Wizard for Hire
Chapter Seven — Seven Steps to Avoid a Demon

Felix still didn’t turn his head away from the wall, like a shy child, until this man had marched through the cafe and placed a large hand on his shoulder.

“Earth to Felix,” said the man jovially.

Felix turned his head in a slow fashion, reminding me somewhat of an owl, before looking at the man. “Alister,” said Felix, in a voice that rippled with resentment. “How the devil are you?” he could not have sounded less genuine if he tried.

“Very well, in fact, very well.”

So this was the famous Alister, what I had gathered from the conversation at the police station, was another wizard. He ran the wizarding private investigation company: PI Wizz, if I remembered rightly. He stood like a confident city salesman with a white smile so bright you could use him in a toothpaste advert. Classically good looking, what I would call a ‘proper man’; tall, dark and handsome. Turned out he was only joking about arresting Felix.

Alister’s eyes fell on me, waiting for Felix to introduce us. But the moment didn’t come.

“I’m his er…” I started, wondering what I was to him. A friend was pushing it. But it was rude to say acquaintance, wasn’t it?

It didn’t matter much, for Felix saved my blushes. “He’s my apprentice,” said Felix puffing himself up with pride.

“Ahh,” Alister eyed me playfully. “The Sorcerers Apprentice. Where have I heard that before?”

Felix cleared his throat in an annoyed way.

“You might know me,” he said in a loud, brash voice that carried through the cafe causing a few uptight people to look around in an aggravated way. This put me on edge. “I run PI Wizz, with a colleague, our office is opposite Scotland Yard.”

I shook his hand, and felt his business card slide into mine — was that by magic or just good sleight of hand? It was hard to tell. The business card was really cool, probably the best card I had ever seen.

PI Wizz — Alister & Bundy, Wizard Private Investigators, stood in the centre of the card in curling golden font. Before fading out like a film title. An orange spurt of light shot out of the card into the air in front of me, into a line of numbers. I looked around the cafe, but no one had noticed.

“Call me if you ever need some assistance.” I knew what he was hinting at — he, like everyone else it seemed, didn’t trust Felix. Alister turned his attention back to Felix, taking a seat.

“Oh, he’s sitting down now, that’s good,” Felix muttered failing to hide his disappointment.

Alister looked like he was enjoying himself. The relationship they seemed to have reminded me of two brothers. Alister taking the older brother role, talking down to Felix, winding him up, with an air of disapproval about his life choices. “So,” he said. “How’s business?”

Felix didn’t look at Alister once, keep his gaze fixed firmly on his mug of tea. “Good… very good indeed. Great in-fact.”

“Oh that’s good. Last thing I heard was in The Santuary,” he looked at me and said in a patronising voice. “That’s a pub for wizards,” before turning back. “The guys in there seem to think that you’re stone broke? So I am glad you’ve managed to rectify your economical situation.”

“Yep.”

“So we’re all doing well! Of course if I keep catching all these criminals, I won’t have any work left…” he giggled playfully. “Mind you, at the moment we have so much work we’re turning it away!”

Felix pursed his lips.

Alister stood and fished inside his pocket and pulled out the largest wad of bank notes I’ve seen. It must have been thousands. I heard Felix made a small squeak at the sight of it. “Tell you what, seeing as I am in a generous mood, I will pay for your dinners.”

Felix stiffened and waved a hand. “Put your money away Alister, I told you we’re quite alright.”

“We?” he mused. “So you two are an item then?”

Felix looked perplexed at the question. “An item?”

“No we are not!” I said.

Alister raised his hands in surrender. “Fair enough, just asking.”

There was something about the way Alister spoke, the comments were loaded, like there was an agenda to this little visit. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Felix turned his whole body away. “I don’t want your filthy money…” he said into his mug. “What did you do to get that sort of money anyway? Rob a bank?”

“Ah, well I am glad you mentioned that.”

Sid came over, placed a mug down and filled it for Alister, before silently topping ours and retreating. This meeting must be a semi-regular occurrence because he looked to be on named terms with both the wizards.

Alister leant closer. “Interesting isn’t it? That I learn Felix Freeman is as broke as a poor man’s bike. The next day, I hear he’s allegedly been involved in a break in of a bank. What conclusion should I come to?”

Karen Magdalen’s voice replayed, when she advised me of Felix: “That man is more trouble than he is worth, it’s not worth getting involved with…”

I was starting to see what she meant, for there was not one person we had met today that had a good word to say about the man. But still, I was beyond fascinated.

On hearing these words, Felix bristled with anger. So much so, that I felt a static charge like when you pull a fleece over your head, it enveloped the surrounding area.

“How dare you!” Felix said in a small voice. “Karen asked for my help, what happened was unfortunate, but nothing to do with me.” He said, voice like acid.

Alister leaned a little closer still. “What happened? Tell me and I will help you.”

“Bull-shit! The only person you help is yourself.”

Felix stood sharply from his chair, which scraped along the floor. “Come on Norton, we’re leaving.”

“Yes run along,” said Alister smiling, with the look of a father who knew his son’s moods too well. “But now it’s a murder investigation, they all but begged for my services, paying way more than I feel comfortable with charging. But that’s business. If you help me, I will help you.”

Felix stopped dead as he was putting his coat on. “You came in here to find out if I did it. You don’t want to help me. You’ve never helped me. Why start now? You want me behind bars, and you always have. Your as slippery as a…” Felix struggled for a metaphor. “Bar of soap in prison.”

