Ptolemy's Gate (23 page)

All very well. But still, she couldn't have summoned me. I
knew
this.

The pocket demon shook its head. “It's a trick,” I said slowly. I glanced about, my gaze probing the corners of the room with rapier-keen precision. “The real magician's here somewhere … hiding.…”

She grinned. “What, you think I'm concealing him up my sleeve?” She shook her arm somewhat unnecessarily. “Nope. Not there. Perhaps in your great age you're growing forgetful, Bartimaeus.
You're
the one who does the magic.”

I rewarded her with a suitably demonic scowl. “Say what you like, there's another pentacle close by … must be … I've seen this kind of stunt pulled before …Yes, behind that door, for instance.” I pointed at the only exit.

“There isn't.”

I folded my arms. All four of them. “That's where he is.”

She shook her head, almost laughing. “I assure you he's not!”

“Prove it! Go open it and show me.”

She laughed aloud. “Step out of my pentacle? So you can tear me limb from limb? Get real, Bartimaeus!”

I masked my disappointment with a huffy face. “Tsk. That's a poor excuse. He's behind there for sure. Can't fool me.”

Her expressions had always been mercurial. Now they switched to one of boredom. “We're wasting time. Maybe
this
will convince you.” She uttered a quick five-syllable word. A lilac-colored flame rose from the center of my pentacle and administered a swift jab in a private area. My ceiling-high leap distracted her from my whoop of pain—at least, that was my intention. By the time I landed again, the flame had vanished.

She raised an eyebrow. “
Now
don't you think you should have worn a pair of trousers?”

I looked at her long and deeply. “You're lucky,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, “that I decided not to reverse that Punitive Jab against you. I know your
name
, Ms. Jones. That gives me protection, or have your studies not taken you that far?”

She shrugged. “I've heard something about that. I'm not interested in the details.”

“Again I say it: you're not a magician. Magicians are obsessed with details. That's what keeps them alive. I really don't know how you've survived all your other summonings.”

“What others? This is my first one solo.”

Despite its singed bottom, from which the odor of burned toast was gently wafting, the demon had been doing its best to appear in belated command of the situation. But this new information felled it once again.
³
Yet another plaintive question formed on my lips, but I let it drift away unspoken. There was little point. Whichever way I looked at it, nothing here made sense. So I tried a new and unfamiliar strategy, and stayed silent.

The girl seemed taken aback by this cunning approach. After a few seconds of waiting she realized that continuing our conversation was up to her. She drew a deep breath to settle her nerves and began to speak. “Well, you're quite right, Bartimaeus,” she said. “I am
not
a magician, thank goodness. And this is the one and only summoning that I ever intend to do. I've been planning it for the last three years.”

She took another breath and waited.… A dozen more questions occurred to me.
⁴
But I said nothing.

“This is just a means to an end,” she went on. “I'm not interested in the things that the magicians want. You don't have to worry about that.”

Another pause. Did I speak? No. I just kept shtoom.

“I don't want any of that,” the girl said. “I don't want to acquire vast power or wealth. I think that's all despicable.”

My strategy was working, albeit with the pace of a tortoise in lead boots. I was getting an explanation.

“And I
certainly
don't want to subjugate enslaved spirits,” she added brightly. “If
that's
what you're thinking.”

“Not interested in subjugation?!” Bang went my strategy—but hey, I'd managed more than a minute's silence, which was itself some kind of record. The diminished demon fingered its burned region gingerly, letting off little oohs and aahs of discomfort. “You've got a funny way of going about it then. I'm in pain here, you know.”

“I was just proving a point, that's all,” she said. “Look, would you mind
not
doing that? You're putting me off my stride.”

“Doing what? I was only feeling—”

“I saw quite well what you were feeling. Just stop it. And while you're about it, can't you change into something else? That really is the most hideous incarnation. I thought you had more class.”

