Chapter 31

Kitty

Thanks to her resilience and the weakness of the Compression, Kitty survived the demon's attack. But she blacked out. The last thing she saw was Ptolemy's fearful eyes. Their eyes had locked for what seemed like an eternity. Then she blacked out.

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Hearing was the first sense to come back. She heard something, a voice. It was foreign to her. "Shut up you bitch! Stop your whining!"

Wait, that voice was familiar. But where had she heard it before….?

"Please, let us go! Please!" Kitty tried to move, but her conscious level wasn't that high yet.

Thought and recognition came back to her next. She recognized the pleading voice as her mother. Her thoughts were hard to hear between the pounding of her blood in her ears and the terrible, painful ringing. She couldn't tell which was worse. Her sense of touch was still disoriented.

But then it started to return.

She felt horrible.

No, wait, it was worse then that.

She felt as though she had been raped, in labor, constipated with a stomach virus, and had her head beaten in a couple of times. All at once.

Next to come was her eyesight. When she opened her eyes, she was able to make out fuzzy shapes. It was like looking underwater. And her eyes stung as if chlorine had hit them. But slowly, surely, her vision cleared.

Everything was dark and it was hard to see clearly. Her hearing was the keenest sense she had. She could hear someone—a tall, heavily built man presumably—walking behind her. The man picked her up from her armpits and roughly shoved her onto her feet.

"Summon your demon," He instructed her.

"What?" Speech came back. "I'm a—"

"I know you have a demon at your disposal. Now, summon it or your little friends here will die. Which do you prefer?" Kitty knew she had heard that voice before. She used to hear it everyday…

She dismissed the thoughts and looked below herself. She was standing within a pentacle. Everything was ready for her. Reluctantly, she began the incantations.

Bartimaeus appeared in a few moments later in Ptolemy's form. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again when he got a better look at the settings. His eyes squinted and darted from left to right, searching for something. His brow furrowed, a suspicious look grew on his face. He wasn't moving at all, with the exception of his eyes. He was hardly breathing—if djinn breathe at all.

When his eyes met the man who had captured Kitty, he transfixed on him. Studying him, remembering, perhaps thinking. Everyone was silent for what seemed to Kitty like an eternity.

The man broke the silence. "Bartimaeus, good to see you. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"I thought you were dead." Bartimaeus spoke for the first time. He answered without emotion, as though he didn't care.

"Now, do we really have to start on said terms? Oh, alright. No, I'm not dead, as you can clearly see. I'm one hundred percent free."

"Here we go again," Bartimaeus replied as he rolled his eyes, folded his arms.

"You're just a skeptic. You've always been. You've never listened to my logic."

"Because I'm tired of it! Listening to djinn like you…" That's where Kitty lost interest. The 'person' Bartimaeus was talking to was a djinni. That means someone commissioned him and was controlling him. But who? Farrar was the only one Kitty could think of, and she was now off the suspect list. So, who could it be? "It makes me sick!" Bartimaeus retorted. "All you ever talk about is getting revenge on humans. Don't get me wrong—I love getting revenge—but you! All you do is rant on and on about how free you are and how your logic works. It's utterly repulsing!"

"Bartimaeus, all your years in perpetual servitude has corrupted your system. You've changed over the years."

"As does everyone," was Bartimaeus' simple respond. After a while, he continued. "Alright," he sighed. "how are you free this time?"

"Glad you asked. I was summoned normally by a normal magician, but she wasn't as she turned out to be. I wasn't bonded to her. I soon learned that I didn't have to take her orders. Yes, I'm stuck here on Earth, but there's no pain of being here. I can change my shape as much as I want, all with no pain."

"You've gone mad!" Bartimaeus threw his hands down. "I thought you were bad before, but this takes the cake!"

Kitty broke in between them. She spoke to Bartimaeus. "Figure that out all on your own, did ya?" Everyone fell silent.

But then, Bartimaeus' eyes widened. He looked around frantically. "Where's Ptolemy?"

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A/n

I am on a roll! Where's Ptolemy? Read on.