Jake's Justice, Book Three of Wizards (16 page)

 
“Where did the money come from?” Neither of us was known for our ability to save.

“Daddy gave it me. He said it was the least he could do after you arranged the wedding in Salice. There was no way he could have paid for any of that.”

It took me a few moments to understand. Jenny’s parents were traditionally minded and traditionally the parents of the bride pay for the wedding. Not that I’d ever expected them too.

“Did things go well at the farm and Salice?”

It took a few minutes to get Jenny up to date. By then we had drifted into Kate’s Coffee Shop and ordered coffee and cake.

“You made Anna a wizard without asking Urda first?”

Why does everyone think that’s strange?

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Jenny leaned closer to me. “Jake, you can’t just go around doing things like that. You’re not God, you know?”

“I don’t understand?” And that was the honest truth.

Jenny put her hand over mine. “I think that’s what worries me the most. You don’t see it, do you?”

“I also fixed Mrs. Griffith before the wedding so she could have children. Was that wrong as well?”

Jenny shook her head in what looked like despair.

“You can’t go around doing things to people that will change their lives. What if she gets pregnant?”

I felt a wave of smugness run through me. “She already is. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

Jenny sat back in shock, with no sign of the smile of the pleasure I’d been expecting. It was great news, wasn’t it?

“Promise me you’ll stop. No more changing people until this conference is over. Maybe you should take up the Valhallans offer. The world might be safer that way.”

“Come on, it will make them happy. Mr. Griffith has always wanted children of his own.”

Jenny grimaced. “God, you haven’t given her twins, have you?”

I shook my head. I still couldn’t see what she was getting upset about. It wasn’t as though I’d done anything wrong.

16.
      
Than Others

As soon as we left the café I offered to hop Jenny back to her parents.

“I left my car in the car park and you are not hoping it anywhere. I’ve heard about the way you landed that bus three foot off the ground.”

Spluttering with indignation I tried to slap her bottom, but she moved out of reach, laughing delightedly.

“I suppose you can drive me to your parent’s house,” I conceded.

Jenny gave me a smug look. “You’ll have to learn to drive, Jake. You’re nineteen years old, after all. You can’t spend your whole life hopping everywhere.”

“If I can find the time between crises, I’ll think about it.” The idea of driving worried me. Hopping across the multiverse seemed far easier than directing half a ton of metal down the road. Suppose I hit someone?

“And we are going over to your house. I accepted an invitation from your parents to dinner on behalf of both of us.”

I kept quiet as Jenny led us to her car and drove us to my house. However, it turned out Jenny had more news to impart.

“Dad said he’d lend us the deposit for a house. Until your treasure trove money comes in.”

I struggled to find the words. I didn’t really know Jenny’s parents and it seemed wrong to be taking money from them, even if I would be able to pay it back in the future. It seemed to me that I should be able to look after my own wife and child, or was that wives and children?

“Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t know. That would be an awful lot of money. What if something goes wrong with the treasure trove? What if the government refuses to give me any money?”

Jenny smiled. “You’re a wizard. You’ll think of something.”

“The money would help,” I admitted reluctantly, “if I can’t find another way.”

“That’s settled then. Now what are you going to say to the press camped outside your parents?”

I’d forgotten all about them. And that damned webcam across the road. Jenny laughed again.

“I’ve already run that gauntlet twice when I picked up your papers this morning. You just need some simple answers to the following questions. How do you feel about finding the treasure? What’s the first thing you’re going to buy? Are you going to give any of it to charity?”

That made sense.

“Do you think they’ll go away if I tell them?”

“They’ll go away as soon as a better story turns up. Maybe that boy you found will have got rid of most of them. They can’t cover every house in town at the same time.”

We turned a corner into
Mathonwy Way
, the street where I was born. There were five or six reporters with the same number of cameramen standing outside the house.

“See, I told you. Most of them have gone.”

Jenny pulled the car up a few yards down from the house because the TV crew’s van was blocking us getting any closer. Everyone turned to look at us and as soon as I got out flashbulbs started going off.

“You answer their questions while I get to the house.”

Jenny pointed at me and stepped far enough away from me to let the men converge. She was right about the first three questions. Some of the others were harder to answer.

“People round here say you help find people. Did you have anything to do with the police finding the Michael Evans?”

“I’m sorry, is that the lad that went missing?”

“Have you seen Bronwyn Matthews since she came home?”

I shook my head.

“How did you know where to look with your metal detector?”

“I had a stupid dream. It was just dumb luck.”

“Do you like having sex with children?”

That stopped me and the other reporters dead. I looked up and saw the reporter who had spoken. He had the name of his paper on a lapel badge. He was grinning the way school bullies do when they know that you’re going to try and fight.

I curbed my instinct to scatter his guts over the North and South Poles. When I spoke my voice was ice.

“I will happily use all the money I get to sue your paper into extinction if you ever put that into print.
 
