went quiet and turned away to stare from the window. He was silent for a few good minutes. I had pissed him off. But then, he said in a slow measured voice. “I can make this all go away for you, if you like. Make your life go back to normal, make you forget everything that happened. No police coming after you. No demons. No magic. All back to normal.”
Nothing came out of my open mouth, it hung for a long moment because I couldn’t compute what he was saying. That he could reset everything back to normal exactly the way it was before.
My mind flicked between both possibilities as the rain began to fall harder, the rhythmic patter sound relaxing me as I posed my quandary. “You don’t have to answer now,” he added. “Just so you know. I can do that.”
I wish I had said something, given an answer, but my reluctance to be definitive hung in the air between us as we drove in silence to a nearby pub that Felix knew. He said he needed a drink to help him think a way out of this mess.
When he said he knew a pub, I didn’t realise it was a pub only frequented by wizards. It sat in a place called Borough Market, near London Bridge, on the corner of Park Str
eet facing a huge sign which read: BOROUGH MARKET.
The three storey building looked like a traditional British pub, with green panelling around the outside and a pretty array of pink and red hanging flowers. Huge gold lettering spiralled up the side of the pub reading: THE SANCTUARY.
As Felix and I walked closer, I witnessed a young couple try and open the doors to go inside, but fail as it was somehow locked. But when Felix opened the same door a minute later, it opened straight away. Holding it open he ushered me inside. To say I was a little spooked by the apparent wizard-only pub in the middle of central London was an understatement. If this existed, what else did? The interior was not as nice as the exterior, I could safely say, for it looked to be in major need of a clean. The carpet was sticky, the tables had cup marks, and a strange smell like burnt toast hung in the air.
Felix pushed me towards a booth as he went to order some drinks. “Julie!” he called brashly causing three limp-eyed sour men nearby to look up from their glasses. It wasn’t just the pub that needed a clean, the clientele could too. It was empty, bar the three sour faced men and an older lady propping up the bar in the corner silently swigging a mug of beer.
It felt really odd.
I saw Felix take a few shots of something while he thought I wasn’t looking before coming back to the table. “Here’s a beer,” he said handing me a pint of cloudy beer. “And a vodka chaser.”
When I turned my nose up at it, he took it and knocked it back. He was getting drunk. Brilliant. We had our lives to try and save and the wizard was getting drunk. At least he didn’t have his wand, I bet that would be like giving a mentally unstable drunk a shotgun.
Finally, he sat still for more than ten seconds and opened his mouth to speak with a firm look on his face of a man that was about to talk serious. But this moment of truth was interrupted in one flash, as Zoey burst into the pub with such force the old lady dropped her mug of beer.
Wizard for Hire Page 14