Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy belongs to Jonathan Stroud. (Did you all see the cover for Ptolemy's Gate? If you haven't, go look now – it's so pretty and red.)

Warning: I've come to realize that the most popular pairing in this section by far is Nathaniel/Kitty. Actually, it's really painfully obvious. In fact, all but two stories that have a pairing stick Nathaniel and Kitty together. While I like the idea of them together, I also dislike the lack of variety concerning the pairings in this section. Thus, the pairings that will develop in this fic will be Bartimaeus/Kitty and Nathaniel/OFC. If this puts you off, that's fine – you don't have to read this. If you stick around, please, please don't hesitate to point out anything that bothers you about my OFC. I'm viewing this as an opportunity to work on developing original characters, and I'd really like to improve. So, constructive criticism in this respect (and any others) is very much appreciated. Many thanks to everyone who reviewed the prologue; I hope you stay interested.

Elph

Anticlimax
Chapter 1: Ash, Ash

Nearly a year after Kitty's disappearance, Penelope Cross was in the break room of one of the buildings that made up Whitehall, dipping a tea bag in and out of a cup of steaming water. Her glasses, which she had finally taken off after being forced to wipe them clear of condensation one too many times, were lying by her elbow, arms neatly folded. She was also steadfastly ignoring George Ffoukes and Calvin Trigg, two junior ministers who had taken to talking loudly about commoners' general incompetence whenever she happened to be in the vicinity. It didn't help that she had once dropped an armful of photocopied documents in the middle of one such discussion.

Just as she binned the used teabag and picked up her cup, the welcome scent of the beverage filling her nose, the door to the room opened and John Mandrake, head of the department, strode in. Ffoukes and Trigg immediately broke off their conversation and greeted him respectfully. Penelope, who was standing at the sink with her back to the doorway, didn't turn around. She had long harbored a sort of fearful dislike for her new boss; when she had been a part of the Resistance he had been their greatest and most dangerous enemy. She picked up her teacup and started towards one of the unoccupied tables, but before she had gone two paces Mandrake cleared his throat and said, "Earl Grey with lemon, if you don't mind."

With a last forlorn look at her own tea, she set the cup down on the table and went back over to the cabinets. The still-raw scars on her back throbbed painfully as she reached up to take a clean cup off the top shelf, and she bit her lip. The injury had been inflicted on her by a member of the Night Police in wolf form. The claws had raked along her back, slicing through her skin like paper as she attempted to escape over one of the fences surrounding the warehouse.

The memory of the disaster, as always, set her heart pounding. The explosion had ripped apart a good half of the building and killed three of her comrades instantly. Two more had been attacked by the werewolves moments later, and died trying to escape. She and Kitty had gone off in opposite directions, the leader escaping first. Cerebaton, who had taken his sweet time in answering Kitty's frantic call, had gone off after her. Penelope had managed to stay a step ahead of her pursuers until she reached the fence, and once she was over, even with the three long gashes across her back, she was free: by the time the two officers had shifted back into their human forms and scaled the fence, she was a third of the way across the Thames and her scent was lost to them.

She had changed jobs immediately, and became a secretary to a man who worked in real estate. He took a liking to her, and, as he was well connected, secured a job for her in Whitehall, apparently laboring under the misapprehension that this would be a generous favor. Unable to come up with a plausible reason to refuse, and also because she had watched Lord of the Rings a bit too recently and had Pippin's line "The closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm" running through her mind, she accepted the offer, albeit reluctantly.

And here she was now, squeezing the juices of a lemon wedge into the tea of a dangerous enemy. She wasn't sure if John Mandrake was aware of exactly who she was (he certainly hadn't given any indication that this was so), but it was definitely possible. She had to be careful, in case she was being more closely watched than she suspected. This was her excuse for neglecting the duty Kitty would have wanted her to take on now that she had disappeared: leading the Resistance.

Their leader had organized a sort of order of succession in the event of her death. If Kitty was killed or captured, Joey was to take her place. After Joey there came Marissa, and then Penelope. Joey had been killed by one of the Night Police, and Marissa had died in the explosion, so the position of leader had fallen to Penelope, a position she didn't want to accept. For one thing, she had no idea how to help the Resistance recover from the blow the loss of six top members had dealt. For another, whatever nerve she had had a year ago seemed to have disappeared: she no longer felt the courage she needed to do something so dangerous right under Mandrake's nose.

