Ptolemy's Gate

your toy."
    "Stung?" Nathaniel croaked. "It'll wipe him out."
    "Do you really think so?" The voice was tired and amused.
    "Nouda is greater than you can guess. He is ravenous for energy; he absorbs it like a sponge. See how he grows already! He would welcome your attack and feed off it. I would have let you try it, but I am tired of unnecessary disruptions. However, in a moment I shall take the Staff for my own use." He raised a languid hand. "So then, farewell."
    Nathaniel opened his mouth to scream. I hijacked it for a better purpose. "Hello, Faquarl."
    The hand started; its baleful energies remained unreleased. Behind Hopkins's eyes, twin points of bright blue light flared in wonder and confusion. "Bartimaeus. . . ?"
    "Little me."
    "How—how. . . ?" Here was a thing. For the first time in three dozen centuries Faquarl's impregnable assurance was shaken by my arrival. He was at a loss for words. "How can this be? Is this a trick. . . some voice projection. . . an illusion. . . ?"
    "Nope. It's me in here."
    "It can't be."
    "Who else would know the truth about the death of Genghis? Those little poisoned grapes we slipped into his tent under the noses of his djinn. . . ?"[7]

[7] I won't go into this. It was just a little Asian job, a long while back.

Faquarl blinked; he hesitated. "So. . . It is you."
    "My turn to deal out the surprise, old friend. And I might just mention that while you and Nouda play around in there, most of your army has already been killed. By me."
    As I spoke, I felt Nathaniel squirming. He didn't like lying helpless on the ground—a natural instinct of self-preservation made him desperate to get up. I quelled him with a single thought: Wait.
    "Ah, you traitor . . ." Faquarl had been in Hopkins's body for a long time; he licked his lips just as a human might. "I care nothing for that loss—the world is crammed with humans, and there are spirits enough to fill them all. But as for you ... To murder your own kind, to defend your old oppressors. . . No, it sickens my essence to think of it!" His hands were clenched; his voice was high with emotion. "We have fought each other many times, Bartimaeus, but always because of chance, because of our masters' whims. And now, when we are the masters at last, and should celebrate together, now you choose to carry out this rank betrayal! You, Sakhr al-Jinni himself! How can you justify your actions?"
    "Me, the traitor?" To begin with, I had just been keeping him talking, waiting till our strength recovered from our fall, but now I was too incensed to think. My voice rose to the old wendigo roar that echoed through the pinewoods and kept the tribes cowering in their teepees. "You're the one who's turned his back forever on the Other Place! How much more of a traitor can you be—to desert your home, to encourage fellow spirits to abandon it forever by becoming squatters in these bags of bones? And for what? What do you get from this benighted wasteland?"
    "Vengeance," Faquarl whispered. "Vengeance is our master here. It keeps us in this world. It gives us purpose."
    " 'Purpose' is a human concept," I said quietly. "We never needed that before. This body of yours isn't just a disguise anymore, is it? It isn't just a barrier against pain. It's what you're busily becoming."
    The fire behind the eyes flared indignantly, then dwindled suddenly, grew dull. "Perhaps so, Bartimaeus, perhaps so . . ." The voice was soft and wistful; the hands patted the front of
    the rumpled suit. "Between ourselves, I will admit to feeling a certain discomfort in this body that I had not anticipated. It is not like the old sharp pain we have long withstood; rather, it's a dull itch that nags at me, a hollowness inside that no amount of slaughter can quite ease. So far, at any rate." He gave a rueful grin. "I intend to keep trying."
    "That hollowness," I said. "It's what you've lost. The tie to the Other Place."
    Faquarl gazed at me. For a moment he did not speak. "If that is true," he said heavily, "then you have lost it too. You are just as much a squatter as I, Bartimaeus, cooped up in that young magician of yours. Why did you do it, if you despise the notion as you claim?"
    "Because I have a way out," I said. "I haven't burned my bridges."
    The blazing eyes narrowed in puzzlement. "How so?"
    "The magician summoned me in. The magician can dismiss me."
    "But his brain—"
    "Is whole. I share it with him. Which is tough, admittedly. There's not much to go round."
    Nathaniel spoke