Well, I said Friday, but I finished editing earlier than I thought I would (will wonders never cease?) and waiting a day to update seemed pointless. Hope you enjoy it, leave a word if you feel so inclined.

Accepting Irony

Chapter 7

"About bloody time!" Bartimaeus roared as soon as he materialized in the pentacle opposite Mandrake's. He was in the form of a very disheveled falcon, and Kitty noted, concern spiking, that clumps of feathers and flesh had been torn out of his back.

"You look terrible," Mandrake observed, forehead creasing.

"As would you, if you'd been leading a crazed afrit in a mad chase around London and trying not to get killed for the better part of an hour, waiting for your git of a master to stop torturing his helpless prisoners long enough to wonder where his djinni's got to!"

"He didn't torture them, actually," Kitty blurted out, although it was hardly relevant. Bartimaeus didn't look particularly cheered by this information.

"Oh, well, great, that just makes it all worthwhile," he said sarcastically. "Don't know what I'm complaining for, now that I know that."

"What happened?" Nathaniel asked. "Apparently there's been all kinds of damage done – I was called out of the Tower and I've been hearing about it since we got back to Whitehall."

"Turns out Honorius remembers me, too, and not too fondly," Bartimaeus said grimly, folding his wings with a wince. "I was minding my own business when he came up out of nowhere and attacked. And since I have a charge to carry out," he glanced at Kitty, who felt a stab of guilt, "I led him as far away from the Tower as I could so he wouldn't catch you as you left."

Kitty exhaled loudly, closing her eyes.

"Thanks, Bartimaeus."

"Oh, stop sucking up," he grumbled, but looked very slightly mollified. He proceeded to describe his encounter with Honorius and the subsequent chase. Kitty felt her eyes widening throughout, and must have looked positively bug-eyed by the time the djinni had finished.

"…And if I hadn't been able to leave with a parting shot, I'd smash your head right in," Bartimaeus concluded with a heated glare at Mandrake, his ruffled feathers a testament to his indignation. Mandrake, for his part, looked grim.

"This is worse than I thought," he told Kitty. "I was under the impression that Bartimaeus would give Honorius more of a fight. The next time the afrit comes after you," he went on, ignoring the djinni's splutters of outrage, "we might not be so lucky."

"What should we do, then?" Kitty asked anxiously. "Do you think you should summon another–"

Mandrake shook his head before she could finish.

"I'm already overseeing a number of other djinn," he explained. "I can't take on too many or I'll start losing track. It's too dangerous."

"But we can't just keep pitting Bartimaeus against Honorius if he isn't strong enough to fight him," Kitty protested.

"I'm still here," Bartimaeus said loudly. "You could ask for my opinion about my own involvement any time you like."

Mandrake turned to the djinni, which had taken on the form of a cat and was tending to its wounds, with exaggerated courtesy.

"All right, then, Bartimaeus," he acquiesced, "what do you think?"

"I think you should stop thinking about this in terms of holding the undead nutcase at bay and start thinking about how to destroy it."

"He's already dead," Kitty reminded Bartimaeus, who glanced at her irritably.

"Thanks, I'd forgotten that part."

"I'm just saying," Kitty retorted, slightly stung by the djinni's sarcasm, "that destroying Honorius isn't an option, since he has, in fact, already been destroyed."

"I wasn't talking about killing him twice," Bartimaeus explained. "I have an idea."

"Do tell," Mandrake muttered dubiously.

"I will if you can keep your mouth shut for five seconds," the djinni shot back. "All right. Now I know this is a sore subject for you," here he threw a pointed look at Kitty, "but I don't think a soul can last on Earth for too long without running out of juice. I know you don't pay attention to much besides your clothes, Mandrake, but if you did you might've noticed that Kitty's looking a bit pale even for a specter."

"I am not–" Kitty began indignantly, but Mandrake was peering at her curiously. Judging by his suddenly worried expression, he agreed with Bartimaeus.

"I'm fine," Kitty said, her voice louder than necessary. "Look at me, I feel great."

She twirled around on the spot to emphasize this, but Mandrake was shaking his head.

