She haunts his dreams.
More than that, she haunts his waking hours. While at night he'll see her body twisted and broken, black from the golem's flames, during the day he sees traces of her in his assistant, in Jane Farrar, in the faces of the women he passes in the corridors of Whitehall. He can no longer go by a dark alleyway without imagining her slim form stalking along it, silver knife glinting in hand.
Not that John Mandrake often has the occasion to go by dark alleyways anymore.
Bartimaeus has noticed. Every time he is summoned her form materialises amongst the repugnant smoke and brimstone that the djinni favours. She is much more beautiful than she ever was in real life, yet still rendered with the same precision as the Egyptian boy, small mole on the side of her nose and patches of lighter brown where the fake leather has worn away on the elbows of her jacket. Still, no amount of realism can disguise the inhuman otherness swirling in the deep pits of her black eyes.
It's disconcerting.
Nathaniel can no longer summon Bartimaeus on his own. He is sent for along with the fearsome forms of his other djinni, their grotesque scales, horns, pustules, fins and claws almost completely distracting him from the dark figure of the girl.
Almost.
Sometimes, he wonders whether it is guilt that keeps her form in his consciousness, that makes his chest ache and constrict whenever he thinks of her. Nathaniel knows guilt well, having lost several people in his past because of his own foolishness.
Mandrake doesn't know guilt, however. His past starts well after the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Underwood, the dismissal of Ms. Luytens. It starts with the heroic rescue of all of parliament from the scheming Lovelace, the rise of an unlikely hero, the return of a powerful artifact to the bosom of the government.
Or something close to.
He knows that if it is guilt that he is feeling, it's unjustified, illogical guilt. She was a terrorist, he was protecting the city. She made her choice and there was nothing he could have done. He is grateful, but also understands that he did nothing wrong. There is nothing to feel guilty about.
Nothing at all.
Nathaniel knows that what happened to her was his fault, that he should have kept his promise, that he should have … that he should have saved her. Somehow. But he also knows that still doesn't quite explain why he feels like he does about her. He knows that the reason he can't look at her image and yet sees her everywhere isn't entirely due to guilt.
It's a good thing he's no longer Nathaniel, thinks Mandrake.