The last time they’d seen Bartimaeus was on Halloween. Pip and Eleanor had found the secret room in the clock tower where he’d hidden himself away for decades. Before that, he’d built this house and collected all the artifacts it was stocked with. He was also the one who’d written Thirteen Tales of the Gray. He was a tall, creaky man, with a fluff of white hair on his head and the kind of glasses you mostly wear so that you can peer over them disapprovingly. The vest and suit jacket he was wearing looked almost exactly the same as the ones he’d had on Halloween, though a bit more worn out.

“What are you doing here?” Eleanor demanded, rising.

“Who is he?” Otto asked. That’s right—Otto hadn’t been with them when they met Bartimaeus. He’d been captured by the January Society.

“You know each other?” Ben asked.

“Bartimaeus Ashford, Otto. Otto, Bartimaeus,” Eleanor said. “Now back to my question.”

“My sanctuary in the clock tower is currently inaccessible,” he said, in the detached tone Eleanor remembered from their first encounter, like none of this had anything to do with him. “Your uncle was generous enough to allow me to take up residence in my former abode.”

“So you finally had to stop lurking around not helping anyone?” Pip asked.

“You keep insisting that I’ve done nothing to help, but that’s simply not true. I’ve done a great deal, including building this house, with all its protections. And doing quite a bit of work for your father, young Eleanor, not that he’s ever bothered to come back and thank me for it,” Bartimaeus said, and, as anticipated, peered over his glasses with a scowl.

“He was in an enchanted sleep for thirteen years,” Eleanor said defensively. “You might have told me that Jack was my father.”

“And what could you possibly have done with that information, other than distract yourself into certain doom?” Bartimaeus asked. “You were rather focused on other things.”

“That didn’t stop you from telling me to give him a message. Not very useful when I didn’t even know his name,” Eleanor said, rolling her eyes. Then she gasped. “Yes!”

“Yes what?” Otto asked.

Eleanor pointed at Bartimaeus. “That’s the message he told me to deliver. He said to tell my father the answer was ‘yes.’ Jack told us the question was ‘Can I get rid of the Prime Stories?’ ”

“The what?” Ben said, looking baffled.

“That wasn’t his precise phrasing, but yes, that’s accurate,” Bartimaeus said. He seemed to notice Gloaming for the first time, then blinked at Eleanor. “My goodness. The Stories have moved on, haven’t they?”

Eleanor nodded. “But you can tell us how to stop them. How to get rid of them. So? How do we do it?”

“Is this really the most urgent question right now?” Pip asked.