BARTIMAEUS

1

I felt a prickle growing in my essence as Earth drew me down to its infernal boundaries. My mind spun as I concocted a form that would surely scare the wits out of whatever lily-livered magician had dared to summon Bartimaeus. Aha! I arranged myself just as I exploded into a room. It took me a only a moment to realize I was in…Mandrake's..office, if you could call it that; there had evidently just been some sort of culinary explosion on the desk. Only another moment passed before I realized that the food-decorated walls were now Miss Piper's.

"Wonderful," she said, sporting a wry grin. "A horned rabbit."

I looked around in pretend confusion, deciding to go for a cheap joke. "Oh, is that what I am? Oops. I was trying to do a horned gerbil. Maybe I did the transformation too quickly?"

"Maybe." She sighed. I had never seen her looking this worn out. She had always been perky and slightly childish (well, when you're five thousand years old it's hard to find someone who isn't by your standards), but now she looked a bit gray and totally overworked.

With that awareness in mind I chose to be especially nice to her. No flatulence bombs. "What does milady wish?" I asked in my politest voice, spiffing up my bunny image with a monocle.

She sighed again. "I need you to make sure the Commoners aren't holding any more demonstrations, or, or causing trouble of any kind. No, wait, I suppose you'd better make sure the same is true of the magicians now that the two peoples are equal." She sighed. "It seems so strange now… But at any rate, the committees signed a paper saying neither group would cause trouble for the other."

"You seem to be doing nicely," I said. "Do you have a leader?"

"No." This said vehemently. "Thank God." Suddenly she seemed curious. "By the way, how did you survive? You were inside Mr. Mandrake, weren't you? I was looking in Button's Spirit Encyclopedia when I saw your name still down as 'alive.'"

I felt a pang of…something, but tried to push it back. "He...Dismissed me. Right before Nouda attacked."

"I see," she said softly. For an instant we were both quiet, remembering, but then Miss Piper clapped her hands and looked up. "Better get to work," she told me. "I'm supposed to have the whole city patrolled by midnight."

I shrugged to the best of the tortoise's ability and quickly changed shape; now I was a magnificent golden eagle, as beautiful as it was terrifying.

"Um," said Miss Piper. "Maybe something a bit less noticeable?"

Now it was easier to shrug, and I changed into a slightly larger-than-normal sparrow. She waved me off with evident amusement and I flew off into the night.

I tried to do it quickly so that any Commoners able to spot magic would only catch the last glimpse of my essence. Yet there were still some who regarded me with slight suspicion, and I resolved to warn Piper not to send out too many spirits every week; the Commoners might get angry if they thought there were too many. And that could get very sticky with today's divided government.

I tried to avoid it, but when I passed over the ruins of the Glass Palace I couldn't help doing precisely what I had told myself not to do. I slowly drifted down behind the admirably shortened wall and changed shape. Now I was a tall, hooded man. I slinked behind some trees and then joined a group of tourists, who luckily didn't seem to see my true form. When the guide had finished ranting about how important to history this building was, one of the travelers asked, "Could we possibly go in?"

She considered. "I'm not sure. No one's ever asked, and there's no rule about it. I'll let you go in this once, but"—she cast him a mocking glance—"I'll blame you if my boss yells at me."

We all hurried in, and I wondered why I felt like walking around where a friend of mine (that is, a friend of mine who could be extremely unkind, stupid, and altogether moronic) had died. I felt the metal pulling my essence away, but somehow there was one thing I had to see. I found it quickly; a huge scorch mark, half-covered by debris, lay where Nathaniel and I had been standing the moment before he Dismissed me and died.

I swore first in Arabic, then French, then German, then in just about every language I could think of. Why'd you have to go and die?

The others around me seemed alarmed, but they were not forced to bear my presence anymore; it was only a moment longer before I fled.

When I arrived at Miss Piper's office, I gave her the report quickly: Nothing wrong except for some suspicious looks.

Then she Dismissed me and I floated gratefully back to the Other Place, where I was sure I could brood a bit easier.