Felix Freeman Box Set Read online

  Felix Freeman: Complete Series

  Boxset Books 1 - 3

  jack simmonds

  Contents

  Wizard For Hire

  Soul Catcher

  The Third Ring

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  BLURB:

  “Meet Felix Freeman, London’s finest Wizard P.I. Apart from the other one.

  Turns out the everyday world is full of strange and magical things and London is full to the brim. The city infested with vampires, demons and ghosts…

  When Felix is called upon to find one, he stumbles across an ever bigger mystery…

  An eleven year old boy had been kidnapped by a highly guarded, mysterious laboratory underneath London.

  But why?

  His best friends seem to think it’s because he has powers. Magic powers.

  Now he’s promised the boy’s mother and friends he’ll save him.

  And this wizard doesn’t break promises.

  Look out London, there’s wizards about.”

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  Wizard For Hire

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  1. The Room That Isn’t There

  2. On Seeing the Miraculous

  3. The Meaning of the Odd Word: SPOPE

  4. A Murder by Magic

  5. When I Came Face to Face With a Demon

  6. An Explosive Explanation in Sid’s Caff

  7. Seven Steps to Avoid a Demon

  8. The Morning After The Night Before

  9. A Job For Felix Freeman

  10. Caught at Atlantis Occult

  11. How to Open the Third Eye

  12. Where We First Learn of the CREEP

  13. A Demon in the Disabled Toilets

  14. Merlin’s Creepy Cave

  15. The Wizarding Duel of Tintagel

  16. In Trouble with the Magical Government

  17. The Terrible Trouble with the Terrorist Wizard

  18. My Dodgy Deal with the Demon

  19. The Sanctuary’s Sibling Scuffle

  20. The Last Lead Left to Follow

  21. Sharon

  22. Where We Find Out Who Kriston Really Was

  23. “Bring Me Felix Freeman”

  24. Ring on the Rooftop

  25. The Showdown of Paternoster Square

  26. The Real Ring

  Foreword

  Written by William Thomas Norton B.A. (Hons)

  I have written these stories from memory, of my times and adventures with the wizard. My memory is clear and accurate on all order and events; however, some of the speech is paraphrased as best my memory would serve to recall it.

  This is a true story.

  Signed,

  Will Norton,

  London

  December 2018

  Prologue

  I was standing on the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, looking down at the mass of police and onlookers. I felt the wind whip my hair violently. My heart beat faster than at any other time in my life.

  Felix, my best friend, a wizard, was locked in a battle at the tip of the Cathedral with a dark wizard called Edward.

  This madman had set a bomb to detonate below St. Paul’s, blowing us and the 800 people inside St. Paul’s to smithereens. Unless, Felix gave him what he wanted. A very special magical item. A silver ring that gave the wearer the power to teleport anywhere in the world. But Felix wasn’t willing to give it up.

  A spell blasted into the top of the dome and now it cracked. The iconic masterpiece was about to cave in. Sending us with it!

  “I’m putting this over your neck now,” said Edward. “To stop you doing any more magic.” Edward put some kind of pendant necklace around Felix’s neck. “I don’t want you doing magic and miraculously surviving the fall now do I?” Edward laughed. “You’re the only one who can stop me.”

  Then, quick as a flash and without any time to react, Edward raised Felix into the air high above where he dangled in mid-air. “Where is the ring Felix?”

  Felix hung over the precipice. “I won’t give it to you.”

  Felix floated up and down over the edge of the tower. Edward demonstrating his power over Felix’s life. Edward reached out and inspected Felix’s right hand, waving his wand over it. Sure enough, the silver ring sparkled into existence. “Thank you very much,” he said plucking it from Felix’s limp finger.

  “No…” Felix mumbled as Edward pocketed the ring.

  “You’ve got what you came for!” I cried. “Now let him go!”

  Edward smiled. “As you wish.”

  As he lowered his wand, the spell keeping Felix floating in mid-air stopped. Felix, who was hovering over the side of the tower and now with nothing to support him… fell.

  “NOO!” I screamed into the wind. My best friend fell over the ledge and out of sight, plummeting towards the ground. Screams from the square rang high and shrill at the sight. As my best friend, the wizard, fell to his death.

  1

  The Room That Isn’t There

  My name is William Norton. I am by all accounts, an ordinary man. However, the story I am about to tell you is quite extraordinary...

  I pulled up outside it… 66 Fox Close, London.

  The area, Canning Town, was what you would call “run down”, and for London, that was saying something. The houses were council built: big, ugly, concrete brutalist blocks in an estate spanning a mile or so. The house I had agreed to rent and already paid the deposit on, was a maisonette. This meant that it was a house on top of a house, in a terraced block of ten. To say it was grotty was being kind. Downright ready for knocking down was slightly harsh. Somewhere in between was fair.