"You're not floating anymore," he pointed out, his forehead wrinkling. "Kitty, I think Bartimaeus is right."

"Damn straight," the djinni affirmed. "So my point is that if Kitty's using up her spiritual battery, then so is Honorius. It's only a matter of time before his runs out, especially if he keeps trying to attack her."

"And once his energy's used up," Mandrake said thoughtfully, "he'll…do what, exactly?"

Bartimaeus shrugged his feline shoulders, then looked like he regretted it; the action must have aggravated his injuries.

"Buggered if I know," he said, his nonchalant tone offset by the fact that he was speaking through gritted teeth. "Bloody hell, my essence aches…"

Kitty opened her mouth to voice her concern, but Mandrake beat her to it.

"Then I'll dismiss you for a while, Bartimaeus, since we're going back to the Tower and you won't be allowed in anyway, but I'll have to call on you again before I leave work for the day."

Bartimaeus flicked his tail pensively.

"All right then, it's better than nothing."

Mandrake uttered a brief incantation and the djinni vanished. Kitty followed the magician out of the pentacle, trying to work up the energy to float as she once had. She managed to hover a bit in between steps, giving the impression that she was walking on the moon, but couldn't stay in the air for more than a second or two at a time. The realization was decidedly depressing. Even the sight of Mandrake's spectral trail, the condition of which had improved slightly due to his compassionate dismissal of Bartimaeus, couldn't shake her sudden gloom.

"Well," the magician said once they were in the privacy of his office, "now that that's taken care of, we need to get back to the Tower so I can finish questioning the prisoners. You'll be happy to know that their cells are completely devoid of any instruments of torture."

He gave her a small smile, which she returned weakly. She wondered vaguely if he could feel the positive change in his spectral trail; it seemed that every time its color shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum, his mood improved accordingly. Mandrake didn't seem to notice her lack of enthusiasm, preoccupied as he was with arranging for a small demon guard to accompany them to the Tower. She stared at her hands, noting that, as Bartimaeus had said, they looked even less substantial than usual.

She wasn't stupid; she didn't have to see the signs of her decline to figure out what her increasing exhaustion meant. That didn't keep her from desperately clinging onto the hope that Bartimaeus was somehow mistaken.

"All right," Mandrake said briskly, setting down the receiver and getting to his feet. "Two djinn will accompany us to the Tower, which should be enough to hold Honorius off if he comes after you."

"I thought Bartimaeus said we should be thinking in terms of defeating him, not delaying him," Kitty reminded him dully. Mandrake rolled his eyes.

"Bartimaeus can be an idiot."

"He's right, though, isn't he?" Kitty asked once they were settled in the back of Mandrake's car. The promised djinn were circling overhead, heads swiveling from side to side as they scanned the planes for Honorius. "I'm…fading."

Mandrake glanced at her, then away.

"Maybe a bit, but what do we know? You could just be worn out; it's been a tense few days."

Without realizing it, he was more or less mirroring her earlier argument with Bartimaeus. Kitty shook her head.

"It's not just that. I'm losing control of my powers – I can't even float properly anymore, I was trying earlier."

Mandrake frowned and opened his mouth, but Kitty kept going before he could object.

"I keep thinking about the way I came back to Earth, through that barrier in the tunnel wall. It's like I can feel it, the separation between life and death. It's getting easier to sense every minute."

In fact, it was almost as if the tunnel was calling her. She felt a sensation that reminded her of a magnet pulling a distant piece of metal towards it, inch by inch. And the closer the metal got to the magnet, the faster it moved. How long until she was simply sucked back into the tunnel? Would she be able to finish changing Mandrake in time?

The unfairness of the situation was unbelievable. It would be one thing if she had the rest of Mandrake's life to turn him around, but instead her time limit was more like a week. Surely whoever was running things in the afterlife knew that people didn't change in a matter of days!

