I'm leaving my Author's Note for you to read after this recession into the mind of the evil bad guy.

For the first time in months, Nouda felt strong as he tussled with a minor djinni that had had the misfortune to cross his path. Power flowed through him, filling him with energy he hadn't felt in so, so long...

He didn't have to think to fight: Detonation after Detonation filed from his fingertips like soldiers--he had taken a gargoyle's shape--Convulsions zipped from his core to his enemy. He didn't have to think of the battle he was part of, and so his thoughts turned to other things. He could remember being a human, millennia ago, a sorceror's apprentice. He had killed his master and thus inherited his master's powers, adding them to his own. He had tormented the people of his country from peasant to ruler, demanding they give him all he wished for, on pain of death. Then had come a young man of another land, wielding powers to match Nouda's own. He had been destroyed, vanquished, thrust into oblivion. He had become nothing, and then he was feeling pain--what pain!--and he had become something again, not a spirit of the kind he had summoned when he was human.

I will not be conquered this time, thought Nouda, striking out with a Detonation. As the djinni died, as it vanished from all life, Earth or Other Place, he turned away and once more his thoughts reached out for his enemies. His servants would take care of the girl. The boy, the one he had killed, he had come back--someone would be sent for him. And as for that insolent fool Bartimaeus, he would be dealt with by Nouda himself.

The girl might already be captured. The moon shone like a lamp overhead as he thought. The boy was alive, he knew now, but was he in the Other Place or here on Earth? The same question went for Bartimaeus.

His essence did not hurt him anymore. No more did Earth slip in the cracks of his essence, stealing it away bit by bit. Now he was like the djinn of the earth. He smiled, a horrid gargoyle grin that somehow darkened his face.

His great servant would take care of everything. All he had to do was give orders; and, of course, he would eventually go hunting for Bartimaeus.

He sprang into the night, a blur of ugly gargoyle that soon vanished from sight.

Odd? Who could those servants be? Who is the 'great servant'? And some of you are probably wondering what the heck Jane Farrar has to do with any of this. Rest assured, she'll be back.

To Thunderstorm101, and anyone else who was wondering: While, in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, America is still under british rule (sort of), and thus it would be sometime in the 1700s, I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that there are cars in the trilogy. There were not cars in the 1700s. Also, we have to remember that the Bartimaeus Trilogy is in an alternate universe. So there really could be computers and all that. Of course, I could be wrong. But heck, it's just what I think.

And the Ano-Nimmus Award for Honoring Those Who Reviewed the Last Bloody Chapter goes to the following people(!): XIII Dragon, jenny-R, The known author, Ueki, wingsgirl1313 (anon), Thundertorm101, penwriter95, kaillinne arami, Bartimaeus Fan (anon), michael moragn (anon)

Thank you one and all!

That button down there...yeah, the purple one. You see it, don't you? It gives you eternal youth and immortality. Not to mention, you can get a reward! You get that award a few lines above this one! Want it? LEAVE A REVIEW.
(I know this is weird, seeing as the A/N is almost as long than the chapter, but I had a lot to tell you.)

ano-nimmus