Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the Property of Jonathan Stroud. Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand, but technically since it's in the public domain it belongs to all of us. ^^

A/N: Hey everyone – sorry about the delay. Did I mention I have to work twelve hour shifts at my summer job? :( Profuse thanks to everybody who reviewed last chapter: Nari-nick, Broken Pentacle, Random Inspired, Athenias, and Blue Painted Freak. And of course many thanks to the almighty Lady Noir for her beta skills. Also, awesome news! This fic now has fanart thanks to Nari, which you can view at rhysenne (DOT) deviantart (DOT) com (SLASH) # (SLASH) d2qheel. (Or just follow the link on my profile) If you've never seen her work, go take a peek, she's mind-bogglingly talented!

"Well?"

I stood alert in the pentacle before my master's desk, ready to report. Pale morning light filtered in through a crack in the blinds, casting a half-moon reflection on the polished floor.

Nathaniel, it seemed, had been up through the night. A mysterious stain adorned the left sleeve of his suit jacket, his hair was mussed and not looking its cleanest, and his pale face was displaying the purple circles under his eyes to admirable effect.

I scratched the side of my head. "Well…I don't know how you managed it, but she seems pretty determined to dislike you."

"I've said nothing untoward," the boy insisted. "Surely you've misread the situation."

"She called your knees knobby."

Nathaniel pinched the bridge of his nose and gave a world-weary sigh that was downright disconcerting coming from someone of his young age.

"I didn't say there's no hope," I assured him, "But it's going to take some time."

"Good," he said, piling a stack of envelopes into his briefcase. "Dial down some of that impudence and irascibility and I'm sure you'll prevail eventually."

"I think she likes the impudence."

Nat paused in order to roll his eyes. "As you will," he said, "I'm afraid I haven't got time to advise you right now. Thanks to your antics yesterday, I have to be at the ministry by ten for a damage-control meeting. We're looking for immediate solutions to the leaked-weapon situation."

"Ah yes, very important. You sure are one of the big-shots now."

Nat ignored my jibe and snapped his briefcase shut. "Have the others assist you if you require anything. I expect you to report some concrete progress in the next few days."

"No need to be so emotional about it, you helpless romantic." Honestly, how Nat could act as detached as the retina of an eighty-year-old myopic drag racer while discussing his love life was beyond me.

"You are free to carry out your charge as you see fit, but don't get into trouble. Come find me at Whitehall tonight once you've finished your duties. Discreetly, this time," he said pointedly, and promptly bustled from the room.

I waited until the rumble of his departing limousine faded away before stepping from my pentacle.

As I saw fit, eh? This was certainly going to be an interesting day.

My first executive decision was to rope my compatriots into things.

"Guys?" I called, wandering from the study to the kitchen and back. The house was strangely silent, which in this business is often a bad sign. Stoggles was especially liable to make a noticeable racket, and his absence had me wondering if he'd been gobbled by a stealthy afrit. I searched the attic, the guest rooms, and the chimney, all without any luck.

When I finally located my fellow slaves in the basement, I found them in quite the predicament. Stoggles was clinging desperately to a dangling light fixture, caterwauling like a bobcat with its whiskers on fire. His tail swatted back and forth through a hazy cloud of tiny hovering mites that dove to sting at his face, while tiny cracks appeared in the ceiling as the lamp swung dangerously. Everything in the room was scattered, upended, torn apart, or in some extreme cases, totally incinerated. Queezle, meanwhile, as an orange orangutan, was wading through a dancing, surging tide on the ground, attempting and failing to swipe up the little creatures into an empty milk bottle.

"For Pete's sake, close the door!" She yelled as I sauntered in.

"Hey guys," I said, brushing a pair of dueling Bermuda Fire-Mites from the counter and hopping up to sit cross-legged on its slightly charred surface. "I need some help."

"'eeeeeelp!" Stoggles echoed, spinning in violent circles above.

