Accidental Sorcerer Read Online Free PDF Page A

most valuable and prestigious staff manufacturer that the Department of Thaumaturgy looked forward to their prompt provision of all relevant documentation. You were
not
sent there to cause international headlines!'
    Mr Dunwoody.
Gerald leaned forward, feeling desperate. 'But there was a woman! I spoke to her! She said things weren't being done right, she said there was trouble.' He scrabbled around in his post-explosion memory. 'Devree! That was her name! Find her.
Ask
her. She'll tell you.'
    Mr Scunthorpe rifled through the sheets of paper in front of him.'Holly Devree?' He extracted a statement, picked up his glasses on their chain around his neck, placed them on his nose and read out loud: 'I don't know what happened. I was on my tea break. I never saw the man from the Department. This means my job, doesn't it? What am I going to do now? I've got a sick mother to support. Signed: Holly Devree.'
    'No,' he whispered. 'That's not how it happened, Mr Scunthorpe. My word as a compliance officer.'
    'Probationary
compliance officer,' said Mr Scunthorpe, still frowning. "Very well then, Gerald. What's your version of today's unfortunate events?'
    Haltingly, feeling as though he'd wandered into somebody else's insane dream, Gerald told him. When he was finished he sat back in his chair again. 'And that's the truth, sir. I swear it.'
    Mr Scunthorpe closed his mouth with a snap. 'The truth?'
    'Yes, sir.'
    Mr Scunthorpe's face was so red he could have found work as a traffic light. 'You expect me to believe that a Third Grade wizard from Nether Wallop, who got his qualifications from some fourth-rate correspondence course, who got fired from his first job for insubordination and his second for incompetence, not only managed to single-handedly prevent a Level Nine thaumaturgical inversion but did so, moreover, by using the most expensive, the most finely calibrated, the most
lethal
First Grade staffs in the
world?
Is
that
what you expect me to believe?'
    'Well,' he said, after a moment. 'When you put it like that .. .'Then he rallied.'But sir, far-fetched or not that's exactly what happened. I can't explain how, or why, but that's precisely what I did.'
    'Dunwoody, what you're saying is impossible!' said Mr Scunthorpe, and pounded a fist on his desk. 'No Third Grade wizard in history has ever used a First Grade staff without frying himself like bacon. To suggest
you
managed it is to stretch the bounds of credulity across five alternate dimensions!'
    The urge to punch Scunthorpe in the nose was almost irresistible. 'Are you calling me a liar?'
    'I'm calling you a walking disaster!' Scunthorpe retorted. 'A carbuncle on the arse of this Department! Do you have any idea of the phone calls I've been getting? Lord Attaby! The Wizard General!
Seven
prime ministers and
two
presidents! And don't get me started on the press!'
    Gerald stopped breathing. Scunthorpe was going to fire him. The intention was in the man's glazed eyes and furious, scarlet face. If he was fired from another job it'd be the end of his wizarding career. No-one would touch him with a forty-foot barge pole after that. He'd have to go home to Nether Wallop. Beg his cousins for a job in the tailor's shop his father had sold them. They'd give him one, he was family after all, but he'd never hear the end of it.
I'd rather die.
    'Let me prove it, Mr Scunthorpe,' he said. 'Fetch me a First Grade stall"and I'll prove I can use one.'
    'Are you
madV
shouted Scunthorpe. 'After this afternoon's little exhibition do you think there's a wizard anywhere in the world who'd risk letting you even
look
at his First Grader, let alone touch it? And do you think I'd risk my job to ask them?'
    'Then how am I supposed to show you I'm telling the truth?'
    It was a fair question and Scunthorpe knew it. He snatched a pencil from his desktop and twisted it between his fingers. 'I'm telling you, Dunwoody, you won't be let anywhere near a First Grade staff. But -' The pencil snapped. With enormous