Jake's Quest - Wizards V (3 page)

4.
  
Night in the Museum

As soon as we got back to the cave my phone signaled a message was waiting. While of no use at all across the multiverse, it did allow people to keep in touch with me when I happened to be on Earth. The phone showed me it was nearly ten in the evening and the call was over three hours old.

I slid my fingers across the icons to get to the message. I swear smart phones are trickier than magic sometimes. A few clicks later I got to play the message.

“Hi Jake. If you get this today I am at the museum and plan to spend the night here. Drop in if you get the chance.”

Betty’s Northern English accent always sounded more pronounced on the phone, but it didn’t disguise the invitation in her words. She wasn’t asking me to go and view the Highfields Hoard so much as to get my hands on treasures of a more intimate nature.

“Got to go and see someone about something,” I told Fluffy.

He huffed and black smoke billowed around me.

[Do not think I am covering for you, Jake. We both know what that strumpet wants.]

Strumpet?
Where does he pick up these words? I’d forgotten how well he could hear.

“She’s very important to me. I need to keep her…err satisfied.”

[She is a Norn and not to be trusted. All they care about is making the future arrive exactly as they think it should.]

Betty is human and only a tiny fraction Norn, but rather than continue the argument, I hopped over to the museum.

When the fuss had died down about the biggest treasure hoard ever found, the towns nearest to Highfields Farm had bickered and fought to be the ones to house it. There was sufficient quantity for the British Museum to cherry pick the most outstanding pieces while still leaving enough of it to fill a whole new wing of a museum. Derby had won, and managed to persuade Betty to leave the farm and take up a new career as tour guide and assistant curator. They were paying the tuition costs for her degree in archaeology to sweeten the deal.

I arrived in Betty’s tiny office and though the light was on, she was nowhere around. Going to the door I considered the possibility of wandering the corridors and probably setting off the alarms. Looking out into the corridor showed Betty had thought ahead. On the far wall was a sheet of paper with a big arrow and my name under it.

The arrow trail led me to the main display vault, which was lit up like a Christmas tree. Spotlights burned down on hundreds of gold trinkets and reflected off sparkling gems. We had been paid £2.3 million between us for this lot. Looking at it under the lights I wondered if we’d been cheated by Her Majesty’s Government.

“Jay-ake.”

The cheeky sounding call came from behind a panel plastered with a picture of the field where I’d found the treasure. Betty turned out to be behind the panel, lying on the plush red carpet. She seemed to have lost all her clothes.

“What if a guard walks in?” I hated having to alter people’s memories; it was such a dirty thing to do.

“He won’t. I know.” Betty was in one of those classical painting poses with hands draped strategically to cover her modesty. Not that she had any modesty that I’ve actually noticed. “Come and give me a little sugar, lover boy.”

Normally I’m all over Betty. While I love my wives, there is something primeval about Betty I can’t resist. Fluffy reckons it’s a Norn power and I’m caught in it. But at that moment I felt like I was trapped in a bad porn movie. The casting vote in my body remained deflated.

“What’s wrong with you?” There was rising anger and a hint of something else in her tone.

“I’m not a toy.”
God, did I really just say that?

“You bastard.”

Then she was crying. A light went off in my brain.

“Your Mam’s tried to contact you again?”

“She came to the fucking museum, while I was giving a tour.”

I waited for more. Betty’s mam left her and her father when she was a baby. When she heard about the treasure and the money we were going to get she had got back in contact. Betty’s father had turned her away from the farm. Recently she’d been sending letters to Betty, asking for a meeting.

“She says we have to meet. Says it’s ordained.”

“She’s a Norn like you. It might be”

Never use logic on an angry woman. Betty scrambled to her feet and attacked me.

“She…is…not…like…me.” Every word was punctuated with a thump against my chest. “She had a child and abandoned her to rot, and now I’m stuck with you. And you’re no good.”

I used magic to prevent her knee rupturing the family jewels. It took a surprising amount of magic.