"Grab a bottle and get to work," Queezle ordered me, making great sweeping passes with her milk bottle and utterly failing to capture even one of the little beasts.

"Let me guess, Nat told you to clean this room out, and Stoggles knocked one of the mite-jars off the shelf."

"He knocked the whole shelf over, the little bungler," Queezle growled.

"Well never mind that now," I said, "I need to make some girl fall in love with Mandrake, and I have no idea how to write a love letter."

I displayed a sheet of embossed letterhead that I had nicked from Nat's study. A rogue mouler dropped down from the ceiling and started to nibble a corner.

"We're a little busy here!" Queezle grumbled, chasing after a six-legged creature that was running around the perimeter of the room, waving a pair of scissors over its head.

I crushed the paper-eating spirit with my thumb, leaving a greenish smear across the page which I wasn't sure was all that romantic.

"Aw, they're chewin' on me pretty face," Stoggles moaned.

The scissor-wielding mite hopped up the wall and impudently stuck its tongue out at Queezle. The orangutan bellowed in frustration and smashed the bottle against the floor. "I'll stomp you all to death!" she cried out, charging.

There was only one thing to do in this sad situation. I reached up and pried Stoggles from the ceiling lamp by the scruff of his scaly neck. The swarm of airborne mites buzzed around him like killer bees. I waved him tantalizingly over the mites blanketing the floor, who leapt and whirled in anticipation.

"Oi, whatcha doin'?" Stoggles cried out fearfully.

"Just make sure you fly out the overflow drain," I told him as the slavering bugs began to follow us across the room.

"The wot?"

Suddenly, I slung him through the air and hammered his malleable form down the drain of the stainless steel sink in the corner.

"Arghh!" he protested.

The whirr of a thousand wing casings was like a roaring waterfall. As one great flashing, sulfurous cloud, the mites cascaded down the drain after their succulent prize. I shifted into position as the last beetle-like creature flitted out of sight.

"Now Stoggles!" I called. The poor dazed imp drifted out the overflow opening as a dense indigo cloud. [1. All of Stoggles' forms were dense, for obvious reasons.] I quickly switched on the faucet.

Water gushed into the sink, boiling and churning as it spiraled down the drain. Noxious fumes spewed up, sputtering and crackling, and a hideous squeal rose up and fell silent. Bubbles of filth gurgled from the drain and popped slowly, one after the other.

I sighed in relief as peace returned to the smoldering rubble that was once a nicely furnished room.

"Ughh, I hate mites," Queezle said, wiping bits of ash from her belly fur.

Stoggles wandered around in a dizzy circle and collapsed on his head, moaning piteously. He yelped as an irritated Queezle flicked him sharply with her tail.

"Cheer up bucko," I told him, "At least there weren't any Amazonian Piranha Mites in the mix."

The imp shivered and covered his eyes with his feet. I patted him on the shoulder, then turned to survey my topsy-turvy surroundings which interestingly enough, seemed to defy the very laws of physics. The green paisley couch had been impaled with an ironing board, the concrete floor was rumpled and swollen, and the wall above the sink was spattered with green mite-slime that was slowly eating a hole in the drywall. The Other Place itself would be jealous of such chaos.

"I'm sure Mandrake will love your redecorating," I told my companions, "But just in case it isn't quite to his taste, you might want to get on his good side by helping me out with something."

"With what?" Queezle was suspicious. She wasn't the sort of sucker who let other spirits pawn their work off on her.

"Ahem. As I previously mentioned, our esteemed master charged me with getting this girl to fall for him. Problem is, she's not interested."

I brandished my battered paper. "So I'm going to write her a love letter that will surely win her heart."

"Nice," said Stoggles.

"My powers of eloquence," I continued, "Are of course unmatched, but I'm a bit stumped at the moment, unfortunately. So how 'bout it guys? What do you think dear Mandrake should say to woo his sweetie?" I poised my pen over the paper and looked up expectantly. Stoggles stroked his chin.

"Whatcha got so far?" he asked.

