Wizard for Hire Read online

  “Yes?” Ozzy called out.

  The door opened a few inches and Ann stuck her head in.

  “I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “It is,” Ozzy answered.

  “It might seem out of place for me to say this, but wherever your parents are, I’m certain they would be very proud of what you’ve done.”

  “Thanks,” Ozzy said, a feeling of warmth and safety overcoming him. At that moment, all he wanted was to never leave that bed again. He wanted to stay in a room with a window where he could watch the stars and a lady who checked on him to make sure he was okay.

  “Goodnight, Ozzy.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Ann shut the door quietly.

  “She seems way more normal than Rin,” Clark whispered.

  “Still,” Ozzy said. “I can see how they’re related.”

  “It’s the noses. And what about tomorrow? Are you nervous?”

  “Tomorrow could be big, or it could be a bust.”

  After dinner, everyone had gathered at the computer and Ann had found the address of Timsby’s law offices and when it was open. She printed out a map with directions. It was only a ten-minute drive, and Ozzy couldn’t wait to go there tomorrow.

  “I just hope he’s there.”

  “Yeah,” Clark agreed.

  “And that he’ll talk to us.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” Clark asked. “You’re a nice person with a question only he can answer.”

  “Thanks, but it might be weird to him to have a wizard and a boy he doesn’t know just show up at his work.”

  “That seems perfectly normal to me. Besides, isn’t Portland supposed to be weird?”

  “That’s true.”

  “You want to talk about anything else, or should I just shut down?”

  “You can shut down if you want. I was just thinking how much things have changed for us. It used to be just you and me. The world seemed like a different place than what I see out the window now.”

  “It’s the same place,” Clark said. “There are just more things to fly into.”

  “Goodnight, Clark.”

  With a tick and a click, the bird shut down.

  Ozzy continued to stare out at the starry sky, thinking about tomorrow and what it could mean. Eventually, sleep settled over him and the boy, like the bird, shut down for the night.

  Timsby Lane sat behind a large wooden desk in his corner office on the thirty-third floor of the KOIN Center building in downtown Portland. He was forty-one, and greying more than someone his age should be. He’d been quite successful over the last fifteen years. His swanky surroundings testified to that. He was wearing a light blue dress shirt with heavy cufflinks at his wrists and an elaborately tied necktie that most style magazines would put in the “power” category. His face was clean shaven and, even sitting, he looked tall.

  Timsby flipped through a pile of papers making tiny notations in the corners. It was only ten o’clock, but he was already thinking about taking off early and getting in some golf.

  His desk phone buzzed. He pressed a button on the phone and leaned in.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Lane, but there’s a . . . wizard here to see you.”

  “Excuse me?” Timsby said. “A wizard?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  Timsby checked the calendar on his desk to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. It wasn’t.

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Timsby said into the phone.

  “Should I have him leave?”

  Lots of people came to see Timsby Lane. He was not only an excellent lawyer, but he was involved in the community, with his fingers in many pies and other important pieces of the day-to-day in Portland. It wasn’t unusual for clients to come see him, or for odd members of the community to stop by and ask for his professional help or a donation to their cause.

  “Is he a client?” Mr. Lane asked.

  “No, he’s with a young man.”

  “Tell him to make an appointment and I’ll meet with them later.”

  Mr. Lane went back to thinking about golf.

  The phone buzzed again.

  “So sorry, Mr. Lane, but he told me he wouldn’t leave until you were aware that he was here to talk about two doctors named . . . Emmitt and Mia Toffy.”

  Timsby Lane sat up straight in his wingback leather desk chair. Emmitt and Mia Toffy were two names he hadn’t heard in a very long time. His heart began to pound and it took a moment for him to gather his breath.

  “Mr. Lane?” his assistant asked. “Are you there?”

  “Send them in,” he finally managed to say.

  A few moments later, the heavy office doors opened and Labyrinth and Ozzy stepped in. Timsby stood up, still trying to compose himself. He was a lawyer and used to being cooly composed even when internally flustered, which is why he was so bothered by not being able to get his heart rate under control.

  “Come in,” Mr. Lane said. “Please, have a seat.”

  He motioned to the overstuffed leather chairs sitting in front of his desk. Before Ozzy and Rin could sit down, however, Mr. Lane came from around his desk and shook both of their hands.

  “I’m Labyrinth and this is Frizzel,” Rin said as his hand was being shaken, giving Ozzy yet another fake name. “We apologize for bothering you, but there might be something you know that we need to borrow.”

  Mr. Lane returned to his chair while his two guests settled into theirs.

  “My assistant said your last name was Wizard?” Mr. Lane asked, thinking he had just heard her wrong.

  “No,” Rin corrected him, sounding as if Mr. Lane’s assistant had made an embarrassing social blunder. “I am a wizard.”

  “I see,” Mr. Lane said, willing to play along—to a point. “Well, if she was correct about the wizard part, I’m going to have to assume that she was correct about you mentioning the Toffys?”

