[Kitty Jones - reliably outspoken, generally direct unless she has reason to avoid being so - is skulking. She has spent the past fifteen minutes beetling about the library in Kostos' general vicinity, pulling down this book or that scroll and replacing them after a few moments study, all the while winking and nudging and generally making efforts to tempt the mindless curiosity of one of the man's drifting wisps.]
[ One of them does, eventually, take an interest in Kitty Jones, and wanders near enough that, if it had discernible eyes, it would be using both of them to gaze directly into one of hers. It’s the one Kostos has been calling Markus, for the last few hours.
Not out loud.
Out loud, without looking up from his book, he says, ] Do not complain to me if it zaps you.
[Bartimaeu-- Kitty Jones shoots the Markus the Wisp a dirty look. Tattletale.]
I'll try not to.
[This, in his best impression of Ms. Jones' clipped way of trampling all over anything she doesn't particularly care to hear. Roughly in counterpoint to all of that, the girl raises her free hand and makes to poke the little bobbing ember.]
[ Markus is too close and bobs too slowly to disguise its insubstantiality, but having so bobbed, decides to make a game of darting behind Ms. Jones' head and attempting to stay there no matter which way she looks. It will last for however many seconds it needs to forget and instead become fascinated with her hair. ]
[Form means very little in the world of spirits. He knows this, Kostos has to know this, and even dumb as a cabbage little old Markus here has to know this. It's still annoying. What he wouldn't give for another intelligent being, and yet here he is stuck with the lowest of the low - a dimwit and a wisp. Bartimaeus hisses under his breath as the little bobbing light as is fusses around Kitty's head.]
Fine, [he says to it.] But know that you've forced me into this indignity.
[The girl slinks out from between the stacks.] How do you summon them? And what are they exactly? [Someone must have a summer head cold. She sounds awful.]
[ The suspicion in the look he gives Definitely Kitty Jones has nothing to do with believing someone else is wearing her appearance. Shapeshifting exists among Thedosians, sure, but who would take all of the time required to study Kitty Jones in detail for the amount of time required to convincingly become her, and especially do it just to ask him something like that? If it entered his mind, it would be immediately dismissed for being ridiculous.
On the other hand, the idea that Definitely Kitty Jones might be up to something isn't ridiculous at all. ]
Have you been drinking?
[ Markus has followed the hair, but it comes when he gestures for it, with the aural equivalent of a shimmer. ]
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action;
no subject
Not out loud.
Out loud, without looking up from his book, he says, ] Do not complain to me if it zaps you.
[ Zap is the technical term. ]
no subject
I'll try not to.
[This, in his best impression of Ms. Jones' clipped way of trampling all over anything she doesn't particularly care to hear. Roughly in counterpoint to all of that, the girl raises her free hand and makes to poke the little bobbing ember.]
no subject
no subject
Fine, [he says to it.] But know that you've forced me into this indignity.
[The girl slinks out from between the stacks.] How do you summon them? And what are they exactly? [Someone must have a summer head cold. She sounds awful.]
no subject
On the other hand, the idea that Definitely Kitty Jones might be up to something isn't ridiculous at all. ]
Have you been drinking?
[ Markus has followed the hair, but it comes when he gestures for it, with the aural equivalent of a shimmer. ]