I found this story pleasant, and the reading was downright fabulous, but it felt a little too... light. That is, it was pretty immediately clear from the opening that the Evil Wizard wasn't evil, and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. The uncle was an unambiguous bad guy, the boy was an unambiguous victim, the wizard was an unambiguous good guy, and magic was cheap and easy and solved all the problems. Perhaps it's just my ingrained cynicism talking, but I had a hard time engaging with a story that presented everything so simply and cleanly. I prefer ambiguity and shades of gray to clarity and clean divisions.
(I got really hopeful when the uncle managed to recognize Nick three times; I thought maybe we'd see that his uncle really did care for him, in a twisted way, and there'd be an interesting conflict and a more complex, more intricately faceted relationship, but then it was just a chase scene instead. That's the kind of thing I"m talking about.)