She collapsed into my arms and I held her tightly as she sobbed. As her sobs faded she began to rub against me. She’s an attractive woman and she smelled wonderful. Suddenly hormones took over and I felt myself rise to the occasion. Betty sensed the change. Well, to be honest what was poking out at her must have provided a substantial clue. We slid to the carpet and her hands were undoing my belt and pulling down my jeans. We didn’t bother with further undressing and I entered her in missionary fashion.

As we climaxed my magical sight expanded to encompass both our bodies. We shone with forces, hers a shade of blue that mirrored deep oceans, mine white and surprisingly pure. Then I saw it. A small place of black, of wrongness within her. I removed the darkness as we writhed in ecstasy and without even thinking about what I was doing.

Only as we lay together, her face buried into my chest did I realize that I’d made her pregnant.

She had told me that was impossible, that she was destined to remain both my lover and childless. But I could see the life spark into being inside her. It was a good spark and her body welcomed it. She would see this child to term, of that I had no doubt.

“What have you done?” Betty’s voice was soft, but the question urgent. She sat up and stared at me, puzzled and yet not alarmed. “What have you done to me, Jake Morrissey?”

Then she started to cry again. I held her for a long time until we drifted to sleep.

I woke early. We had moved back to her office during the night to sleep on the inflatable mattress she kept there. Neither of us spoke during the move.

Betty was fast asleep, so I gently eased my body away from her so I could get up. Jenny’s words from when I had similarly fixed Mrs. Griffith’s fertility problems had come back to haunt me. She said that I had no right to go around interfering in other people’s bodies without their permission. And I had made Betty pregnant without even considering whether she wanted me to.

Well, at least there were morning-after pills. It’s not like she had to have the baby
. My thoughts seemed a bit like cop outs. I had crossed a line again and I was going to have to face the consequences, tomorrow, or the day after, but not today. I hopped to the Bat Cave.

Fluffy appeared to be sleeping, but as I headed for the shower his thoughts echoed in my head.

[Are you feeling guilty, Jake? You should be.]

Was he reading my mind now? He couldn’t know what I’d done.

[Jenny deserves better than this. It is bad enough she has to share you with Esmeralda.]

A wave of relief ran through me. He was referring to my other guilt.

“Betty’s gifts have kept me alive.”

Fluffy chuckled and dragonfire leapt across the cave.

[Is that what you tell yourself? Then why don’t you tell your wives what you are up to?]

Yeah. That. Well, it’s never that simple is it? I decided to take a shower at my parents’ house. At least I wouldn’t have to listen to a nagging dragon.

5.
  
The Twins

I hopped directly into their bathroom and took off my trainers, socks and jeans, using magic to remove the stains from the jeans and giving them a general clean up before throwing them down by the door. I turned on the shower over the bath and held my hand in the stream waiting for the water to get warm. As I go commando, I was naked from the waist down.

The door burst open and Britney and Brad burst into the room, ten year old twins that lived with Mam and Dad. I couldn’t tell if their looks of shock were from finding me there or finding me half naked. I used my hands to cover my embarrassment.

“Is that what you’ll look like when you’re grown, little brother?” Britney asked. She didn’t stop staring and didn’t look embarrassed. I had acquired a layer of pink from hairline to hairline. Ten year olds don’t seem to experience shame.

Brad sneered. “I hope not. That’s gross.”

“Out, out, both of you.” I used a hand to wave at them, which was a mistake as I couldn’t quite cover myself up with one hand.

“How come Jake’s got skin over the end of his?” Britney asked. “Is yours peculiar?”

Brad and I exchanged looks. “His is,” we said with remarkable synchronicity.

Magic could have saved my embarrassment in a second, but the twins had no knowledge of what I was, beyond being their brother by adoption when the final paperwork went through. Instead I reached for my jeans and covered the offending parts.

“How did you get in here, Uncle Jake?” Britney asked. Her eyes narrowed and she stared suspiciously at me. The
uncle
was a sort of insult she often used, though I wasn’t quite sure how it was supposed to be insulting.

“Do you two always go to the bathroom together?”

“We didn’t see you come in and we were in the hall?” Brad countered.

It was so tempting to use mind control, but even as I considered it I rejected it. Messing with people’s minds was always wrong.