And yet here she was, the ties binding her to Earth loosening slowly but surely. She would never admit it to Mandrake, and definitely not to Bartimaeus, but she was afraid. The glimpse of the entrance to hell had been enough to terrify her; the memory of silver prongs ripping desperate souls off the tunnel wall, reflecting the fiery inferno at the core of the underworld, made her ghostly skin crawl.

She felt Mandrake's cautious concern – for a while she had been able to block out others' emotions, but she had lost that ability along with floating – rippling out to her in small, pale waves. She stared him down.

"Stop looking at me like that; I'm still here, aren't I?" she demanded roughly.

"For how much longer?" he wondered aloud, although he averted his gaze. She continued to stare at him as he looked out the window, reflecting mournfully that he was at least on his way to becoming a decent human being. If she'd only been given a little more time, she knew she would have been able to succeed. She bit her lip to hold in her disappointed sigh.

"So I can't look at you, but you can stare until your eyes drop out of your head, is that it?" Mandrake inquired archly, and Kitty's mouth fell open as she realized he'd been watching her reflection in the tinted window the entire time.

"I was just thinking it's a shame you're still at least forty-percent bastard," she snapped, grateful once again that her face couldn't redden and betray her embarrassment.

"I suppose that accounts for your stricken look," he said thoughtfully. He didn't seem at all affected by her harsh comment; in fact, he sounded amused.

"You are not enjoying this," she said dangerously. He snorted.

"If you can't float, I think it's safe to say hypnosis is out as well."

"You cretin!" she yelled. "Do you work at being that insensitive? I tell you I'm getting weaker by the second, which means I could be sucked into hell at any moment, and you're mocking me!"

Mandrake raised his eyebrows, looking determinedly straight ahead.

"Your volume hasn't been affected, at any rate. Thank God for small mercies."

Kitty gritted her teeth, for a moment too overcome with fury to speak. She was silent for several seconds, hands clenched into fists, concentrating on not bashing Mandrake's head in with all of her remaining strength. When she had recovered enough to think of things that didn't involve the magician's grisly demise, she turned to look at him. He no longer looked as though he found the situation funny; he was frowning, unwanted concern working its way back into his expression.

"Are you having an emotional spasm?" Kitty demanded scathingly. The young magician sighed, running his hand through his well-oiled hair.

"No. I'm just wrong."

"You bet you are, buster." She hesitated. "Wrong about what in particular?"

"I thought that if I provoked you enough – which is disturbingly easy, by the way – you'd start levitating again. You always did before, when you were worked up. If you had, then it would have been safe to assume that you were only worn out, not losing control of your abilities."

Kitty glanced down at herself as if to confirm that she was, unfortunately, still sitting on the leather seat.

"But you didn't," Mandrake continued, his expression darkening, "so it seems that Bartimaeus really is correct, loathe as I am to admit it."

Kitty's heart sank even though she had already resigned herself to this reality.

"What're we going to do?" she asked softly, staring at her fingers, which were twisted together in her lap. "It doesn't feel like I have much longer…and like I said, you're still at least part bastard," she added wryly, quirking an eyebrow at Mandrake.

"The attempt should count for something," he muttered, looking away. "People don't change in a matter of days."

Kitty blinked, startled to hear her exact thoughts spoken in Mandrake's voice.

"Well," she said, trying and failing to sound casual, "looks like death's not fair, either."

-

If you've ever dropped utterly exhausted into bed and gone to sleep, only to be woken by a screeching alarm what feels like seconds later, you have a fraction of the idea of what it feels like to return to the Other Place only to be yanked back before you can even settle in properly. My reluctant return to Earth might have been the tiniest bit more bearable if I'd been greeted with any kind of enthusiasm, but instead the two faces staring out at me from the opposite pentacle were eerily reminiscent of the Tragedy mask.

"I'm so happy to see you, too!" I exclaimed sarcastically.

"You were right," Nat said dismally, glancing at Kitty and then at the carefully painted runes on the floor. "Kitty's running out of time."

Well, no surprises there, but still…

"Funny, I thought we'd already established that. I seem to recall a long, overly simplified explanation on my part, and dawning comprehension and agreement on yours."

"You could have been wrong," Nat points out without much conviction. I scoffed.

