Disclaimer: I do not own The Bartimaeus Trilogy.
Demons are evil. Check. Demons will eat your face. Agreed. Demons will kill you the moment the opportunity arises. Absolutely. Demons are not to be trusted, not to be chatted with, not to be kind to. In fact, if you can go your whole career without summoning anything larger than a mite, then do it. Demons are bad, bad demons. Keep them under control or it's over.
We know that. Got it. It's simple. And it doesn't hurt that every apprentice has had this drilled into their head since the moment their masters told them to forget their names. There are extensive books on what not to do and what not to say, and histories of magicians who decided to do and say them anyway and ended up dead or otherwise maimed.
So I will never befriend a demon.
But nowhere does it say anything about... um... other feelings in relation to demons.
Believe me, I've looked. And in all the histories, there is not one single true account of a magician falling in love with a demon.
I know he would kill me if it suited him. Really. I'm a clever boy, and that's a painfully obvious fact. But sometimes, just for a moment, he's gentle, and I realize that despite what the tomes say, humans and djinni and not that different.
Then he transforms into a beast and the books are back with a vengeance.
But still, in those moments, I can't deny what I'm feeling. When he's in the form of the Egyptian-looking boy, there is a tenderness in his movements that can only result from love. The boy was real, and Bartimaeus loved him. How? I don't know. In what way, what sense? Haven't the foggiest. But he loved him. You can see it in his alien eyes every time he makes the change into the boy, a flash of indescribable emotion. Every time, even in the heat of battle.
Djinni do not have relationships among themselves, and the boy has the face of one from many centuries ago. When I realized that, I realized that he has loved no one, been alone, all that time.
If he could see that I love him, although I don't know how, or in what way, or in what sense, if he could see that he isn't alone now, then maybe...
But no. Demons are evil, they'll eat your face.
Can't go around falling in love with them.