I cleared my throat and read dramatically. "Dear Kitty…"

Stoggles and Queezle leaned forward in anticipation.

I rubbed Ptolemy's hair nervously. "…That's all I've got."

They slumped.

"What?" I said, "I'm no expert here."

"Say something poetic," Queezle suggested. "All humans like that stuff."

Stoggles nodded enthusiastically. "Tell 'er: Yer rear nasal flaps er as lovely as the multicoloured stink-cloud plumes from a Stygian Imp's backside. That's what I always tells the missus." Stoggles placed a spiky hand over his heart and made doe-eyes at the ceiling while Queezle and I just stared.

"The missus?" I said, "Actually no, don't tell me. I don't want to know. I think I'll just tell Kitty that Mandrake likes her very much and…uh…"

Queezle wrinkled her nose. "I think you're supposed to say something about rosebuds in there. Like: Your eternal beauty is as winsome as the dewy petal of the rosebud."

"Uh…I don't think Kitty's much for the archaic stuff."

The orangutan crossed her arms petulantly. "Do you want our help or not?"

"Fine, fine." I scribbled it down.

"An tell 'er she makes yer 'eart pump like water through a fire hose. Only one with a hole innit, geddit? 'Cause you gots an arrow through yer 'eart, an now there's a hole!"

"Why do I even talk to you guys?"

"Bartimaeus!"

"A hole, got it."

"With rosebuds."

"Rosebuds it is."

Fifteen minutes, and we had come up with the most hideous love letter in all of creation. I winced and signed Nat's name to the bottom. [2. No, not his birth name. Don't be thick.] I was just grateful that it wasn't me who would ultimately be taking credit for this dreadful abomination.

Poor Kitty. I could only hope that her brain wouldn't leak out of her ears when she read it.

XXX

"Knock, knock…"

I popped into Makepeace's office in Whitehall in the sharp blue uniform of a telegram boy. It was a nice guise if ever I saw one. My shoes glowed as though from hours of polishing, each of the brass buttons on my jacket gleamed brightly enough to bore holes into one's eyeballs, and a cap sat at a jaunty angle atop Ptolemy's carefully arranged hair. But sadly this effort was all lost on Kitty, who shrieked and tipped head-over-heels from her chair, dragging along the desk drawer she'd been rooting through and spewing its contents all over the room. I gingerly sidestepped the gigantic stapler that hurdled my way.

"Geez, calm down," I said with a smirk, "It's almost like you've got something to hide."

"You!"

Kitty leapt to her feet and hurriedly dusted herself off, eyeing me suspiciously all the way.

"Don't look at me like that," I told her, "If you want to go looking through Makepeace's private documents, I'm all for it."

She shook her head with a roll of her eyes and sat back down in the chair. "What on Earth are you doing here?" She said. "If you try to tell me you just happened by again I'm going to strangle you."

"Good luck with that. I have a very resilient windpipe. It's nothing to get uptight about. John Mandrake, my master, sent me to deliver something to you."

"Mandrake!" Kitty shot up out of her chair and glared at me. I held up my hands in a pacifying gesture.

"Kitty, sit down, it's fine. I didn't tell him anything about your extracurricular activities if that's what you're afraid of."

The girl ran a hand through her hair, looking conflicted, then after a moment resumed stuffing Makepeace's papers into her backpack.

"How did you even know I was in here?" she asked.

"I've got an imp pal who knows how to scry," I said. [3. Admittedly, Stoggles was less "pal" and more "burdensome albatross around my neck", and his ability was not so much "scrying" as it was "squinting blearily into the astral plane and making a couple of loose guesses." Still, it came in handy occasionally.]

Kitty placed her hands on her hips. "Are you saying someone could be watching us right now?"

"Psh, of course not!" I said indignantly, "If some mangy scrying imp was poking around in here right now, I think I'd notice. All I'm saying is that you might want to make sure you're really alone before you ransack the place for government secrets."