“I came in the back way.” While technically feasible this would have required me to scale a five foot high wooden fence. “I arrived earlier and went out in the back garden. Mam wanted me to do some pruning for her.”

If that didn’t satisfy them I was going to mind control them. A man needs to retain his dignity, not to mention his secret identity.

Mam poked her head around the door.

“Come on kids. Leave Jake in peace. He’s been doing some gardening for me and needs a shower,”

Blessed be the mother who covers for her son. The twins moaned, but left the room leaving me and Mam alone.

“You’re going to have to be more careful in the future,” Mam said and gave me a broad wink. “It’s lucky I heard you before I came in.”

“You didn’t have to adopt Colleen’s kids.”

Mam gave me a reproachful look. “Colleen put it in her will, though Lord knows why. She must have had a premonition. And we are responsible for what happened, aren’t we, Jake?”

I had a flashback to the minutes after the bomb blast when I was searching for survivors. What was left of the twin’s mother was splattered across the far wall of her house. The twins were buried under the front wall of the house, only alive because of the way the floor had collapsed beneath them. I hadn’t known their names back then, though they’d been neighbors for years. Lifting the wall off them before they suffocated was the least I could do under the circumstances.

“I am, Mam. Not you.”

“She was my sister and I’d insisted you help her. A lot of people would still be alive if I hadn’t.”

I shook my head. Mam couldn’t have known what Dafydd would do. It wasn’t her fault.

“And it’s nice to have kids in the house again. Especially ones who stay close to home and don’t go wandering across the multiverse.”

I dropped my jeans to the floor and Mam’s tinkling laughter drifted through the house as she walked away. Taking the time to lock the bathroom door, I got into the shower. The water was warm getting colder, but a little magic fixed that. Luxuriating in the hot water was bliss and I took my time before getting out.

 
“You must like cold showers,” Britney said as I walked into the kitchen. “Mam says we can’t afford a better boiler just yet.”

It was strange, her using that word for my mother. It almost hurt.

“I can give you the money,” I told Mam.

Mam was busy cooking a fried breakfast. According to the clock it was nearly eight. I was going to be late getting home.

“We don’t want your money, Jake. We’ll make do until we can afford it. Sit down, breakfast’s almost ready.”

“Some idiots used all the hot water,” Dad said as he entered the room.

“I can…”

Dad spotted me and waved me to silence before I could finish the sentence. It would have been easy to heat the water in the tank. Not so easy to explain it to the twins.

“I’ll manage. Anyway I’ve already washed in cold.”

“Jake came over to do that pruning we talked about,” Mam said quickly. Brad and Britney gave her suspicious looks.

Dad harrumphed and sat at the table, opening his paper. I’d bought him a tablet with subscriptions for all the local and national papers at Christmas, but I think he preferred to hide behind the real thing.

Further talk was curtailed by the arrival of breakfast. The twins ate ravenously. They always did, as if afraid the food would vanish if they took too long. Dad ate toast loaded with marmalade. This allowed him to keep on reading his paper as he ate.

“That college course I’ve been talking about starts on Friday.”

Mam stopped eating and stared at me.

“You will be careful?”

“What’s so dangerous about going to college?” Brad said mouth full to overflowing.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, dear” Mam said absently.

“Uncle Jake might read a book by accident and have a heart attack,” Britney suggested. “Can you read, Uncle Jake?”

Dad lowered his paper and gave Britney a significant look.

“Sorry, Uncle Jake,” Britney said quickly. Dad had found out that taking her laptop away was a major punishment. One he was happy to dole out frequently as he didn’t think kids as young as her should spend their lives behind a keyboard.

“I have to go. Jenny is expecting me.”

I stood and walked to the front door. Mam followed me up the hall.

“Is it starting again?” she asked.

“Perhaps.” I gave her a peck on the cheek. “But I have to find him, Mam. None of us will be safe until I do.”

“Be careful, son.”

I smiled and walked up the drive to the road. Mam and Dad’s new house was only a quarter of a mile from where we lived and it wasn’t worth hopping on such a beautiful day. I turned to wave back after a few hundred yards, but Mam had already gone back inside.