A/N: Seriously, am I the only one who has seen this pairing? Please reread The Golem's Eye. It's there, I swear.

"Bartimaeus?"

"Yes, Queezle?"

The cat's heart beat double time, its ears pricked forward with anticipation. I forced myself to remain cool and calm, appearing casual and uninterested.1 She wasn't going to say what I was hoping she was, so there was no point in getting my hopes up. No point at all.

"Oh, nothing."

"What?" I wasn't going to let her off the hook so easily. I wanted to hear what she had to say, longed to hear what she had to say.2

"It's just…well, it's not just the foliots. I'm jumpy, too."

Disappointment crashed over me in a wave. Despite the fact that I'd been telling myself not to, I'd gotten my hopes up. I'd been praying that she was going to say…well, never mind that.

The cat trotted back and sat beside her for a moment, curling its tail around her affectionately.3 "You needn't be," I said. I didn't want her to be scared. "It's already past midnight and neither of us has seen anything. On every occasion when this thing has attacked, it's done so by midnight. Your only fear should be the boredom of a long, tedious vigil."

"I suppose so." The rain drummed all around, like a slid thing. We were cocooned within it. It would be so easy now to simply say what I was thinking. I was an articulate being. I could manage three words.

"Between ourselves," Queezle said softly, "What do you think it is?"

My tail twitched. "I don't know, and I'd rather not find out. So far it's killed everything it's come across. My advice is keep vigilant watch, the if you see something unusual coming, scamper the other way pronto." It wasn't just out of my own disinclination to meet the creature that I said this. I didn't want Queezle to get hurt.

"But we have to destroy it. That's our charge."

"Well, destroy it by running away."

"How?"

"Um…Make it chase you, then lure it into heavy traffic? Something like that. I don't know, do I? Just don't do what Zeno did and attack it head on."

The spaniel heaved a sigh. "I liked Zeno."

"A little too eager, that was his trouble."

There was a heavy silence. Queezle said nothing. The incessant rain beat down. Here was my chance.

"Well," I said at last. "I'll see you."

Idiot, Bartimaeus, idiot. I'll see you? Not quite the three words I had in mind.

"Yes."

I hopped down from the plinth and ran, tail out, through the rain and across the waterlogged street. A single jump took me up onto a low wall beside a deserted café. Then, in a series of leaps and bounds—wall to porch, porch to ledge, ledge to tiles—I negotiated my athletic feline way, until I had sprung up onto the guttering of the nearest, lowest roof.

I took a quick look back, down into the square. The spaniel was a forlorn and lonely speck, hunched in the shadows beneath the horse's belly. A gust of rain blocked her from my view. I turned and set off along the nearest roof crests.

Little did I know, that would be the last time I ever saw her. I would never get to tell her three very, very little words.

It was days later, into the darkness of the night, that my courage to say them arrived, far too late.

"I love you," I whispered, and they tasted foreign on my tongue.

But she would never hear them.

1 Note I said appearing. Of course I was interested in what she had to say. After all, I…oh, well, forget it, you'll just give me a funny look. Let me just tell you, I'm not incapable of caring for someone, alright? Now ignore me. Please. Really.

2 Maybe longed to hear what I wanted her to say would have been better, but that's beyond the point.

3 Just the cat, mind you.