She was a coward, she reflected disgustedly as she swept the puckered lemon wedge into the dustbin. She was thinking only about herself. Still, how–

Her train of thought was broken as the door to the room swung open and Gregory Hamilton, the youngest magician in this department next to Mandrake, hurried in. The three other magicians looked up curiously.

"I was speaking to Marcus," Hamilton began, abandoning preliminaries, "Did any of you know that Jessica has a Resistance member in the Tower?"

Penelope found her head whipping in his direction against her will, betraying too much interest. Fortunately, the others were ignoring her completely, struck by this news. As she turned her head so that she was only watching Hamilton out of the corner of her eye, Ffoukes set his teacup down on the table with a bit too much force – some of the contents sloshed over the rim and splashed onto the table. Hamilton didn't wait for an answer, but kept speaking.

"Yeah – they caught him smuggling an Elemental Sphere into one of Makepeace's plays. Less than an hour after he was caught he confessed to being a part of the Resistance before, and that he'd hoped to revive the group by tossing the Sphere into one of the magicians' boxes."

"What do you mean, 'revive the group'?" Mandrake asked him, his brow furrowing. Hamilton's shoulders straightened, perhaps unconsciously, as he addressed his Head of Department directly.

"He said the group fell apart months ago, sir. Apparently their leader's disappeared and no one else had made a move to take over. Actually," and here the young man smirked unpleasantly, "He got a bit fired up at that point, or so I'm told. Said whoever was supposed to step in is a bloody coward for not doing so, and a traitor. According to Marcus, he thinks this person might have also had a hand in the leader's disappearance."

What? Her – a traitor to the Resistance? The cup Penelope had been holding slipped from her grip, which had loosened with shock and indignation, and shattered on the floor, sending lukewarm tea and shards of china in all directions.

"You clumsy fool – clear it up," Trigg barked. Even Hamilton, who was normally courteous to her, was looking at her in annoyance: she had interrupted his story. She bent over, her back complaining again, and began to pick up the fragments of the teacup, piling them on the counter. As she did so, Hamilton proceeded to inform the rest of the room's occupants that the boy was still being questioned, although it seemed as if he had told them as much as he could, as an admittedly low-level member of the former Resistance.

As she reached for a towel to mop up the tea, Penelope glanced over at the group of magicians, only to find Mandrake looking at her with a distracted expression, a slight frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. When he saw that she noticed he averted his eyes lazily, but her heart was pounding again. Somehow she doubted that his slight frown was only due to disapproval at her dropping his tea.

By the time she had cleared up the mess and fixed Mandrake another cup, Hamilton was gone and Ffoukes and Trigg were also standing.

"We'd best be going," Trigg was saying, and threw a glance of deepest scorn in Penelope's direction before leaving, Ffoukes at his heels. Remembering that Ffoukes had spilled tea on the table, Penelope carried a paper towel over as well as Mandrake's cup. She noticed with a certain amount of nervousness that her hand trembled as she set Mandrake's tea in front of him, and hurriedly mopped up the small puddle on the table and took Ffoukes' half-empty cup away.

She moved over to the table where her own abandoned refreshment was still sitting, and tapped the sides of her cup restlessly with the tips of her fingers, alternately staring at the murky brown liquid within and the back of Mandrake's head, which was blurry. Her glasses were still sitting on the counter.

She went over to retrieve them, and poured her tea, which was stone-cold by now anyway, down the drain. As she rinsed out her cup her eyes flicked towards the corner, and what she saw almost caused her to drop this cup, too.

Cerebaton!

-

The djinni had returned to earth a day ago, fully recovered. Upon arriving in the mortal world, he had proceeded immediately to Kitty's flat, the way to which he remembered perfectly. What he lacked in the strength the upper-level entities boasted of, he made up for in sharp memory and quick reflexes.

Kitty's flat was near the middle of a cluster of similar homes, all in varying degrees of shabbiness. Kitty's, Cerebaton noticed when he reached his master's house, was by far the most run-down – some of the shutters on the dark, blank windows were even hanging askew. What little grass there was in the tiny yard in front was overgrown, choking the post of the sign that read "For Sale".