“This
—hideous?” I whistled. “You really
haven't
done many summonings, have you? All right then, seeing as you're so sensitive. I shall cover my modesty.” I changed into my favorite guise. Ptolemy suited me, as I felt comfortable in his form, and he suited the girl too, as his burned bits were hidden under his loincloth.

As soon as I altered, her eyes lit up.
“Yes,”
she whispered under her breath.
“That's it!”

I looked at her, eyes narrowed. “Sorry, can I help you with something?”

“No, it's nothing. Um, that's … that's a much better shape.” But she was all breathless and excited and it took her a few moments to regain her poise. I sat down cross-legged on the floor and waited.

The girl sat too. For some reason she was suddenly more relaxed. Where a minute earlier her words had been slow and cumbersome, now they burst from her in a veritable flood.

“Well, I want you to listen to me very carefully, Bartimaeus,” she said, leaning forward with her fingers jabbing against the floor. I watched them closely, just in case they chanced to jab a chalk line, maybe
smudging
it a little. I was interested in what she had to say, for sure, but I wasn't going to miss an opportunity of escape.

Ptolemy rested his chin upon the back on one hand. “Go ahead. I'm listening.”

“Good. Oh, I'm so
pleased
it's worked out so well.” She rocked back and forth on her haunches, almost hugging herself with delight. “I hardly dared to hope that I'd succeed. I had so much to learn—you have no
idea.
Well … maybe you do,” she conceded, “but from a standing start I can tell you it was not much fun.”

My dark eyes frowned at her. “You've learned all this in three years?” I was impressed, and more than a little doubtful.

“I started not long after I saw you. When I got my new identity papers through. I was able to visit libraries, get books of magic out—”

“But you
hate
magicians!” I burst out. “You hate what they do. And you hate us spirits too! You told me so to my face—which, I might add, rather hurt my feelings. What's changed that makes you want to call one up?”

“Oh, I wasn't after
any
old demon,” she said. “The whole purpose of my studying all this time, of my mastering these … these wicked skills, was to summon
you.
”

“Me?”

“You seem surprised.”

I drew myself up. “Not at all, not at all. What was it that drew you back? My marvelous personality, I suppose? Or my sparkling conversation?”

She chuckled. “Well, not the personality, of course. But yes—the conversation
was
what did it for me, what caught my imagination when we spoke before.”

In truth, I remembered this conversation too. Three years had passed, but it seemed longer now, back in the days when my perennial master Nathaniel was still a glum outsider, panting for recognition. It had been during the middle of the golem crisis, when London was being beset by the clay monster
and
Honorius the afrit, that my path crossed Kitty Jones's for the second time. She had impressed me then both with the force of her personality and with her fierce idealism, qualities rarely mingled in magicians. She was a commoner—scarcely educated, ignorant of everything that had conspired to create her world, but nonetheless defiant and hopeful of change. And more than that too: she had risked her life to save that of her enemy, a despicable lowlife, someone unfit to so much as lick her boots.
⁵

Yep, she'd made an impression on me. And on my master too, come to think of it.

I grinned. “So you liked what you heard, eh?”

“You set me thinking, Bartimaeus, with all your talk of civilizations come and gone. Above all, you said there were
patterns
to look out for, and I knew I had to find them.” One finger jabbed down as she made the point,
almost
touching the red chalk line. It was close, very close. “So,” she said simply, “I went looking.”

Ptolemy adjusted the corner of his loincloth. “All very well, but that's a different thing from cruelly ripping an innocent djinni from his place of rest. My essence is in sore need of respite. Mandrake's kept me in service”—I made a rapid finger-and-toe calculation—“for six hundred and eighty-three days out of the last seven hundred. And
that
has its effects. I'm like an apple at the bottom of a barrel—sweet and fair to look at, but bruised to a pulp beneath the skin. And you've taken me from my place of healing.”

Her head was tilted; she looked up at me from under her brows. “The Other Place, you mean.”