  I felt that familiar wave of sadness crash through me as I took up my two holdall bags from the back seat of my car. A Honda Civic 2007 silver which uses diesel fuel, definitely a mistake for driving in London! I slung both bags over my shoulder and locked the car. It was the sort of place that you had to lock the door.

  I pressed for number 6 on the intercom to let me through the double security doors, a necessity in a place like this, I would have thought.

  “Come up,” said Ms McCall, the landlady, in a gravelled, lifetime smoker’s voice.

  Ms McCall greeted me at the front door. A walking stereotype of a no-shit-taking landlady if ever I saw one: hair curlers, cigarette, pink fluffy slippers and nightdress, which was brave for this January weather. She put out the cigarette on the wall and ushered me inside. She turned on me in the hallway before I had even wiped my feet.

  “This is my house, so no funny business goes on under my roof. Got it? I live in that room at the end,” she pointed a long bony finger to a door with a sign on it reading: Landlady.

  “If there’s a problem you knock for me. Rent is £390 every month paid the first day of the month, and it includes bills, unless you go crazy with the electric.”

  She turned to the stairs and asked me to follow. The upstairs landing held three doors and a small flight of stairs.

  “Oh, this is a three story house is it?” I said pointing at the stairs.

  “No,” said Ms McCall blankly, before pushing a door straight ahead and ushering me inside.

  A single bed in the corner, a desk and a wardrobe. Upon closer inspection, the floor, dark oak, looked like it was splintering. The bed looked like it had come straight from a whore house,
the magnolia paint was peeling in several corners, the wardrobe looked ancient and sagging, and the window was thick with a layer of crusted dirt which dampened the light. But for the price, not bad.

  “There you are, Bill. I’ll leave you to get settled in.”

  I didn’t bother correcting her, simply giving my thanks and closing the door, wanting to be alone. It was sparse and cold, and my footsteps echoed like they do in an empty unfilled room. Still, it was cheap. I put my suitcase and holdall on the desk, all my worldly possessions. Twenty-nine years on earth and all I owned in the world fitted neatly inside two bags.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, my gaze caught by a nasty looking, brown stain on the wall opposite me, next to the fireplace. God knows what that was.

  And then I cried.

  It wasn't long before I met a man living in the house, who would change my life completely...

  I didn’t think much on the fact that this two story house had an extra flight of stairs. There was no space for a third floor. Perhaps it led to the roof, I thought, justifying this anomaly.

  After feeling sorry for myself a while longer, I deepened my woe by getting my iPhone out and following my habitual routine. Telling myself not to didn’t work. Like a child sitting opposite a bowl of sweets, I just had to.

  First: Facebook, type Ginny’s name into the search bar to see what she was up to. I knew she was back in England now and back working as normal. I scanned her pictures and updates, nothing new. No pictures with the new man.

  Second: Instagram. No new pictures.

  Third: Find Friends. This one was naughty. It was an app that showed me her location. We had it set up for each other when going out. Location: Oxford Circus, that’s where she worked.

  I had to stop this. It was bordering on the obsessive, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it was over. To make a statement of intent to myself, I charged across the room and chucked the phone into one of the desk drawers. Never again would I check it. Yeah, right.

  Attempting to take my mind off her, I set about unpacking my things. The wardrobe creaked ominously as I hung its new contents. I wondered how long it would last. I was convinced that the radiator, the only source of heat in the room, had perished. However, after some fiddling, it came to life with no clear method. I did not care, as heat is a primal thing that makes a cold person happy. Indeed, my spirits did lift as I set about the room, placing my laptop on the desk and flicking the lamp on. In one of the desk drawers was a page of old newspaper, so I crunched it up, pulled open the window and rubbed it down. Canary Wharf and the big glass buildings were just in view across the way, and in my foreground were the brutalist concrete blocks. What a juxtaposition between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor.

  After changing the bed sheets, I settled in bed as best you can in a new place, waiting for sleep to alleviate the day’s stresses. I set the alarm on my phone for work, a little earlier than usual anticipating my new route would take time to work out. I tried for sleep.

  It was as I was dozing that a sharp bang, like a dropped mug echoed from the ceiling above. I jolted awake, straining my ears. Did that bang just come from above? Wait, but above this was only rooftops? Perhaps it was a seagull, or a fallen television antenna, I mused, rolling over.

  But not ten minutes later, I heard something else. This noise was not unlike a firework, but it wasn’t loud. Like one of those catherine wheels which makes a screeching, whizzing noise before a bang. It occurred three more times, a screeching, a whizzing… and then a bang! Some person must be on the roof letting off fireworks, and on a Thursday evening? This area was worse than I thought.