  “Well, as they say in Quarfelt, ‘When you assume . . . you make a guess based on what you see and think.’”

  “That’s very straightforward,” Mr. Lane said, having no idea what a Quarfelt was.

  “I thought you’d appreciate it, being a lawyer and all.”

  “This is interesting, Mr. Wizard, but could we get to what brought you here?”

  “Labyrinth. Or Rin,” Rin said. “Did you know the Toffys?”

  “Yes, and that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.”

  “How long, exactly?” Rin asked. “We wizards work on a different time scale. I have a friend who took over five hundred years to create a spell that a first-level wizard could have created in three hundred.”

  Mr. Lane looked puzzled but still answered the question.

  “I suppose it’s been more than seven years since I’ve seen Dr. Toffy.”

  “And where did you last see him?” Rin asked.

  “First, can I ask why you’re interested? It’s not every day that a wizard walks through my door and starts asking questions about my personal relationships.”

  Ozzy spoke up. “Actually, it started as a school project. I was researching inventors and I came across Dr. Toffy. There’s not much about him and as I tried to find out more, I guess the mystery just got to me. I mean, I want to get an A on my project, but now more than anything, I want to find out what happened to him. I figured talking to you would show that I have gumption and get me an A for sure.”

  “Oh, I can respect that . . . Frizzel, is it?”

  Ozzy reluctantly nodded.

  “Sadly, however, I don’t think the little bit I know will help your paper much.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Ozzy said.

  “It is worth a shot,” Mr. Lane said, liking the gumption that Ozzy was showing in hi
s pursuit of good grades. “I knew Dr. Emmitt and Dr. Mia when I lived in New York. I had just passed the bar exam and started working for a firm called Swilt, Leonard, and Wagon. Dr. Emmitt was one of our smaller clients and so he was given to me to take care of. He was only about five years older than me and, really, his legal needs were minor. But we became friends of a sort. I must have had dinner with him and his wife on three or four occasions. He used to invite people over to his house to socialize. He really liked to throw a party.”

  “Really?” Ozzy asked.

  “Yes. They were good people and we had no reason to think anything was strange or amiss. Then one day, they were gone.”

  “Just like that?” Rin asked.

  “Just like that,” Timsby reiterated. “Because I was their lawyer, their landlord contacted me. He was concerned because their apartment was empty and they hadn’t said anything about leaving. The only thing in the apartment was a short note.”

  “What did it say?” Ozzy asked.

  “I can’t remember exactly. Just that they were okay and that they wished everyone they knew well. It was a shock to those who knew them that they were gone. The police were called in, but no actual crime had been committed and the note explained . . . well, enough, I suppose. Once the curiosity died down, there was very little mention of them. My wife and I moved out here about a year after that.”

  “Can I ask you about the zoo?”

  Timsby blinked and fiddled with the tip of his nose nervously.

  “If you mean the polar bear incident . . . there’s even less to say about that. I had an episode of some sort and wandered into a polar bear enclosure. I don’t remember anything about it.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I remember being questioned by the police and my wife wondering whom she’d married. What would that have to do with Emmitt and Mia?”

  “Probably nothing—it just popped up when I searched for your name. You’ve got to admit it’s pretty interesting.”

  “Well, no—it was horrible and I still don’t understand it.”

  “Sorry,” Ozzy said sincerely. “One last question. Do you still keep in touch with any of those dinner guests?”

  “Heavens, no. There were about five of us and I only knew them through Emmitt and Mia. When the Toffys left New York, I never saw them again.”

  “Any names you can remember?”

  “Wow, you are serious about getting that A,” Mr. Lane said. “And no, I don’t. There might have been a . . . Susan? And a Milo. Oh, right—one of them was Dr. Emmitt’s half-brother.”

  “What?” Ozzy asked in shock.

  “His half-brother,” Timsby said. “Charles? Or John? He had a different last name than Emmitt and I can’t recall it. He wasn’t a pleasant person. He’d make bad jokes and then pout when people didn’t react the way he wanted. He was at the gatherings, but he and I rarely spoke.”

  “So Charles . . . or John?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And no clue about the last name?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  Ozzy looked at Rin and tried desperately to telepathically communicate to him that he needed to put some sort of spell on Timsby that would help him remember. When the telepathy didn’t work, he took another approach. He leaned over to Rin and whispered privately in his left ear.

  “Is there anything you can do to help him remember?”

  Rin looked puzzled for a moment before whispering back.

  “You mean like bribe him? I don’t have any cash.”

  “No, not bribe him—a spell.”

  “I did know a spell once that would have been perfect for this,” Rin whispered. “But I can’t remember it.”

  Mr. Lane cleared his throat. Rin and Ozzy stopped whispering and sat up straight.

  “When people whisper in the courtroom, it makes me nervous,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Ozzy apologized. “I’m just making sure I’ve asked everything.”

  “I’d say you’ve done a thorough job and then some. Now, I hate to break this up, but I’ve got a meeting to get to.”