"Right. When has that ever happened?"

"You've had your moments, but that's not the point," the kid said sharply. "We need to figure out a way to keep her out of hell, since I doubt she'll last long enough to finish her job here."

"You can't stop being a prat and make the job a little easier on her? I'm appalled."

"I've made progress," he snapped defensively, looking at Kitty for support. She squinted at him and nodded.

"Still mostly purple. It helped that you were civil to those workers just now."

I'd forgotten that Nat still had to wring information out of his prisoners.

"Huh, gathering information without torture. Groundbreaking. Find out anything interesting?"

Nat waved a hand impatiently.

"Someone's going around adding fuel to the fire, somehow procuring magical weapons and passing them along to protestors. No one seems to know anything about him, though – I've been asking questions for hours and all I have is a very vague description."

"Interesting," I remarked thoughtfully. "It has a magician-like stink about it: this mystery person lurks in the shadows and lets other people do their dirty work for them."

"There's always the possibility it's a traitor," Nat admitted. "It would explain how they managed to take the weapons in the first place – they're protected by all sorts of enchantments, naturally. Unfortunately, the description of the person giving out the weapons doesn't match up with anyone in Whitehall."

"Could be a Glamour," I suggested.

"Could be Nick Drew," Kitty said suddenly, and both of our heads swiveled toward her. She had the wide-eyed look of one who's just figured out something that should have been completely obvious to begin with.

"It fits," she continued excitedly. "Nick's blonde, he's big – just like the workers said. And he has access to weapons and knows how to activate most of them."

Nat's expression was caught somewhere between triumph and doubt.

"Where could he find weapons?" he asked, and Kitty gives him an impatient look.

"In the cellar, remember? Where we were keeping the Staff."

A dark look passed over her face and she glanced away. Apparently this memory, which took place the night she had died, had reminded her of her current, unpleasant situation. Typically, my master didn't seem to pick up on her sudden change in mood, instead informing Kitty that the cellar had been cleared out by a team of police soon after the incident.

"But that doesn't mean it can't be him," he babbles on. "That was brilliant, Kitty – he was an old Resistance member, wasn't he? The only other one who escaped Gladstone's tomb?"

"Yes, he was," Kitty answered softly, and Nat froze, realizing that he had blundered right into sensitive territory.

"I'm sorry," he said immediately. "I shouldn't have–"

"It's okay," she replied just as quickly.

"No, really, I–"

"Ahem."

Both of them looked over at me with slightly indignant expressions. I rolled my eyes.

"Hate to ruin this touching moment, but wasn't there a problem we were supposed to be working on?"

"Before you got us off-track? Yes, there was," Nat mutters, flicking his wrists to straighten out the arms of his suit jacket; apparently his old, preening habits persisted despite Kitty's claims of improvement.

"How to make a ghost live longer…" I mused aloud, tapping a finger against my chin speculatively.

-

"How is it," Satan asked softly, ignoring the writhing and screaming of the archdemon at his feet, "that a single soul is proving so troublesome to capture? You have her location on Earth. You have the one soul determined to tear the girl and the sorry creature defending her to tiny shreds hunting her down. Why all the bungling?"

He eased Balmung's torment just enough so that his servant could answer.

"I…don't understand it either…Your Darkness," Balmung gasped. This was, apparently, the wrong answer – the archdemon howled in agony as a new wave of pain washed over him.

"You're useless," he hissed. "Unable to accomplish even the simplest of tasks."

"It's Honorius!" Balmung screamed, his form no longer concrete but twisting, boiling smoke. "He's the one who keeps fouling it up! Please, no more!"

Satan laughed maliciously and increased his torturous hold on Balmung's soul. Passing off blame was so amateurish, honestly – look what it had done to Adam and Eve.

"Call Honorius back," Satan instructed calmly over Balmung's sobs and pleas, "and give him new instructions. If the girl can't be dragged back directly, we'll have to try something different, make her come to us."

He smiled cruelly.

"Tell Honorius to kill the boy."

All recognizable characters and settings belong to Jonathan Stroud.