The last twenty four hours had been blur of chaos. Kitty was currently bent over a great map of London lit dimly by candlelight. She had quite possibly led her entire campaign into total disaster. As Kevin Drefer listed off towns and areas of London she marked them with a red pen. When he had finally finished with the list, she and the five other young managers and assistants leaned inwards to peer at the map, which was almost entirely covered in red marks.

There was a moment of silence as they stared in shock.

"We are so fucked."

Kitty looked up at their anxious faces from her seat.

"yeah. Pretty much."

24 hours earlier

"what could possibly be so urgent that you actually had to start the summons? I was only on the other side of the neighborhood."

As I entered the room, Kitty attacked me, throwing her arms around me.

"Success, Bartimaeus! Your campaign worked! It worked you cocky smart-ass!"

I stared at her dimly for a second before throwing my nose in the air haughtily.

"Well obviously it worked. I'm a genius." Kitty laughed and spun around in the encroaching glow of sunset, which basked the room in an orange glow.

As she opened the champagne in her bottom desk drawer, almost hitting me in the face with the cork, I lounged in her chair.

"What part exactly though? I mean, I've had a lot of ideas…"

Kitty poured herself a glass and handed me the bottle from which I promptly started chugging.

"The envoys out to the surrounding areas. Except I tweaked your idea a little."

"Go on."

"We sent teams out to launch an informational campaign for the citizens and commoners instead, telling them all about parliament, freedom from the magicians, everything. It's been kind of hush hush, we wanted to surprise everyone. But we sent out a petition to all the workers, mums and common folk out in all the surrounding areas of London. Guess how many signatures, Bartimaeus."

I stared at her, a pit of uncomfortable dread growing in my bowels.

"How many?" I asked weakly.

"over 50,000, why don't you look happy?"

I groaned and putmy face in my hands.

"oh dear god, Kitty."

She put her glass down and started looking as worried as she should have been.

"Kitty, tell me where all the magicians are that just so happen to take an immense dislike to the idea of being bossed around by anyone but themselves?"

"Um…in the surrounding area of London?"

"tell me now how they survived the collapse of the government, seeing as they obviously weren't invested in it's maintence and put their money to other uses."

"I dunno, manufacturing and-"

Her face fell and she looked at me aghast. She sank down against her desk.

"Yes, that's right, you just turned an entire workforce against their employers. I don't mean to sound harsh, but you literally just put 50,000 people out of a job."

Suddenly, she got that determined, fierce look I recognized.

"no. no, that's not necessarily a bad thing."

I gave her a skeptical look, to which she got up from the floor and began pacing, waving her hands about in a state of fiery resolution.

"No, this can work. So it's all a bit soon, but how else can we get these magicians to fall? We need numbers on our side and drastic measures have to be taken for a change to take place. I know it means that everyone will be out of a job and the country may face some hard times, but if we don't restart the ecnomy without magicians now, how can we expect to do it later?"

I sighed. "Kitty, theres truth to what you say, but you're not looking for that, I promise. Remember what I said about great uprisings coming and going? Just because something happens quickly doesn't make it permanent. Time and time again-"

'Commoners rise up and restart a democratic government without magicians and they fail, yes, yes, I know. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the right leadership cant lead us away from that."

Her eyes were bright with determination and her aura was pulsing bright blue and purple with excitement.

"time and time again, leaders have been turning the masses against commoners, but that doesn't work. It doesn't work when magicians are against commoners. If theyre all out of jobs, then who's going to work? If no one works, how can the magicians expect to maintain their wealth? We don't have to go after them, even if they go after us. We can choose to offer the olive branch."

"What exactly is the olive branch, Kit-kat?"

Kitty stopped and sighed now.

"Yeah that's the hard part. But If they choose to invest in this new government, it wont prevent them from continuing the practice of magic. It'll just be a more stable investment. Maybe. I don't know, Bartimaeus, I'm no hedge fund advisor. I do know that I have an incredible team working behind me teeming with creativity and between all of us we're bound to come up with a bright idea."

Quite ironically, after Kitty finished her sentence, all the lights went out.

"shit."