All this was a pretty clear indicator that Kitty would not be found there, but Cerebaton had a look inside anyway. A quick inspection of the place revealed that she was, beyond a doubt, gone: there were no personal items or clothing in the dust-covered bureau, nor was there food in the cabinets or refrigerator. Cerebaton had perched on the bare bed and gathered his thoughts. Kitty was gone, but not dead – the fact that he was here was proof enough of that. She had told him that if he didn't find her here (which he had interpreted to mean in her flat), he was to seek out the girl called Penny and obey her as he would his master. Fine – that was clear enough. The problem had been that he only knew her first name, Penelope, and what she looked like. And she could have altered her appearance quite a bit in ten months. He had no idea where she worked or where she lived. In the end, he had decided to search the libraries first, since he knew for a fact that a few Resistance members had been worked in these places, gathering as much information as they could.

For half a day he was unsuccessful. He had visited several libraries, even Mesmerized the men and women at the desks so that they obediently brought up lists of current and previous employees on their computers. But none of the girls around Cerebaton's estimate of Penelope's age had the right name or physical description. Just when he was starting to get truly frustrated, he found her.

Or, rather, he found the library where she had worked ten months ago. Under the influence of Cerebaton's Mesmer, the middle-aged woman at the counter told him that she had abruptly changed jobs several months previously, and the last she had heard Penelope had gone to work for a Mr. Thallimar, whose business was in real estate. Having gotten the address of this man's office, Cerebaton had left the confused and slightly dazed woman blinking at the records on the computer screen, wondering when and why she had opened the file.

While she was working that mystery out, Cerebaton was en route to Thallimar's office. Once there, he discovered that Penelope had changed jobs yet again (what was the matter with this girl?), and was now working in Whitehall.

That had come as something of a surprise: everyone knew that Whitehall was run by magicians. But, Cerebaton had mused as he flew in the admittedly dull guise of a pigeon towards the impressive cluster of buildings at the heart of the west side of London, the magicians might use commoners as clerical workers, errand-runners, that sort of thing. This, he had discovered upon locating Penelope at last in the break room in the Department of Internal Affairs, was precisely the case.

He had spent the better part of the half hour he had been in the corner of the room discretely deflecting the pulses emanating from the sensor in the youngest magician's ear. Every fifteen seconds three of them would ring out in quick succession, and avoiding them without alerting the magician that he was doing so was a delicate task. At last, however, the boy downed the last of his tea. Penelope, who had been hovering over by the sink, went over to take the cup away.

"Put it in the sink; I've had enough," the magician told her, and swept out the room without another word. Penelope grimaced at the door as it swung shut behind the boy, and, to Cerebaton's surprise, turned to look directly at him.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed, the hoarseness of her voice evident even in a whisper, eyes wide behind the wire frames of her glasses. With a quick glance at the door, Cerebaton became a sparrow and flitted over to the sink, landing on the faucet. Now that they were closer, they could talk softly.

"I'm carrying out my orders," he informed her in a low voice, folding his wings neatly. "I couldn't find my master at her flat, and she said that if that happened I was to find you and become your servant instead."

He couldn't help but sound a bit sour; he resented being passed along like an object. Penelope didn't seem to notice his less-than-enthusiastic tone. Rather, she looked elated.

"But you came back!" she said, her voice raspier than ever in excitement. "She's still alive!"

"Yes, yes," Cerebaton said, not about to be caught up in her enthusiasm. "Though I can't imagine her being too pleased at how you've carried on in her absence, if she knows."

Penelope's relieved smile disappeared quickly enough to be alarming. She glared at him before turning her head away, plucking two clean cups off the counter and putting them back in a cabinet.

"Things got complicated," she said after a pause. "I was preoccupied with not being tracked down, which was difficult enough without being roped into working here at Whitehall. And anyway," she said, her tone suddenly bitter, "The rest of them must think I'm at fault for what happened. They don't want anything to do with me."

Cerebaton flitted off the faucet and rapped her sharply on the top of her head with a curled-up foot.

"One boy stupid enough to be captured said that," he told her, disgusted by this display of self-pity. "I suspect his opinion is not widely shared, if at all. You're just making excuses."

Penelope scowled. "That's not important anymore."

"No?"

"Obviously not." She turned around to look at him. "Now that you're here, and I know she's still alive, we have to find her."

She looked satisfied – apparently she had been waiting for a goal of this sort.

"Fine," Cerebaton said, landing on her shoulder. "But you'll need to figure out where to look."

"The only thing she'll need is a good explanation for this," a cold voice said from the doorway. Penelope gasped and whipped around to face the speaker, her face white. John Mandrake, who was leaning against the frame of the door, gave them both a grim smile.