  Mr. Lane stood up, which started a chain reaction of Ozzy and then Rin doing the same thing. Timsby came around his desk and shook their hands again.

  “Listen, Frizzel, if you decide to go into the law, look me up. I could use someone with your tenacity for going the extra mile.”

  “No thanks. I’m going to be something else.”

  “Well, you’re obviously too honest to be a lawyer, anyway.”

  Ozzy and Rin left the office. Neither said anything to the other until they were back on the street.

  “That was interesting,” Rin said, adjusting his hat.

  “Frizzel?” Ozzy asked.

  “It was the name of my house elf in Quarfelt.”

  “Still. And I wish you could have done some kind of memory spell. It’s exciting that I have a half-uncle, but it might be hard to find him with the little amount of info we have.”

  “There are no problems too big to conquer if you keep the goal in mind.”

  “Really? What if your goal is to have a wizard use a memory spell on the one person who might possess a real clue?”

  “Next time, you might want to not aim so high.”

  The wizard and apprentice returned to Rin’s car, where Clark had been peacefully recharging himself and waiting.

  “So?” he said after they were in. “How’d it go?”

  “I have a half-uncle,” Ozzy reported.

  “Interesting,” Clark said. “I have a full charge.”

  “And my doughnut meter’s on empty,” Rin said. “Who’s paying?”

  Ozzy raised his hand.

  “How delightful. You wompins and your currency.”

  Rin started the car and they pulled out into traffic.

  After stopping for doughnuts, and then stopping for shakes, they stopped at Ann’s. She tried to serve them a lunch that no one wanted to eat. So she packed up the food from the day before, the tofu eggs from breakfast that nobody finished (or began, really), and what looked like lasagna made of discarded salad and gave them to her brother to take back home to Otter Rock.

  Ozzy was sad to say goodbye, but he was thrilled at the prospect of never eating her food again.

  The drive back to Otter Rock seemed longer than the drive up had been. Ozzy had a thousand things on his mind and Clark kept interrupting by playing a game he made up called Beak Bug. The rules were simple. If you see a Volkswagen, you pinch someone with your beak. And since Ozzy and Rin were beakless, Clark pretty much ran away with the game.

  About twenty miles out of Otter Rock, Ozzy said, “We should strategize. You know . . . make a game plan about what to do next.”

  “Good idea,” Rin said. “I’ll drop you off at the train tracks, then I’m going to go to Bites. From there I’ll go home to get a good night’s sleep. That cot Ann had me sleep on was the worst.”

  “I don’t mean strategize about your evening plans—

  I mean about finding my parents.”

  “Of course, of course. I’m with you. I need a little time to think and ponder and work at home. I might have some powerful ideas for what’s next.”

  “Like what?”

  Rin laughed. “Ozzy, you have such a tricky sense of humor.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “There it is again.”

  “I am paying for all of this, remember?” Ozzy said. He was frustrated and the red creeping up his neck proved it. “I mean, so far everything we’ve done was accomplished by car and computer, not magic.”

  “Don’t be so quick to dismiss ordinary things that might actually be magic. Do you think we walk around in Quarfelt just zapping things and casting spells? No, we pick up things that we’ve dropped, we walk to get the mail, and we shower standing up. There is magic
in the force of gravity, magic in the mail system, and magic in the construction of pipes that provide water to stand under. When the time comes to use the kind of magic that books and movies fill people’s heads with, you’ll see it. And it will be that much more powerful because of the deft touch with which it was used.”

  “Sometimes you sound smart,” Clark said to Rin.

  “That’s because I’m a wizard.”

  “My point is that sometimes you don’t,” Clark added.

  Rin got a little pouty, Ozzy was already frustrated, and Clark was bored. So they traveled the remaining miles in silence.

  When they arrived at the train tracks, Ozzy got out of the car quickly.

  “Should we meet tomorrow?” Rin asked.

  “How about you sleep on it and if you get any answers, get in touch with me magically and I’ll respond.”

  “You got it,” Rin said, completely missing the sarcasm.

  Ozzy closed the car door and watched Rin drive away. He stood by the side of the train tracks as he had all those days for school. But now he knew there would be no bus to pick him up and give him a slight chance to think about something else or maybe see Sigi again.

  Clark situated himself on Ozzy’s head.

  “You can’t blame him too much,” Clark said. “I mean, aren’t wizards kind of known for being unstable?”

  “Some of them.”

  “I know what will cheer us up. Why don’t we go back to the cloaked house and look at pictures of birds?”

  Ozzy crossed the road and walked into the trees.

  “Are we making any progress?” he asked the bird.

  “I think so. You’re walking pretty fast.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean, are we any closer to finding my parents?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t remember anything else about my dad? He built you.”

  “I remember some stuff, but not specifics.”

  A large fox dashed between the trees just in front of them. The shadows of leaves covered everything in cracks and fissures. Ozzy was down, but being in the forest he knew so well lifted his spirits.

  “It’s been so long since they were taken,” Ozzy said.