Bartimaeus

I

The temperature of the room began to rise, slowly at first, but getting hotter and hotter rapidly until it reached a climate of a volcano. The air turned dry and scorching, the furniture in the room appearing to turn to sand and gusting with the furnace wind. In the middle of the pentacle appeared a demon. (An actual one, thank you very much. So much slander these days aimed towards us honest djinni.) It's skin was a brilliant mix of blood red and dark black, with jagged and torn wings black as the Devils pupils which flapped infrequently to keep it's cloven hooves of the hardwood floors. It's top half was one of a humans, though of course red, with the bottom half being that of a goat. (Who's fur also the red and black mix as said before.) The head had a mix of a goat and a human, with sharp teeth, most straight and like daggers with the top canines more similar to a snakes fangs. Horns jetted from elegant forehead and curved until they almost touched the back of the demons head. It had an impressive coal black beard the pointed smartly at the end. Hey, I wanted to scare the kid.

The summoner was a kid, which if I had learned anything from the past, was going to be bad for me. (You all remember Nathaniel, right? In the beginning he was right cheeky and mean, but he made the eternal sacrifice in the end. He ranked second on my list of favorite masters, only being over ranked by Ptolemy, of course) He watched the entire spectacle before him, a small smile on his face. He was sitting on a three legged stool and reached between his legs and grabbed a bottle of water, which he sipped as his amused if not amazed eyes observed the happens that were occurring before him. That put me off a bit, and I quit the show. The sand returned to the furniture and the heat in the room returned to its norm. I stayed a demon though, but stopped trying to keep in the air. (Which was beginning to tire me out. You try hovering in placed with the wings of an overgrown bat and see how easy it is.)

We sat in silence for a moment, checking each other out. Finally, the boy spoke.

"My name is Geoff. This is my birthname."

The foolishness of this boy! Right off the bat he gave me arsenal to throw at him if he tried to punish me. Not a smart move. Obviously, his master had neglected to tell him to forget it as soon as possible.

Geoff continued. "I tell you this for two reasons. The first is that I will show you no harm. I am aware that if I try to punish you, you, being a strong and wise spirit, will throw it right back at me."

The demons topped smiling and closed its mouth. Now that was strange.

The boy smiled at my reaction. "The second, and probably the most surpising to you, is that I am a commoner, and thus for have no other name."

I held up a demonic hand, the black and torn fingernails glowing in the brightly lit room. "Now wait a minute," I said. I looked around me and saw that this was no magicians summoning chamber. It was indeed a commoner kind of room. It was painted the color of blood on two walls, the rest a kind of light black, though both were extremely faded. There was a foton in couch position, and posters of girls on the wall. (None naked though. Just thought I'd tell you.) A computer sat on a desk along with a stereo the boy had managed to rig to the computer to give it surround sound. Two guitars stood in a corner on stands, one acoustic, the other electric, with an amp sitting next to them. "You're telling me that you're a commoner?"

The boy nodded. "While it's not widely known, a commoner has summoned you before. Kitty Jones, I believe."

I groaned. "What year is it?" When he told me, I let out another groan. "Two years? Two bloody years? Why is it that everyone's summoning me? There are a load worth of other spirits out there, you know!"

The boy smiled again. "Yes, but none as wise or experience as you," he paused for a moment. "Not necessarily true, I suppose. There are beings out there that have created the earth and the Sun, but I'd prefer not to bring them into this World. I think they'd be disgusted to see what us humans have done to their creations. Not mention I would most likely die of exhaustion if I even attempted to summon them. Don't look so down." I had taken the comment before all this as a compliment, but he kind of dashed it was the second bit. "While you may not be as wise or experience as those beings-and how could you? You're still relatively young for spirit! What you are is a smart djinni, one that has surived all five thousand years of your existence. You're almost has old as intelligent human kind, and I use to word intelligent loosely. Man today, I am afraid to admit, is almost as ignorant as our oldest ancestor." (Too right, there. Man seems to always kill each other for some reason. Us higher beings have no need for this; we see not each other by our difference. Sure, some have five tentacles while others have eight eyes, but we all get along in the Other Place.)

"What is your charge, then?" I asked impatiently. "My essence is beginning to feel drained."

A worried expression filled the boys face. "Does it? Do you need food? I have found a litter of kittens along the side of the road. While they are cute, they are surely likely to die within the week."

Time for some acting. I put a shocked face on. "You're going to feed me kittens? You're a down right monster!"

"They will die within the week, I already told you. Most have pneumonia and I couldn't give them away. My last resort would be to send them to the pound in hopes that they would be adopted, but it's more likely that they'll be gassed. You having them would give them a quicker and more humane end, and would help you're essence. I'm sure they'd rather have that."

The boy had a point there. I didn't really give two sneezes about abandoned kittens, but I was trying to get the boy to feel bad. I could already sense that he did, but he was choosing the lesser of two evils. I sighed and said, "Alright. Fetch them."

I watched him contently, waiting for him to exit the pentacle. He stood from the stool, but didn't move. He addressed me. "I'm gonna get them, which means I will leave the pentacle. Whether or not you attack me is solely up to you. If you do decide to, I have a request. Not a command, a request. There is a letter on my dresser. You may leave your pentacle to read it if you want to, but it's for my mother. She'll want to know what happened to me. I've already put so much strain on her from recent events that I don't want her to think…to think that I went backwards again. I left out your name to keep her from alerting certain authorities, who would no doubt penalized you, and you wouldn't have had the advantage of knowing their names. If you decide to attack and devour me, before you return to the Other Place, please make sure she gets it. Drop it in the mail, or something."

I considered the strange proposal. He had surrendered all his power to me, something unheard of. (Well, except Ptolemy, but that was long ago.). Though it went against my natural instinct, which was to pounce on him at the first chance, devour him and his essence (maybe the kittens, too, if they were in the condition that Geoff described), then fly laughing home to tell the tale. I accepted his deal with a nod.

His last remark before he went and fetched the kittens shocked me more than the entire ordeal thus far. "I trust you," he said, then began to leave the pentacle.