"P—place it in the vessel."

A small soapstone bowl sat on the floor midway between the outermost arcs of the two circles. I removed the Amulet and with a certain amount of inner relief tossed it casually into the bowl. The boy bent toward it. Out of the corner of my eyes I watched him closely—if one foot, one finger, fell outside his circle, I would be on him faster than a praying mantis.

But the kid was wise to this. He produced a stick from the pocket of his tatty coat. Jammed into the tip was a hooked piece of wire that looked suspiciously like a twisted paperclip. With a couple of cautious prods and jerks he caught the lip of the bowl with the hook and drew it into his circle. Then he picked up the Amulet's chain, wrinkling his nose as he did so.

"Euch, this is disgusting!"

"Nothing to do with me. Blame Rotherhithe Sewage Works. No, on second thought, blame yourself. I've spent the whole night trying to evade capture on your account. You're lucky I didn't immerse myself completely."

"You were pursued?" He sounded almost eager. Wrong emotion, kid—try fear.

"By half the demonic hordes of London." I rolled my stony eyes and clashed my horny beak. "Make no mistake about it, boy, they are coming here, yellow—eyed and ravening, ready to seize you. You will be helpless, defenseless against their power. You have one chance only; release me from this circle and I will help you evade their clutches."[25]

"Do you take me for a fool?"

"The amulet in your hands answers that. Well, no matter. I have carried out my charge, my task is done. For the remainder of your short life, farewell!" My form shimmered, began to fade. A rippling pillar of steam issued up from the floor as if to swallow me and spirit me away. It was wishful thinking—Adelbrand's Pentacle would see to that.

"You cannot depart! I have other work for thee." More than the renewed captivity, it was these occasional archaisms that annoyed me so much. Thee, recreant demon—I ask you! No one used language like that anymore, and hadn't for two hundred years. Anyone would think he had learned his trade entirely out of some old book.

But extraneous thees or not, he was quite right. Most ordinary pentacles bind you to one service only. Carry it out, and you are free to go. If the magician requires you again, he must repeat the whole draining rigmarole of summoning from the beginning. But Adelbrand's Pentacle countermanded this: its extra lines and incantations double locked the door and forced you to remain for further orders. It was a complex magical formula that required adult stamina and concentration, and this gave me ammunition for my next attack.

I allowed the steam to ebb away. "So where is he, then?"

The boy was busy turning the Amulet over and over in his pale hands. He looked up absently. "Where is who?"

"The boss, your master, the éminence grise, the power behind the throne. The man who has put you up to this little theft, who's told you what to say and what to draw. The man who'll still be standing unharmed in the shadows when Lovelace's djinn are tossing your ragged corpse around the London rooftops. He's playing some game that you know nothing of, appealing to your ignorance and youthful vanity."

That stung him. His lips curled back a little.

"What did he say to you, I wonder?" I adopted a patronizing singsong voice: " 'Well done, young fellow, you're the best little magician I've seen in a long while. Tell me, would you like to raise a powerful djinni? You would? Well, why don't we do just that! We can play a prank on someone too—steal an amulet—"

The boy laughed. Unexpected that. I was anticipating a furious outburst or some anxiety. But no, he laughed.

He turned the Amulet over a final time, then bent and replaced it in the pot. Also unexpected. Using the stick with the hook, he pushed the pot back through the circle to its original position on the floor.

"What are you doing?"

"Giving it back."

"I don't want it."

"Pick it up."

I wasn't about to get into a prissy exchange of insults with a twelve—year old, particularly one who could impose his will on me, so I reached out through my circle and hefted the Amulet.

"Now, what? When Simon Lovelace comes I won't be hanging on to this, you know. I'll be giving it right back to him with a smile and a wave. And pointing out which curtain you're shivering behind."

"Wait."

The kid produced something shiny from one of the inner pockets of his voluminous coat. Did I mention that this coat was about three sizes too big for him? It had evidently once belonged to a very careless magician, since, although heavily patched, it still displayed the unmistakable ravages of fire, blood, and talon. I wished the boy similar fortune.

Now he was holding in his left hand a burnished disc—a scrying glass of highly polished bronze. He passed his right hand over it a few times and began to gaze into the reflective metal with passive concentration. Whatever captive imp dwelled within, the disc soon responded. A murky picture formed; the boy observed it closely. I was too far off to see the image, but while he was distracted I did a bit of looking of my own.

His room… I wanted a clue to his identity. Some letter addressed to him, perhaps, or a name tag in his coat. Both of those had worked before. I wasn't after his birth name, of course—that would be too much to hope for—but his official name would do for a start.[26] But I was out of luck. The most private, intimate, telltale place in the room—his desk—had been carefully covered with a thick black cloth. A wardrobe in the corner was shut; ditto a chest of drawers. There was a cracked glass vase with fresh flowers among the mess of candles—an odd touch, this. He hadn't put it there himself, I reckoned; so somebody liked him.

The kid waved his hand over the scrying glass and the surface went dull. He replaced the disc in his pocket, then looked up at me suddenly. Uh—oh. Here it came.

"Bartimaeus," he began, "I charge you to take the Amulet of Samarkand and hide it in the magical repository of the magician Arthur Underwood, concealing it so that he cannot observe it, and achieving this so stealthily that no one, either human or spirit, on this plane or any other, shall see you enter or depart; I further charge you to return to me immediately, silent and unseen, to await further instructions."

He was blue in the face when he finished this, having completed it all in one straight breath.[27] I glowered under my stony brows.

"Very well. Where does this unfortunate magician reside?"

The boy smiled thinly. "Downstairs."

Downstairs… Well, that was surprising.

"Framing your master, are you? Nasty."

"I'm not framing him. I just want it safe, behind whatever security he's got. No one's going to find it there." He paused. "But if they do…"

"You'll be in the clear. Typical magician's trick. You re learning faster than most."

"No one's going to find it."

"You think not? We'll see."

Still, I couldn't float there gossiping all day. I encased the Amulet with a Charm, rendering it temporarily small and giving it the appearance of a drifting cobweb. Then I sank through a knothole in the nearest plank, snaked as a vapor through the empty floor space, and in spider guise crawled cautiously out of a crack in the ceiling of the room below.

I was in a deserted bathroom. Its door was open; I scurried toward it along the plaster as fast as eight legs could carry me. As I went I shook my mandibles at the effrontery of the boy.

Framing another magician: that wasn't unusual. That was part and parcel, it came with the territory.[28] Framing your own master, though, now that was out of the ordinary—in fact possibly unique in a wizardling of twelve. Sure, as adults, magicians fell out with ridiculous regularity, but not when they were starting off; not when they were just being taught the rules.