Kitty leaned back in the chair. "Can't I block it or something?"

I grinned. "Not without a slave of your own…or at least one of these." The chain of a small gold locket was poking out from the jumble of papers Kitty had knocked to the floor when I entered, and I bent now to scoop it up. Its weird, inverted aura had been calling out for my attention for the past couple of minutes. I held it out to Kitty, letting it dangle from my index finger.

"I'm not sure if it's an Amulet of Shrouding or Obfuscation, but either way it ought to protect you from prying eyes while you go around doing your thing."

Kitty slipped it around her neck, somehow making a truly hideous piece of Babylonian jewelry look good. "Well, thank you," she said to me, "Though I imagine your master won't be pleased if he finds out you helped a spy evade the magicians."

"Who, Mandrake? Naw, he's no more loyal to the government than you or I."

"That little weasel is all about increasing the magician's control," Kitty said. "I've watched him backstab his way up the ranks. He's the most power hungry of the whole lot."

Her dark eyes smoldered, and I was forced to admit that the girl was indeed very beautiful. Smart too. It wasn't hard to understand what Nat saw in her. [4. And you had to hand it to Nat; he had taste. Most magicians aimed for a vapid, cosmetic-caked blonde who could hang off their arm and giggle on command. I was fairly confident that Kitty would viciously maim anyone who even tried to insinuate that she might possibly know how to giggle.]

"That's not the tune he's singing now," I said. "Maybe that's why he likes you so much. Here, he told me to give you this." I held out the letter, neatly folded. I watched in nervous anticipation as her eyes skimmed over the page. With both Stoggles and Queezle donating lines, the whole thing had turned out rather…uneven.

"Dear Kitty," the girl read aloud, "Your eternal beauty is as winsome as the dewy petal of the rosebud. My heart gushes with love for you like water through a fire hose. A pink satin fire hose bedecked with rosebuds from the bosom of summer. I can't live without you, my rosebud, seeing as you stole my heart and several other vital organs too. I wouldn't mind getting my spleen back if it isn't too much trouble. Dearest darling, say you will give me your sweet rosy hand. Looking at you is like devouring a six-course dinner of Swiss chocolate stink-mites. And rosebuds. Say you feel the same. Love, John."

Kitty fell silent, one dark eyebrow lifting eloquently in response.

"I think he's got split personalities," I said by way of explanation.

Kitty carefully laid the letter on the desk. Her lips twitched upward. "Would you believe this is only the second-oddest thing I've seen today?" she asked. "You know…It's so silly that it's almost charming."

"Er…that's certainly a unique attitude toward serious mental illness."

She smirked. "I don't think he's being serious."

Yeah, let's roll with that. "Probably not," I agreed. "Want me to take a reply back to him?"

I waited as Kitty absently ran her nails along a gore in the wooden desk. She bit her lip. "You don't have any reason to be loyal to him," she said out of the blue, rolling the locket between her fingers.

"Not really," I agreed.

"And in your perfect impartiality, you're assuring me that despite all appearances, Mandrake supports the commoner's cause?"

"Why don't you ask him about it?"

She cradled her head in her hands. "It's so risky…but a potential contact on the inside? I can't let an opportunity like that slide, can I?"

"No," I answered, "No you can't."

XXX

"…And thus Devereaux is advocating a preemptive strike against the resistance in the next month or so. Members of our special unit have infiltrated the group and…"

Whitwell was blabbering on self-importantly about tactics. Officially, I was supposed to be taking notes on the meeting, but instead was preoccupied with playing hangman against myself on the back of my notepad. [5. Incidentally, I was also losing terribly – a quirk that came with being able to think on multiple conscious lines of thought. It didn't help that I was including characters from the Mayan, Arabic, Chinese, Sumerian, Greek, and Latin scripts. The page was beginning to look like the Rosetta stone on steroids.]

Nathaniel cleared his throat and gestured pointedly.