Now you can go to hell.”

I wondered if the TV crew and cameras had caught any of that. It seemed unlikely as they’d fallen back after my answers to the first few questions. I left the reporters contemplating my words and stepped to the front door. Jenny was waiting on the other side and opened it as I approached.

“We weren’t expecting you this early,” Dad said jovially as I went into the kitchen. My family always congregated in the kitchen rather than the living room.

“I’ve poured you a cup of tea,” Mam put in.

“Did you sort out the registry office?” Dad asked Jenny. She nodded.

“The wedding’s on Friday. There’s no need to come. Mum and Dad have offered to be witnesses.”

Dad nodded, though Mam looked a little upset. “Until those people outside get bored I think we should stay here. We don’t want them following us to the registry office.”

I blushed, “Sorry about them, Dad. It never occurred to me that finding a few old things would create such a fuss.”

Dad blinked. “You’ve become notorious, son. What with your arrest over Bronwyn, which brought all those bodies you’ve found over the years to everyone’s attention, then the coma and finally Bronwyn’s reappearance. It is any wonder that they’re after you when a couple of weeks later, you discover the biggest treasure hoard ever found in the
British Isles
?”

Mam looked up. “It’s my fault. I put the idea in his head.”

“I lose track of the time. Most of those things seem as if they took place years ago.”

Jenny smiled and took my arm in hers. “If you knew what he’s been up to today you wouldn’t be surprised. Jake fits a whole year’s worth of adventures into a morning.”

Dad grunted and handed me a piece of paper. “Inspector Thomas wants you to contact him. I take it, it was you that found that missing boy?”

Jenny pulled me back down as I got up to hop.

“You can’t hop now. What if someone sees you at the police station?
 
There are cameras that show you’re here.”

Jenny was right. I had to be careful now I was the center of all this media attention. The last thing I needed was more headlines.

“I’ll phone him.”

The Inspector seemed surprised. “I didn’t think you used phones?”

“Only when stalked by cameramen. Did you do anything about that webcam?”

“It’s gone.”

“Is the boy we rescued okay?”

There was a pause before he answered. “Dehydrated, Michael had been in that boot since the day he disappeared, but he should make a full recovery.”

“Who did it to him, and why?”

There was a longer pause. “Michael told us that the people who took him looked strange, not like normal people. They didn’t speak to him except just before they closed the boot. Then one of them said, ‘
It will be over when the wizard comes.
’”

Wheels turned in my head. Would one of the worlds annoyed with me use a child to flush me out? And why? They could only get to Earth by following my image, so why not attack me directly? It didn’t make any kind of sense.

“I don’t understand. What would be the point of getting me there, Inspector?”

Again, a long pause from the Inspector. “I thought at first it might be some kind of sick media stunt. To see if they could prove you could find missing people. But then video of you and me appearing in the dump would be all over the internet by now and there’s nothing. Then there’s this silver box.”

He didn’t carry on so I had to prompt him. “What box?”

“There was a thin silver box stuck to the boy’s tee-shirt. It looks like a cigarette case, though you’re probably too young to remember them. The lab think its solid silver and they drilled a test hole right through it to prove they were right, but who knows what people like you can do?”

“Is there anything written on it?”

“It’s brightly polished and apart from the hole the lab boys drilled though its center there’s not a mark on it. Do you want to come over and give it the once over?”

I considered the cameramen outside and the fact I was exhausted. “Not today. Is it urgent?”

“Not unless another child goes missing.”

“I’ll try and drop by tomorrow. Where should I go?”

“It’ll be with me.” Another long pause. “Are you in some kind of trouble, Jake?”

“No more than usual.”

Mam had made a brilliant cottage pie for dinner. I get lots of fancy food served to me in Salice, but when it comes right down to it, Mam’s cooking is the best.

Dad burped loudly at the end of the meal, much to Jenny’s amusement. Posh families like hers don’t burp where people can hear.

“That was grand,” Dad said with satisfaction.

I shoveled the last fork of mine into my mouth and immediately felt guilty. “The people in Salice may starve this winter because of me.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Jake,” Jenny said quickly.

“Bronwyn wanted me to exhaust my magic, setting fire to the forests and the crops were her way of doing it. But it was aimed at me, not at them.”

“That child has a lot to answer for,” Mam said quietly.

“So do I. If I’d realized what she went through in Barren I could have taken her memories and…”

Jenny cut in, “Taking people’s memories is horrible, Jake. It stops them being who they are. You didn’t know she couldn’t handle it.”

“I took two years from her in the end. Was that better?”

There was a silence. That was the trouble with being a wizard, with having all this power at my fingertips. When I do things ahead of time, like making Anna a wizard, everyone bitches at me. But when I don’t do things, like taking a few hours of memories from Bronwyn, memories of her being tortured and raped, the consequences turn out much worse. Whatever I do, I’m wrong.