Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Jonathan Stroud. I just like messing with his characters.

Authors note: REVIEW!

Chapter 2

We scarpered through the newly blasted doorway (my one) and into a maze of corridors and rooms that all looked as gratingly similar as one another. And they went on forever.

Whatever this thing behind us was it obviously wasn't one for walking around stuff, but the crashes of statues getting blasted to pieces eventually died off after a while. Apparently, the thing was now as lost as we were.

We stopped for a bit when the sounds had completely faded out. Ptolemy slid down a nearby column to sit on the floor, red, sweaty and panting, again*. This room was emptier than the others. There was a large pool in the middle of the floor which told me this had probably been some sort of bathhouse. I threw up some more dim wisp-light's to float around and give us some better vision.

(*Sometimes I really wonder how you lot manage to function, we'd only gone through about twelve rooms, that was just over a mile, tops. I swear you'd think he was dying.)

The summerian stood in the doorway which we'd just walked in through, his muscled back to him, keeping keen watch for signs of incoming danger*

(*imminent danger is probably a better description. The thing chasing us might have had all the cunning and intellect of a common garden slug but if you crash through enough walls you're bound to find something eventually i.e. us.)

"Still don't want to leave Alexandria?" I asked, with a smirk over my shoulder.*

(*you might be thinking I'm being unusually mean to the boy tonight. You also might be wondering why I didn't just carry him through all those rooms. Well, he needed to be taught a lesson. He needed to see how much danger he was in. Trust me, it's got nothing to do with the fact that I think he's being a right stubborn little twat at the moment, really, anger doesn't come into it, the great Bartimaeus is above that sort of pettiness.)

"No…. of…of course not," the egyptian boy replied peevishly, still dying*.

(*soon to be actually dying once this thing found us.)

I turned back to the darkness of the room beyond. It was the worst mistake I could've made. I heard Ptolemy yell, a yell that was quickly muffled by something.

I span round, he wasn't there, nothing was, just my wisp-lights lighting the room with their pale white glow casting shadows on the statues and pillars, making the pool sparkle like cut glass.
Ice went down my spine. I scanned the room on the seventh plane frantically. Nothing.

Then something walked from behind a pillar in the middle of the room. Not something, someone. Someone with all the grace and poise of a bull elephant, and just as pretty.

"Really Bartimaeus, you almost looked like you cared then." Said the djinni in a lofty voice. On the first plane he'd have been swathed in shadow, the wisp light didn't stretch that far, on the seventh though he was revealed in all his glory.

The muscles on the summerians toned shoulders tightened.

"Hello, Faquarl." My voice was ice.

"Nice to see you again, Bartimaeus."*

(*Sarcasm, honestly, the lowest from of wit. Faquarl was as classy and debonaire as ever.)

I sighed, mostly to cover my slip up. "I suppose you've been sent by Rome. I was wondering when my masters cousin would put himself in their pockets, none of the so-called priest's round here would've been able to summon you."

"That comment says far more about you than it does me, I'm sure"*

(*ouch.)

I shrugged."Still a slave though, aren't you? That bid for freedom not going too well?"

I was stalling him, of course. I had to figure out a way out of this. There was an interesting sheen to the pool, it was definitely cursed in some way. It made me wonder what would happen if Faquarl accidentally fell in it.

"I'm disappointed, Bartimaeus." I looked up. "Not even you're normally this slow on the uptake."

"Huh?"

He rolled his eye's."I'm stalling you."

"YOU'RE stalling ME?" I said incredulously. Then the penny dropped.

I suddenly felt numb.

"There's two of you!"

"Ooh, well done."

"Where's Ptolemy!" I snapped, forgetting my affectation of indifference. Faquarl looked genuinely taken aback.

"Honestly Bartimaeus. What are you, close to the boy?" The djinni replied sounding confused and amused at the same time. "Don't turn into Ammet on me will you?"

That was it, time to put my newfound plan into effect. I ran at him, to all intents and purposes it looked like I was attacking. That's what he thought.

Faquarl held up his hand, inferno twirling round his fat Nubian fingers. He threw, I feinted to the left, it went over my shoulder to burn the patch of wall next to the doorway I'd just been standing near.

I ran up the wall. Down the other side behind him, jumping the last bit and landing in a crouch gracefully. He turned. A detonation hit my side and sent me flying forward at an angle, skidding along the floor, almost into the pool on our right. I managed to get up and away just as another one burned the tiles where I'd lay. I ran, moving erratically so Faquarls attacks didn't hit. He lobbed another. I heard it rush past my ear.

Sooner or later my luck was going to run out. I turned, the fat Nubian slave was walking towards me now both hands glowing, casting his contours in an unflatteringly harsh light*

(*if he was painful to look at before, it was nothing on now, trust me.)

I was almost backed against the wall, really hoping he didn't decide to throw those combustions before he'd moved another two steps.

There. Perfectly placed.

I hit a stone that was sticking out of the back wall. It was a rather obvious big circular thing painted bright red. It practically screamed 'press me'.

Another stone grated open, this one to the side of Faquarl. He looked left. A jet of water shot out of the newly formed hole, hitting the djinni straight in the side and, rather conveniently, sending him crashing into the pool where he was sent struggling to the dark depths.

I couldn't spend time revelling in my defeat of Faquarl though*, I had bigger things to worry about, things in the form of a skinny egyptian kid in a tunic and whatever spirit he was currently in the claws of.

(*and that that had actually worked.)

Time to find Ptolemy.