With a sigh, I scribbled out the half-drawn hanging figure (who bore a suspicious resemblance to my master) and returned to jotting down the dull spewings from Whitwell's mouth.

"…In the meantime, we have our best researchers working on an antidote for weapon X4, though we must be prepared for a worst case scenario fight against armed resistance members. Mandrake will be heading the alchemical research team, while Cutter and I shall be working out a ritual-based cure in order to…"

If I was capable of sleeping, I'd have drifted off long ago. In these situations, distraction was a form of self-preservation that kept my restless brain from churning itself into butter.

"THE TARGET IS MAKING PROGRESS." I scrawled on a blank sheet for notepaper, and waved it under Nat's nose. The magician raised an eyebrow in silent inquiry.

"SHE FINDS YOUR APAULLING, NIGH-INSANE TURN OF PHRASE 'ALMOST CHARMING.'" I clarified.

"My what?" Nathaniel whispered in distress.

The rest of the meeting was much more amusing. By the time we left, Nat's hair was in total disarray and his nervous fingers had shredded a total of sixteen agenda sheets into a tiny mountain of shaved paper on the table in front of him. The alligator-faced woman on his right subtly edged her chair away.

"Tell me exactly what happened." He snapped the minute the two of us were free of the conference room. I had to jog to keep up with his long, angry stride.

"Nothing to get excited about," I admitted, "She just– oh no."

"Bartimaeus, so help me I'll…" Nat looked like his aorta was going to burst, but I just pointed wordlessly ahead. Hurrying up the hallway toward us was Kitty Jones herself. She must have finished ransacking Makepeace's desk and come to look for my master.

"Quick," I whispered, "She can't see us like this!" Nat flew off his feet as I yanked him round the corner, ignoring Kitty's called greeting. There was a door to one side, a janitor's closet, and I roughly stuffed Nat inside.

By the time Kitty rounded the corner, a fair facsimile of John Mandrake was leaning casually against the closet door.

"Kitty," I called out in the friendly voice of a man who hadn't just been dragged from her presence by a panicking djinni. "What a surprise."

Kitty gave me an odd look, but refrained from commenting on Mandrake's strange behaviour. I think by this point she was probably coming to expect it of him.

"I've been looking for you," she said, waving the letter.

"Ah, yes," I said, "Come to thank me for my gift of fine poetry?"

"If this is your idea of a letter, I'd love to see how you fill out your tax papers."

"Yup, total yearly income: 100,000 rosebuds."

I smiled at her and she smiled back, snickering a little.

"The demon of yours who delivered this–"

"Bartimaeus? Yes, an excellent servant that one. Resourceful, intelligent, good-looking, well-spoken…I really don't deserve him – everyone knows it."

"Well, he certainly turns up at the strangest times. He said a few things that caught my interest…"

The words were light, but something had changed behind Kitty's eyes. She leaned in close to speak softly into my ear and I was assailed by the spicy scent of her hair.

"John, I think you and I have something very important to discuss…" The hallway was empty and quiet; even her whispers echoed hollowly against the bare walls.

My breath caught. "Like what?" I whispered in reply.

"We'd better not talk of it here. Come and see me tomorrow, alright?"

"Alright."

She tilted her head and studied me with interest. "Well, I'll see you then."

Even after she left I remained slumped back against the wall, heart thumping in my chest. Had I just managed to get Nat inducted into the resistance? It hadn't exactly been my original intension, but the curiosity was overwhelming. The mysterious rebel group had been growing more and more active each year, and yet no one seemed to know much about their numbers or organization. It was entirely possible that the fall of the British Empire would come far sooner that I had thought, and if it did I wanted a front-row seat.

A muffled but insistent thumping roused me from my thoughts and I stood aside to let the door swing open. Nat tumbled out of the closet, a bucket crowning his head and a mop head wound viciously around his feet.

He lifted his chin from the floor and glared at me.

"So Nat," I said, kneeling down to his level, "What was Whitwell saying about striking at the resistance again?"