Disclaimer: I do not own the Bartimaeus Trilogy or any of its associated characters or fictional locations.

Instructions: To read the footnotes scroll down to the number indicated at the bottom of this fic. It'll make more sense once you read it, I promise.

The other place is heaven.

There is no doubt about it. That great mass of muddled essence and personality is what makes my life worth living (1). Unfortunately there are always those annoying smelly people who just can't seem to grasp it's beauty and insist on dragging me down to their confusing petty plane of existence (2).

Now this was perhaps the first time since Ptolemy died that I didn't resist a summons. As I felt the familiar hooks in my essence, dragging it down the mortal plane, I actually went quietly (3). Now I usually took either Ptolemy's form or my old favourite gargoyle, but I was feeling nostalgic that 'day' (4) so I fixed my form into another beings and appeared in the mortal realm as the one other human who meant almost as much to me as Ptolemy.

"WHO DARES TO SUMMON ME!?" I began in significantly lower tone than my usual booming voice. "I AM SAKHIR AL JINNI-"

"Oh shut up you pompous ass!" Snapped a voice, cutting me off mid-introduction (5).

"Eh?" I took in my surrounding. I was in a small wooden house, from the scent I was in London again (6). I spotted a small wiry man of about twenty years old in casual street clothes. I (surprise! surprise!) was in a chalk summoning circle drawn into the damp wood, the man was in a protective circle a few meters away. "AND WHO ARE YOU MERE MORTAL TO CHALLENGE THE GREAT-"

"I said SHUT UP!" The man snapped his fingers and a lance of fire suddenly shot up my behind (7). "Dammit you're going to wake up the neighbours!"

I rubbed my sore behind and gave him my best puppy-dog eyes. "How could you do that to a little girl?" (8)

"You're not a little girl, just a fugly demon with an ego to match his stupidity!" (9) Is it just me or have manners become a thing of the past? "Now shut up so I can speak!" (10). "I charge you, Bartimaeus, to tell me all you know about the Reapers!"

Uh-oh, stealing, fine. Moving furniture, fine. Cleaning, not so much (11)but still better than spilling about the people who control life and Death. "Umm, I don't suppose I could interest you in a first hand account of how the walls of Prague were built instead?"

The Magician gave me a death glare that made Mandrake after a four-hour lecture on agriculture look like a trip to the fun fair (12). "You really have quite the masochistic streak Bartimaeus" He raised his hand and prepared to snap his fingers.

"No, no, wait a second!" I shouted desperately. "I'll talk, just din't send another one of those things up there again!" (13)

"Then spill!"

"You spill!"

"I'll make you spill!" He snapped his fingers again.

"Owwee, you really are a bad man!" I said in my sad little girl act when I could move my legs without wincing.

"Yes, yes I'm the scum of the earth. Now tell me abut the reaper's already!" I was about to tell him to do something to himself when I noticed the very large silver pistol sitting on the floor next to him. In my experience telling someone to do what I was about to tell him to do was a very effective method of suicide. "Fine. The spirits who exist on the border of life and Death, Reapers, Shingami whatever you want to call them, they exist to guide human sould onto the next world." (14) "That's all I've got, so can I go now?" I gave him even better version of my puppy dog eyes.

"No!" Snapped Mr Magician. "I do hereby charge you, Bartimaeus, to protects me until such time as I release you!" (15)

"And if I refuse?" I folded my arms. I mean, you can't just give into these people or they'll never respect you!

He picked up his big gun and pulled the trigger, the bullet blasted through my hand and knocked a hole through my hand (16). "Need I continue?"

"Alright alright you've made your point! I'll do alright!" Damn, another master, another undefined period of time in which I will have to repeatedly save his scrawny behind. Is it just me or do these situations gravitate torward me?

1. After all these centuries of being dragged to earth and back like some kind of trans-dimensional Yo-Yo, the other place is the one place that I actually enjoy spending my existence.

2. Magicians, for the slower ones among you my adoring readers.

3. As opposed to making my usual ruckus which informed every other spirit nearby exactly what I thought about my situation in highly inventive terms.

4. There aren't exactly any real measurements of time in the other place

5. Excuse, I'm not pompous. So what if I take pride in my history, I have a lot to be proud of. I built the walls of Prague you know!

6. Oh joy. And the smell wasn't exactly roses either, more like a combination of excrement and sweat. I was obviously near the Thames.

7. That HURT. Why is it all magicians have an obsession with driving various things into me, eg, swords, bullets, various appendages (no not those, my goodness you people have such perverse imagination these days) the list goes on.

8. Let me guess, you people thought I was impersonating a certain seventeen year old Magician with a bad taste in hair styles, right? Nope, no matter what he may have done in the end he still spent years dragging my poor essence from one end of Europe to the other. Mind you, he went out with one hell of bang (I was feeling the vibrations from the other place), I'll give him that. No, I was impersonating a certain black haired revolutionary before she went to the other place. Look I don't feel like going over it all again, if you want to find out go and read my trilogy.

9. Ouch.

10. If I didn't know better I would say he was having a hell of a period.

11. You wouldn't believe how bad the combination of summoning incense that clings to any magician of real power and last night's curry is while you're trying to unblock the toilet.

12. That's a whole new level of nasty all on its own.

13. Perhaps the lowest point in my five-thousand year career. Right down there with stripping for Caesar's guests and hiding in a Magician back in Peru, I'm not saying where. Ever.

14. Wow, I sounded so smart didn't I?

15. All very dramatic, complete with windswept clothes because of the drafts.

16. Well technically it was Kitty's hand but you get the point. Oh and one more tinsey little edetail. THAT HURT!