Ptolemy's Gate

word and let me go."
    "I'm going to. But I do think you might stay and talk a little more. What Ptolemy did doesn't have to be unique. Maybe it's just that no one since knows much about this Gate thing."
    The boy laughed shortly. "Oh, they know, all right. Ptolemy wrote about his journey; some of his notes survived. Like you, he talked a lot of nonsense about a truce between magicians and djinn. He hoped others would follow his example, take the same risk he did. And over the years a few did try, more out of greed and the lust for power than with his idealism. It didn't go well for them."
    "Why not?"
    No answer came; the boy looked away.
    "All right, say nothing," she cried. "I don't care. I'll read Ptolemy's notes for myself."
    "Oh, you understand ancient Greek, do you?" He laughed at the expression on her face. "Just don't worry about it, Kitty. Ptolemy's long gone, and the modern world is dark and complicated. You can't make a difference. Look after yourself and survive. That's what I do." He prodded at his flesh. "Or try to. Mandrake very nearly had me killed just now."
    Kitty took a deep breath. Downstairs, in some book-filled corner of his decaying villa, Mr. Button slept; next morning he would expect her bright and early to begin the collation of new papers. In the evening she would be at The Frog once more, helping to repair the bar, serving out drinks to passive commoners. . . Without her secret plan to drive her, these prospects seemed wearisome indeed.
    "I don't need your advice," she said harshly. "I don't need anything from you."
    The boy looked up. "Well, I'm sorry if I've deflated you a bit," he said, "but those things needed saying. I suggest—"
    Kitty closed her eyes and spoke the command. It was tentative at first, then very quick—she felt a sudden violence in her: she wanted to get rid of him, be done with it.
    Air moved around her face, candle smoke filled her nostrils, the demon's voice receded into nothing. She did not need to look to know that he had vanished, and with him three whole years of her hopes and dreams.

16

    Halfway home from the house of Quentin Makepeace John Mandrake gave an abrupt command. His chauffeur listened, saluted, and did a U-turn in heavy traffic. They drove to Chiswick at top speed.
    Night had fallen. The windows of the Frog Inn were dark and shuttered, the door was barred. A rough, handwritten sign had been posted in the porch.

SAM WEBBER'S FUNERAL TAKES PLACE TODAY
WE ARE CLOSED
REOPENING TOMORROW

Mandrake knocked repeatedly, but drew no response. The wind gusted along the drab, gray Thames; on the shingle seagulls fought over scraps deposited by the tide. A red vigilance sphere in the courtyard pulsed as he departed. Mandrake scowled at it, and returned to central London.
    The matter of Kitty Jones could wait. That of Bartimaeus, however, could not.
    All demons lied: this was an incontrovertible fact. So, in truth, Mandrake shoul d not have been particularly startled that his slave conformed to type. But when he learned that Bartimaeus had concealed the survival of Kitty Jones, the shock affected him profoundly.
    Why? In part because of the image he had built up of the long-dead Kitty. For years her face had drifted in his memory, spotlit by a guilty fascination. She had been his mortal enemy, yet she had sacrificed herself for him; it was a gesture that Mandrake could scarcely comprehend, but its strangeness, together with her youth, her vigor, and the fierce defiance in her eyes, had taken on a bittersweet allure that never failed to pierce him. The dangerous Resistance fighter he had hunted down so long before had, in the quiet, secret places of his mind, become something pure and personal, a beautiful rebuke, a symbol, a regret. . .Many things, in fact—all far removed from the original living, breathing girl.
    But if she lived. . . ? Mandrake felt a surge of pain. It was the sensation caused by the destruction of this peaceful inner shrine, by a sudden rush of confusion and renewed memories of the actual, messy past; by waves of anger and disbelief. Kitty Jones was no longer a private image in his head—the world had reclaimed her. He felt almost bereaved.
    And Bartimaeus had lied to him. Why had he done so? To spite him, certainly—but this did not seem quite enough. Well then—to protect Kitty. But that presupposed a closeness between girl and djinni, some kind of bond. Could this be so? Mandrake felt a jealous knowledge in the pit of his stomach