"What, like an Algonquin leaving ceremony? Bah. We'd be here all night. And all of tomorrow. Nevermind that you haven't the fortitude for it. Besides, out of everything I know - which I shouldn't have to tell you is considerable, but seeing as you don't know pentacles or Aramaic then maybe I do -, dismissals could be considered something of a speciality of mine. I know it when I hear it and if anything would have done the trick, that would have."

As he's been speaking, Bartimaeus has whipped the rug back to the floor and been pushing it around with his foot to rub the chalk of the larger pentacle into an unintelligible smudge. He leaves off it now, the rug a dusty pile slumped across the floorboards.

"No, and I say this quite literally, you don't have the authority to tell me to do anything. Or to go anywhere."

Which, shockingly, turns out to be a real pity. In fact, the dysphoria of it might carry him all the way through the next few minutes.

Bartimaeus takes up the cloak and whips it about himself with far more enthusiasm than he feels. For good measure and in case the strange, hollow feeling plaguing him is showing anywhere in the arrangement of this horrible guise, he rakishly tosses an edge back over one shoulder. "Well, Kitty. I can't say it's been a pleasure."