He put his cap on backwards, brushing his hair back. “Sid!” he called. “Stick the bill on the slate.”

Sid nodded once and returned to his newspaper. Felix leant down to Alister and whispered. “I didn’t do it.”

I followed Felix dutifully, leaving Alister at the table. We were halfway across the cafe when Alister carried on talking. “I will catch you one of these days, and I can feel it won’t be long now. You are bad through and through.”

Felix stopped dead. That static feeling returned, it made my hair feel like it was upside-down. Alister came to stand in a slow methodical way. Tension felt thick and I am sure would have ignited if exposed to a flame.

“Everyone will come to realise what you are: a criminal. A user of black magic,” he said black magic in a way that I would have said: child molester. “It won’t take them long to find that you are bad through and through. And that it was you… who killed your own mother.”

That was the fuel the tension needed. Felix’s face screwed into pain and livid anger. All I saw next was a flash of his coat, he spun, arms a-wide like he was throwing a baseball. In his outstretched hand collected a contact-lens shaped collection of pink light. There was this split second of silence as his fingers closed around the spell, it sucked all noise from the nearby vicinity. His fingers released. Sound returned. Like one huge rush of wind through trees, the spell expelled at Alister like a bolt of lightning. The burst of pink light, scorched through the air. But Alister was ready for it, lazily flicking his wand at it, and sending it into the ceiling with a loud: THWACK!

Plaster and dust fell to ground, around the feet of the cafe occupants who had ducked beneath the tables.

“NOT IN MY CAF!” Sid screamed charging round the counter at them. “BOTH OF YA’ OUT!”

Felix stormed out, in a huge huff and, as I followed I heard Alister say he would cover the cost of repairs.

My heart was beating so fast at this most outrageous and obvious performance of magic as to render me dumfounded.

Felix stormed aimlessly around Westminster for a while, with no obvious destination. Simply expending his anger. Muttering resentfully, cursing Alister over and over. After a while of this, he decided it may be a good idea to go and collect my car. Grateful at this sudden emergence of common sense, and wondering where on earth it had grown from, we set forth, back towards Paddington Green.

“They will be on the look-out for us though,” he said. “So, put your hood up. We’ll take the Underground, it will so packed no one will notice us.”

We snuck out of Edgware Road Underground, which was opposite the police station we were at earlier, hoods up. I paid the bill on the car, with no offer for payment from the wizard whatsoever. Once inside the comforting familiarity of the car Felix turned to me. “We need to do laps.”

“Laps?” I repeated, wondering if I could manage any more running today.

“Yes, we must do laps of the city to evade the demon. It’s a precautionary tactic that I always do, or face the consequences of it finding us,” he said in a deathly tone.

“Fine,” he had suitably scared me into submission. “What do I need to do?”

“Just drive around, I will direct you.”

“Drive around?” I said, suddenly thinking how much I wanted my bed. “You want me to drive around London aimlessly in the rush hour?”

“It’s either that, or wake up to a demon brutally murdering you and then eating the evidence.”

I turned the engine on. “Well when you put it like that.”

The wizard put his seat belt on, his hand catching something. “Oh look, my wand!”

If I’d have known that we would have to drive around London all night, doing three laps of the M25, countless stops and two full tanks of fuel, I would have given serious through to taking my chances with the demon.

The journey was made all the more intolerable by the fact that the wizard firstly kept moaning about Alister: “The annoying thing is that Alister is the good guy. I am the bad guy. But he’s still a prick.”

And secondly, that he kept reading out long passages to himself, seemingly narrating the book he wanted me to write about him. Mind you, I suppose this was better than listing fucking road names all night.

He went on like this: “Reader: please imagine some moody, atmospheric jazz playing underneath me as I speak… my life is like a noir film, all black and white, the constant thud of rain in the background beating down upon my beige duster with the collar poked up. I light a cigarette—”

“You don’t smoke.”

“It’s all about image Norton,” he said clearly annoyed at my interruption. “I must project an image.”

“Neither do you wear a beige duster.”

“So?” he shrugged, non-plussed. “In this book I’d like to.” He continued: “I walk through the driving rain, a man on a mission, ready to take on the world. I flick the cigarette into the drain, and set forth to… the pub. There to meet a man about a dog. And perchance some food. I am a wizard, not of this world… well, born in this world but not wanted by it, not believed, treated like a charlatan wherever he goes. Sad and lonely, he marches on, determined to keep the people safe from the things they most fear…”

He even started doing this odd little accent that sounded like American. In between these unannounced episodes of narrative, he would bark directions at me. Leading us to abandoned warehouses, industrial estates and riverbanks. How he knew where they all were was beyond me.

Each time he got out, he took a little bag of magic with him, insisting I stay in the car, I wasn’t going to grumble at that, however I was curious as to what he was doing.

“Laying scents,” he said after I asked. “There’s seven steps to avoiding a demon,” said Felix. “This should keep it busy for a while.”

I repeated “laying scents?” back to him in a curious way until he expanded upon it.

“It’s how demons operate, by smell. If I lay enough scents traps, it won’t be able to sniff us out. There must be seven, no more or less. Hence the seven steps.”

It was past midnight by the time we returned home and I climbed, grateful beyond belief, into bed. I could say with absolute certainty, that this day had been the strangest I had ever had. Unless, somehow I was dreaming, hallucinating or in a coma, three options of many which I had not ruled out just yet.

But, I had forgotten in my tiredness, to do one rather important thing… lock my door.

8

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