I updated as fast as I could, because you guys were all killing me over my last cliff-hanger! Well, I don't really blame you…

I pick up where I left off with Nathaniel, showing a bit more of what happened in those two months after his "death", and I also move on to Kitty as she…er…takes a walk. Sorry, there isn't a lot of action yet…I have to fill in Nathaniel's two-month gap before I can stick Kitty and Bart back in here.

Disclaimer: I still haven't kidnapped Jonathan Stroud and made him hand over the copyrights to his books…

Questioning Humanity

"Help me if you can, I'm feeling down,
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me?"

- Help (The Beatles)

A young girl stood over him, dipping her cloth in the water again. She couldn't have been more than six or seven years old, and yet a certain serenity hung about her…it was this much that surprised Nathaniel.

She was very small, with rather plain brown hair in a plait down her back. Her face was thin and somewhat pale, and her eyes were very green. It was truly the eyes which made him question her humanity, but she was too solid to be one of the demons, and in any case why would one of them help him?

Nathaniel rasped out a question to her, but his voice wasn't there. He coughed, cleared his throat and tried again.

"Who are you?"

The girl fixed him with her disturbing emerald eyes, but did not say a word.

Within a few hours, he was able to sit up again without feeling nauseous. The girl, too, sat in front of him as he leaned back against a tree. She still had not said anything too him, simply staring and staring until it was rather unnerving.

Nathaniel's exhausted mind, meanwhile, was going into overdrive again. Why was he here, and where was here? Where was Nouda? Why had he been allowed to live? And where had the girl come from? He wondered if she, too, had been touched by a dying demon and brought here as well…

And with that thought, he understood everything. It was too simple, all too simple: Phasma Mortuus.

How had he not seen it before? Nathaniel had killed Nouda with the Staff, he was sure of it, but Nouda must have done something else…he remembered the demon reaching for him…had he perhaps been imprisoned here? For what purpose? Why hadn't Nouda just left him to die?

It was obvious, that last bit. The powerful demon obviously knew that pain and helplessness were a worse punishment than a quick, easy death. And no one would ever know, believing that his remnants had been destroyed like the demon…

Kitty, he thought, Kitty could figure it out. But how? He had no way of sending a message to her, trapped her as he was. He certainly didn't have the strength or the materials to summon Bartimaeus or any demon to bring him back. Of course, Nathaniel thought despairingly, Nouda would have accounted for all that.

And so Nathaniel, renowned for his exceptional mind, had no idea how he was to get out of this situation. Stupid, he thought, it was so stupid to go after Nouda! There might have been another way, any other way, one that didn't involve him getting trapped on an island where demon's souls roamed. One, perhaps, that involved both him and Kitty getting out of this alive, along with all the commoners…

Nathaniel had never felt so alone, so abandoned. Not even a slave was here to help him, however grudgingly. He looked up, remembering the girl.

"Do you – er – have a name?" he asked.

The girl didn't answer, but something stirred in the back of his mind. What was that? Her eyes were fixed intently on him. Perhaps she didn't have a name? Would he perhaps have to give her one?

"Erm…" he thought a moment, and his mind fell on Kitty once again. "Can I call you Kathleen, for now? After a friend?"

The girl smiled at him then, a sweet smile, but one that seemed to encompass all the sorrows of the world. Again, that stirring in his mind, almost as a probe…and, all at once, an insane and rather irrational idea struck him. Was the girl, Kathleen now, reading his mind?

Even if she was, and it was rather impossible that anyone could do such a thing, what was she looking for that she though he wouldn't share with her? After all, she seemed to be his only companion, trapped as he was. All the same…

"Kathleen, are you doing something to me?"

She looked at him blankly, her eyes fathomless. He found himself strangely drawn to her, as if hers was a power he wished to add to his own…

There, a little shake of the head. He was imagining it all. Unless she was lying…but Nathaniel didn't want to believe that of her, his only companion in this godforsaken place. Literally godforsaken…he allowed himself a small smile.

Kathleen smiled back, cocking her head at him.

I was literally astounded at the changes I had seen in Kitty over the past few days. Ever since she had thought up her Nathaniel's-alive-on-Phasma-Mortuus theory, there was a new spring in her step that I didn't really want to ruin.

It wasn't that I didn't believe in her; on the contrary, I wanted Nathaniel back as well, at least so I could give him a good whack around the head and a piece of my mind. The thing was that this seemed just…just so unlikely. Why wouldn't Nouda just kill the guy and have done with it?

Unless he had wanted Nathaniel to suffer. That, perhaps, would explain it…but wouldn't the kid die when he got to Phasma Mortuus anyway? There was nothing to explain how he could still be alive…like I had said to him, I'm no medic, but I could tell how much of my own energy forces had been used just to stop him falling over. Humans can't lose that much blood and just bounce back up like it's nothing; that's what gives spirits such an advantage in wars, as long as our essences are up to scratch.

