Ultimate magus (Complete Mage and also online here) can advance both wizard and assassin spellcasting, as it requires both arcane spellcasting prepared from a spellbook, à la wizard (or wu jen), and spontaneous arcane spellcasting, which the assassin has by virtue of the fact that, “An assassin casts spells just as a bard does.”
You need at least 2nd-level spells on the prepared side and at least 1st-level spells on the spontaneous, so a 3rd-level wizard/1st-level assassin has the requisite spells (though you'll need more levels because of skill requirements of both assassin and ultimate magus).
The ultimate magus advances both classes on 7/10 levels, and only one class on the other three levels (at 1st, 4th, and 7th). In each case, the class that is advanced is the one with the lower caster level. Since wizard spellcasting is better than assassin spellcasting, it is probably best to try to boost your assassin caster level above your wizard caster level, so you can benefit from full spellcasting progression for your wizard side. Practiced Spellcaster (Complete Arcane) helps a lot with this, but ends up being not enough without additionally possessing the krau sigil.
Ideal Case: Illumian 5th-level wizard/1st-level assassin/10th-level ultimate magus
You want to enter the prestige class ASAP, you want to do it with minimal loss of wizard spellcasting, and you want to advance wizard spellcasting at every ultimate magus level, particularly since you’ll already have the highest-level assassin spells even if you miss three like that.
First, you’ll need Hide and Move Silently as class skills, at least for your wizard levels and ideally for the ultimate magus levels as well. You may also want Disguise in-class, but it’s not a big deal since it caps at 4 ranks required, which you can do cross-class if necessary.
Move Silently is annoyingly difficult; Flexible Mind from Dragon vol. 326 is the only good way to get it as a class skill. Barring that, you could be a viletooth lizardfolk (Dragon Magic) but with LA +1 it might be better to just dip something (though having it be always a class skill is useful). Alternatively, an elf (preferably gray elf or fire elf for the Intellignce bonus) could take Aereni Focus (Move Silently) from Player’s Guide to Eberron to get it always in-class as well as a +3 bonus to it (also counts as Skill Focus if that matters to you).
Hide has two easy options, at least: Unearthed Arcana wizard variants can get it for you at level one, at the low cost of your Scribe Scroll feat. You could either take a Fighter feat, and use it for Martial Study (any Shadow Hand maneuver), or if you are an illusionist, you could take the shadow shaper ACF to just get it directly (and add your Int to Hide at 5th level, which is pretty cool). I prefer the Martial Study route as it sets you up for Assassin’s Stance and also gets Hide in-class for ultimate magus levels. Martial Study and Stance are from Tome of Battle.
I will note that I find the lack of a feat that grants both skills in-class kind of strange; they’re certainly thematically linked and plenty of feats do that sort of thing. An Apprentice feat could reasonably combine the two (Apprentice [ninja] maybe? Hell, Apprentice [assassin]), but none of the examples from Player’s Handbook II actually does so.
If you want Disguise in-class, City Slicker from Races of Destiny is a pretty easy choice. Silverbrow Humans (Dragon Magic) also get it.
Anyway, have 8 ranks in Hide, Move Silently, and Spellcraft by wizard 5th, along with the 4 ranks you need in Disguise and Knowledge (arcana). This requires at least 5 skills points per level (4 if you have Disguise in-class), but even with 2+Int skill points a Wizard should have at least 6, particularly a gray elf who gets an Int boost. Which is good because of course you also want Concentration.
Then at 6th level, take assassin 1st and Practiced Spellcaster [assassin] from Complete Arcane to boost your assassin caster level to 5th, matching your wizard caster level. At 7th, it’s your 1st level of ultimate magus, and your caster levels between wizard and assassin are equal, so you can advance wizard. At this point, you have a choice. You could leave well enough alone, accept that you’ll miss a second Wizard level at ultimate magus 4th, and thereby gain 9th-level assassin spellcasting instead of 8th-level.
Or you could be an illumian with the krau sigil, which provides a +2 caster level bonus quite similar to Practiced Spellcaster.
So my conclusion is an illumian 5th-level wizard/1st-level assassin/10th-level ultimate magus, with 15th-level wizard spellcasting and 8th-level assassin spellcasting.
Although I don't remember the direct sources, there have been a few books out there for d20 based games that discuss what I will call 'legacy items'. These items level over time with the players. They must put in the time with the item and in some cases something else, such as gold for ingredients, a sacrifice of some kind, or as a reward (of sorts) for a momentous occasion. There is also, generally, a minimum level for each enhancement level equivalent on the item. This approach could work for players with magic tomes and such as well.
I'll give an example to help clarify what I mean:
A player wants to play a samurai, and as part of his story, he want a blade that's been handed down through his family's lineage for generation. It has great rumors that the strongest heroes of the family have been able to harness the power of lightning through it.
It begins as a masterwork katana. Functionally, this is all it is at this level. At level 3, the samurai gets 1,000 gold in incenses, food, and other sacrifices, and offers them to his ancestors, hoping to please them. They 'are pleased' by the sacrifice, and thus afford the weapon a +1 bonus.
A year goes by, and although he continues to honor his ancestors it is more time for him to show his own heroism in order to awaken his blade. This comes in the form of killing a tyrant in the midst of a thunder storm. He is now a level 9 character, and his act of heroism has allowed his katana to gain the lightning burst ability.
This gives a good idea on how to approach it. Add powers to the item as the wielder unlocks the power. Use the level suggestions in the Ultimate Magic book as a reference for when they could reasonably gain that power, while adjusting for the powers that are already there. Simply give them the power instead of a new magic item in the same place. It gives that one item a much more personal feel anyway, and players tend to love that one choice item that level with them.
Best Answer
D20PFSRD has an Advanced Spell Search, that lets you filter by a number of criteria. One of those is spell descriptor, which is where the Evil tag can be found.