I order you, Bartimaeus, to reveal whether you have diligently and wholly carried out your charge-" "Of course I have - what do you think this is, co… - Jonathan Stroud

I know you," he said. "I know your scent. Long ago, yes, but I never forget. I know your name." "A friend of a friend, perhaps?" I eyed his spear-tip nervously. Unlike Eagle-beak, he didn't wave it about at all. "No... an enemy..." "Terrible when you can't remember something that's right on the tip of your tongue," I observed. "Isn't it, though? And you try so hard to recall it, but often as not you can't because some fool's interrupting you, prattling away so you can't concentrate, and-" Bull-head gave a bellow of rage. "Shut up! I almost had it then!

"Woken up, have you?" the woman said. Her voice was like broken glass in an ice bucket.†

When I landed on the top of a lamppost in the London dusk it was peeing with rain.