Chapter 51

Bartimaeus

Well, I'd found every magician under the sun in Mr. Button's estate, but Ptolemy. Why wasn't he here? I know Kitty tried taking the books with him in it, but she couldn't have taken them all. But what really surprised me was the fact that Nathaniel was mentioned in a few books. He even had his own biography! I sneered in disgust whenever I saw one of those, riped the pages out, and scattered them all over with a happy grin.(1) But out of all the books here, none of them had even the slightest mention of Ptolemy.

Sighing, I sat down at a nearby table and began thumbing through a book that was there. King Urchalis Fin, it said. Never heard of him. Must've been some low-level king nobody liked. Hmm, born in 1803 in Finland. Oh boy, how interesting. Reguardless of how interesting it was, I skimmed it(2) and looked at the pictures. Not the most interesting book I've ever read, but it gave me something to do.

It was hours before I felt the tugging on my essence. It was very weak at first, like the person calling me was sying, but then they were strengthened somehow and I couldn't shake it off then(3). Sighing, I dropped the book and gave in to the summons.

A moment later, I was there in my pentacle, but Kitty and Ptolemy weren't. They were scuffling around the observatory of Farrar's estate, collecting things they had scattered and putting them in bags. I watched them for a moment, until Kitty said to me, "We're leaving."

"What about Farrar?"(4)

"Dead," she answered with a grimace.

"Suicide." Ptolemy put in, with the same grimace. Why did they care so much? I decided it was best not to ask.

"Where are we going?"

"Egypt," Ptolemy answered again. And this time, there was the slightest grin on his face.

"Egypt?" I repeated, my mouth cracking in a smile. I'd never been able to go back to Egypt since Ptolemy died, but now I had the chance to go back! Words could not describe the joy I felt just then.

"Yes, Egypt." Kitty answered. She seemed irritable, but I tried to act like I didn't notice. "We've nowhere else to go."

"Yes!" I shouted at the top of my lungs as I began jumping up and down. "Woohohoho!" I ran over to Ptolemy(5) and began jumping around again. Ptolemy picked up on my cheerfulness quickly. Soon, both of us were cheerful and hapy. But our cheerful mood quickly dissipated when we saw Kitty's solem face.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"Farrar's dead," she mumbled under her breath. "Our last hope."

"That's not true," Ptolemy told her. "Egypt is out last hope."

"What about my parents?"

Ptolemy opened his mouth to answer, but I interrupted him before he said anything.(6) "We'll bring them."

"Really?"

"Ues. We'll go back to their house and ask them if they wanna come." Kitty seemed to brighten then, and came over to the two of us.

"Wooohoo!" She said hapilly as she began to jump up and down, grabbing one of my hands and one of Ptolemy's. Soon, the three of us were happy and celebrating.

(1) Demented, I know. You should try it, it's fun.

(2) Djinn can read faster then any human. So skimming for us is like looking at the page without reading any of the words for you.

(3) Just thought I'd clear this up for you: I could shake off the summons when I first felt them, because they were so weak.

(4) When you're a djinni, you get used to moving around a lot.

(5) They had set up the pentacle so both of us could move around. There were designs for it, it had been thought of before and written down, but no other magician besides Kitty and Ptolemy would ever trust a djinni like that.

(6) Seeing as he didn't really know his parents, because they had both died when he was young, he probably would've said something that would've offended Kitty without realizing it, and she was a disaster already.

A/n

They're going to Egypt!!! Here's a shout out for Solarengo, The known author, AngelicMermaid1994, and Cryptic Sarcasm. All those ideas are wonderful, and I think I'm going to use them. I'll have to incorperate my own ideas and stuff, and that would just make it better! Next chapter is Kitty, but I'm not done with it yet, so you'll have to wait a while!