  I sat up and checked my phone: 1:13am. Christ! I had to be up in six hours. If I did not get my full quota of sleep, my day’s work would not be good, and I was already being monitored for poor performance.

  Wrapped in my dressing gown and slippers, I set foot into the dark, quiet, landing. The noise set off again in the exact same fashion. How had no one else heard this, let alone doing something about it?

  The staircase up was covered in darkness, and I fumbled around for a light switch, to no avail. Not one for confrontation, I took a breath and ventured upwards. At the top was a door.

  Screech, whizz, bang! Went the noise again, loud enough so as to jolt me back against the wall with fright. It sounded very much like a firework. I was nervous about confronting anyone setting off fireworks. I was about to leave and scuttle back to my room. But then, I heard movement and muttering, a shuffling of heavy boots and a falling of books.

  Ms McCall was quite mistaken. She did have a third floor, and someone seemed to occupy it. I wrapped my hand on the door and waited. All noise stopped for a second as whoever was inside seemed to stop dead.

  The door flew open.

  A man stood looking down at me, I being three steps below. He had an expression that told me he did not like being interrupted. “Yes?” he said in an expectant tone. Past the man, I could see the room he occupied. It was an attic room, littered and full to the brim with stuff. This made the mystery of the fireworks even more of a curiosity. “Can I help you?” he said, his voice growing in annoyance.

  “Well, yes. My name is Will Norton. I moved into the room below earlier today.”

  I was hoping he would fill in the blanks for me like a good housemate, and promise to keep the noise down. Instead, he was flat out rude.

  “So? Why should I care?”

  “I was hoping you would, perhaps, keep the noise to a minimum at this late hour?”

  “Why you talking like you’re from Victorian times?”

  That threw me. I stammered some. “I... w-was trying to be courteous to my new housemate. And I hoped you would do the same. Until we get to know each other.”

  The man mumbled ‘get to know each other?’ under his breath and laughed a little. However, he pushed the door aside and stepped away.

  “So Will Norton, you’re new here, huh?” he said, I stepped up into this most strangest of rooms. “You must be desperate, or just unlucky,” he said, shutting the door then looked me up and down, then muttered “Or both.”

  It was a bedroom, with a sloped roof and a skylight, but so full of stuff that my eyes felt assaulted. It was like a laboratory, with whirring instruments and things moving of their own accord. I would say it was ‘organised messy’. A bookshelf in the corner was spilling over with so many books the shelves were sagging. A big pot I can only describe as a cauldron, perched atop a chest of drawers, was being stirred by a wooden spoon as if by an invisible hand. There was heat being produced by something else too, which made the room feel warmer than a sauna.

  “I am confused,” I said, “how can this room possibly be here? I saw the building from the outside. There are two floors only to this house.”

  In a flash, this man put a hand straight up to my face. “Sleep!” he said.

  I bent my head around his hand. “That would be nice. I’ve got work early.”

  The man, looking confused, held his calloused hand a few seconds longer. Then, apparently changing tack, he clicked his fingers. Some strange rhythmic music began to play from a nearby record player, and he started muttering at me. “You will forget this ever happened. Forget this ever happened. You will not hear anything from my room again. Nothing from my room. These stairs will not appear to you, they are invisible to you from now on. I do not exist. Do not exist…”

  I stood in quiet amazement as he seemingly finished what he was saying. He opened the door. “You may go now. Go now.”

  “What was that?” I said. He was either a complete nutcase or a failed hypnotist. Either way, I was tempted to take for the door but had to get some guarantee the noises would cease, my job depended on it.

  The man looked perplexed and stunned. “You mean, it didn’t work?”

  “What didn’t?”

  “Never mind,” he looked utterly put out and began muttering things about that never happening before and his powers were waning.

/>   “It didn’t work on you. That’s strange.”

  His tone changed towards me with this new revelation. “Usually I hypnotise new people who come into the house, to make sure I am not disturbed. I am very busy. But you must have a natural aversion to it. Very rare, very rare…” he muttered.

  A huge desk sat at the end of his bed, three times the size of mine. What struck me was how every available surface was covered by open books. Three open notebooks in the middle and a well-used pen and ink. Did people still use pen and ink? Obviously they did. I scanned the room for some clues of the strange whizzing noises, but apart from odd metallic devices, a large, ornate mirror, and a carved, foot-long wooden stick on a velvet lined box, there were no fireworks. It was perhaps the oddest room I had ever seen.

  “So you live here too?” I said. He replied impatiently that he did, still holding the door open. “In an attic that doesn’t exist?”

  He shut the door and seemingly resigned himself to pleasantries.

  “Felix Freeman is the name. Wizardry is the game.”