The Bartimaus Trilogy Book Three- Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud.

   I've read this book once before. It could be classified as strange, obscure, and just weird. I suppose magicians and djinni (no, they do not give three wishes; they are not imprisoned in lamps for a thousand years) in London are strange. Ptolemy's Gate is the third book in the Bartimaus trilogy, I consider it the second-best. Bartimaus is a third-level multiple-thousand year-old djinni. He is currently in service to a young powerful magician named John Mandrake. I'm not giving away the plot, if I do some people will turn it away without actually reading the book, which is better than it sounds. John's real name is Nathaniel (magicians receive new names at the age of twelve, their birth names must be kept secret, as a djinni or a fellow magician will have considerable power over them if they find it), and Bartimaus knows this. Almost their whole relationship has to be based on trust, because the djinni does know the name and could completely destroy Nathaniel if he wanted to.

   There is another character: Kitty Jones. Kitty is not a magician, she is a normal person (called a commoner, commoners are looked down on by magicians) who is very smart. Nathaniel has had encounters with her since the first book when he was twelve- he currently thinks she is dead, and is somewhat haunted by her memory (it's not a ghost story). Anyways, there's a ton of action in this book, you've got to read at least the first book in the trilogy (The Amulet of Samarkand) before you'll understand any of it, but it's a good read and I highly recommend it.