Look who can't get a word in edge-wise now. She successfully bowls over a few sharp sounds of protest and one or two scoffs of disbelief - him? Tricked? Highly unlikely -, the result of which at least means that by the time she's done the long pointed teeth poking out of Bartimaeus's otherwise very human mouth have at least started to feel (and look) more silly than intimidating. He's still mad as a cat in a bag of course, but who wouldn't be? Never mind the harassment, the constant need for a very human guise, the intolerable drain of the rift shard on his honestly enfeebled essence, and the depressingly consistent backwards thinking on spirits and their ilk that evidently is a requirement for every version of the physical world. He's tired. And tipsy. And he just wants to take her by her long dark hair and--

"--Hold on," he blurts out around his mouthful of shark's teeth. It's loud in the otherwise abandoned stairwell despite the marble-mouthed syllables. For a rather long moment, he squints at her through the haze of the evening's activities and the halfway darkness. After the frankly relentless bout of talking, the silence is nearly intolerable.

Finally: "Shouldn't your hair be shorter?"