“That is one of its names.”

“Well, I'm sorry to have disturbed you.” She spoke as if all she'd done was rouse me from a little nap. “But I didn't know I could even do it. I feared my technique might be faulty.”

“Your technique's fine,” I said. “In fact it's good. And that leads me to my biggest question.
How
have you learned to summon me?”

She shrugged modestly. “Oh, it wasn't so hard. You know what I think? The magicians have been exaggerating the difficulty for years, just to put the commoners off. What does it take, after all? A few careful lines drawn with rulers, string, and compass. A few runes, some spoken words. Popping down the market to get some herbs … a bit of peace and quiet, a little memorizing … do all that and you're sorted.”

“No,” I said. “A commoner's never done this before, as far as I know. It's unheard of. You must have had help. With the languages, the runes and circles, that noxious plant mix—all of it. A magician. Who?”

The girl twizzled a strand of hair beside her ear. “Well, I'm hardly going to give you his
name.
But you're right. I have been helped. Not to do
this,
exactly—that goes without saying. He thinks I'm more of an amateur enthusiast. If he knew what I was doing he'd blow his top.” She smiled. “Right now he's fast asleep two floors down. He's rather sweet, really. Anyway, it's taken time, but it's not been too bad. I'm surprised more people haven't given it a go.”

Ptolemy gazed at her from under hooded lids. “
Most
people,” I said meaningfully, “are a little nervous of what they might summon.”

The girl nodded. “True. But it's not so bad if you're not scared of the demon in question.”

I started. “What?”

“Well, I know that terrible things can happen if you get the incantation wrong, or misdraw the pentacle or something, but those terrible things are more or less up to the demon—sorry, I meant
djinni,
of course—the djinni in question. Aren't they? If it was some old afrit that I'd never met, I'd obviously be a bit worried, in case we got off on the wrong foot. But
we
know each other already, don't we, you and I?” She gave me a winning smile. “And I knew you wouldn't harm me if I made any little mistake.”

I was watching her hands, which once again were gesticulating in the vicinity of the red chalk line…. “Is that so?”

“Yes. I mean, we more or less teamed up last time, didn't we? You know, with that golem. You told me what to do. I did it. Good partnership, that was.”

Ptolemy rubbed the corners of his eyes. “There was a small difference then,” I sighed, “which it seems that I must spell out for you. Three years ago we were both under the heel of Mandrake's boot. I was his slave, you were his quarry. We had a shared interest in foiling him and ensuring our own survival.”

“Exactly!” she cried, “and we—”

“We had nothing more in common than that,” I went on imperturbably. “True, we had a bit of a chin-wag. True, I did give you a few clues about the golem's weaknesses—but that was merely in a scientific spirit, to see how perversely your odd little conscience would behave. And mighty perverse it was too.”

“I don't accept—”

“If I might be allowed to get a word in edgeways,” I said, “I will just point out the salient difference between then and now. Then, we were both victims of the magicians. Agreed? Right. But
now
, one of us—i.e.
moi
”—I tapped my bare brown chest—“is still a victim, still a slave. As for the other one … she's changed sides.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“She's a turncoat—”

“I'm not—”

“A two-timing backstabber—”

“Bartim—”

“A conniving, treacherous, opportunistic, false-faced traitor, who's taken it upon herself to add to my endless years of slavery! Who's set out to learn the cursed arts, without prompting and without coercion! You can say this much for Nathaniel and the rest—they didn't have any choice in the matter. Most of them were molded into magicians before they were old enough to know better! But
you
—you could have taken a dozen different paths. And instead you decided to enslave Bartimaeus, Sakhr-al-Jinni, the Serpent of Silver Plumes, the wolf-jawed guardian of the Iroquois. And in your arrogance you consider I'll do you no harm! Well, let me tell you, young madam, you underestimate me at your peril! I am master of a thousand tricks, a hundred weapons! I can—ouch!!”