So even if he had survived, I thought personally that he wouldn't have kept on living much longer anyway. First of all, he was alone in every possible sense of the term. Second of all, he was so emotionally frail (I knew this from long experience) that he probably wouldn't do a lot to try to save himself anyway. Third of all…all right, you get the point. But what was I supposed to tell Kitty?

I'd had enough experience of her obsessive little ideas to know that, no matter what I told her, she wasn't going to let this little spark of hope die out. I sincerely hoped, myself, that she wouldn't get her dreams dashed or her heart broken pursuing what I thought to be a hopeless quest.

I wandered around her little flat for a bit, contemplating far more intelligent things than what I have told you, until I finally found her in her bedroom, reading what looked like an encyclopaedia. I cleared Ptolemy's throat.

"Erm…what are you looking for?"

"Phasma Mortuus, of course," she said brightly, not even looking up from her page. "I want to make sure I know everything possible before I try to find him there."

"Look, Kitty," I said haltingly, "I know you've got your heart set on this, but I think you should consider -"

"The fact that he might not be alive, even if he somehow did get to Phasma Mortuus? Thanks, Bartimaeus, but I'm really not that much of an idiot. I know how little chance there is of it happening…"

"You've hit the nail on the head." I sat down on the floor cross-legged.

"But I still want to try. Remember the revolt? There was no chance of – of him getting the Staff, and basically no chance of me getting to you in the Other Place. But both plans still worked! It doesn't matter how small the chance is, as long as it's still there!"

I stared at her for a moment. This was one of those times when it's best to keep silent, but I cared too much about Kitty.

"You don't have any real proof." I said it as gently as I could, but her head still snapped up angrily and she fixed me with two angry, shadowed eyes.

"What do you suppose these visions are, if not proof? Why would I have them if not to get the necessary information to save him?" I could hear the intense desperation in her voice, but I was determined to put my two cents in, for all they were worth.

"Kitty, you know some of your – visions­ – aren't real. What if that last one was – well – just a dream? Like the one about the golem?"

She made an unidentifiable noise of extreme frustration.

"I've told you, Bartimaeus, I didn't see him on Phasma Mortuus! I saw the one memory he had that would give me the vital clue to what happened when Nouda touched him!"

"But -" I began, but Kitty cut me off. She seemed to have worked herself into a passionate fury.

"Why can't you, of all the people and spirits in the world, believe me? This is something I believe, something that I know has to be true. I'm not just dreaming, everything has happened to me for a reason!"

We stared at each other for another moment. Then she stood up suddenly.

"Come," she said, "I want to show you something."

Kitty led Bartimaeus to St. James Park. The fury that had flared within her at Bartimaeus' flat refusal to believe in her once again had ebbed away gradually, leaving her feeling rather drained.

No one truly understood her anymore. Not even he had, when the spirits were trying to destroy the very world around them. Why was it that every proof she ever gave anyone was seen as minute, not worthy of consideration by the "intelligent" people, or even spirits like Bartimaeus? It was this that had led the first Resistance to their deaths, and the second Resistance to their culmination. Except for Kevin, she thought to herself, Kevin always believed in me…but there was too much bitterness, too much grief, too much raw emotion within her, with no time or place to let it out. Sometimes Kitty questioned her own humanity.

They had reached the place she wanted to see again, the silver statue of John Mandrake glittering with frost. And beneath it, an identifying plaque that she had read so often during the two months since his death that Kitty had it practically memorized.

"Read it," she hissed at the djinni beside her.

The words shone silver in the sun setting behind them.

John Mandrake, born Nathaniel, lived from November 4, 1989, to September 23, 2005. He served the government as Internal Affairs minister from 2001 to 2003, and Information Minister from 2004 until his death. He died while defending the city from renegade spirits, helping establish the new governmental system. He will not be forgotten.

This would be the right part, Kitty thought sarcastically, for the emotionally unstable heroine of the story to dissolve into tears at reading the words that confirmed the death of her dearest one. But her eyes were as dry as they always were.

"Can't you see?" she said, turning to Bartimaeus who, predictably, had finished reading long before her. "This is what I've had to live with these past few months. All that remains of him is a few words on a piece of metal, and if that was all you had to think about, you might go out of your way to find a way to change it as well."

The djinni said nothing, staring upward at the frozen face of a boy that she couldn't believe to be dead.

Woohoo! Loved that chappie! Now tell me…who do you think "Kathleen" really is? All right, I've given you very little information, but still…guess, it'll amuse me! Reviews please, I love you all!