“Sí?”
he said hesitantly.
Artemis pointed to the top of the building. “You’ve got some mosaics planned for the roof. You might want to rethink those. Very derivative.”
Then boy and demon disappeared.
Butler had not panicked when a creature had stepped out a the hole in time. Then again, he
was
trained not to panic, no matter how extreme the situation. Unfortunately, nobody else at the Passeig de Gràcia intersection had attended Madam Ko’s Personal Protection Academy, and so they proceeded to panic just as loudly and quickly as they could. All except the curly-haired girl and the two men with her.
When the demon appeared, the public froze. When the creature disappeared, they unfroze explosively. The air was rent with the sounds of shouting and screaming. Drivers abandoned their cars, or simply drove them into store windows to escape. A wave of humans withdrew from the point of materialization as though repelled by an invisible force. Again, the girl and her companions bucked the trend, actually running toward the spot where the demon had shown up. The man with the crutches displayed remarkable agility for one who was supposedly injured.
Butler ignored the pandemonium, concentrating on his right hand. Or rather, where his right hand had been a second earlier. Just before Artemis fizzled into another dimension, Butler had managed to get a grip on his shoulder. Now the disappearing virus had claimed his own hand. He was going wherever Artemis had gone. He could still feel his young charge’s bony shoulder in his grip.
Butler fully expected his arm to disappear, but it didn’t. Just the hand. He could still feel it in an underwater pins-and-needles kind of way. And he could still feel Artemis.
“No, you don’t,” he grunted, tightening his invisible grip. “I’ve put up with too much hardship over the years for you to vanish on me now.”
And so Butler reached down through the decades and yanked his young charge back from the past.
Artemis didn’t come easy. It was like dragging a boulder through a sea of mud, but Butler was not the kind of person who gave up easily, either. He planted his feet and put his back into it. Artemis popped out of the twentieth century and landed sprawling in the twenty-first.
“I’m back,” said the Irish boy, as if he had simply returned from an everyday errand. “How unexpected.”
Butler picked his principal up and gave him a perfunctory examination.
“Everything is in the right place. Nothing broken. Now, Artemis, tell me, what is twenty-seven multiplied by eighteen point five?”
Artemis straightened his suit jacket. “Oh, I see, you’re checking my mental faculties. Very good. I suppose it’s conceivable that time travel could affect the mind.”
“Just answer the question!” insisted Butler.
“Four hundred and ninety-nine point five, if you must know.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
The giant bodyguard cocked his head to one side. “Sirens. We need to get out of this area, Artemis, before I’m forced to cause an international incident.”
He hustled Artemis to the other side of the road, to the only car still idling there. Maria looked a little pale, but at least she had not abandoned her clients.
“Well done,” said Butler, flinging open the rear door. “Airport. Stay off the highway as much as possible.”
Maria barely waited until Butler and Artemis were belted before burning rubber down the street, ignoring the traffic lights. The blond girl and her companions were left on the roadside.
Maria glanced at Artemis in the mirror. “What happened out there?”
“No questions,” said Butler curtly. “Eyes on the road. Drive.”
He knew better than to ask questions himself. Artemis would explain all about the strange creature and the shining rift when he was ready.
Artemis remained silent as the limousine swung down toward Las Ramblas and from there into the labyrinthine back streets of downtown Barcelona.
“How did I get here?” he said eventually, musing aloud. “Or rather, why aren’t we there? Or why aren’t we
then
? What anchored us to this time?” He looked at Butler. “Are you wearing any silver?”
Butler grimaced sheepishly. “You know I never usually wear jewelry, but there is this.” He shot one cuff. There was a leather bracelet on his wrist with a silver nugget in the center. “Juliet sent it to me. From Mexico. It’s to ward off evil spirits, apparently. She made me promise to wear it.”
Artemis smiled broadly. “It was Juliet. She anchored us.” He tapped the silver nugget on Butler’s wrist. “You should give your sister a call. She saved our lives.”
As Artemis tapped his bodyguard’s wristband, he noticed something about his own fingers. They
were
his fingers, no doubt about it. But different, somehow. It took him a moment to realize what had happened.
He had, of course, done some theorizing on the hypothetical results of interdimensional travel, and concluded that there could possibly be some deterioration of the original, as with a computer program that has been copied once too often. Streams of information could be lost in the ether.
As far as Artemis could tell, nothing had been lost, but now the index finger on his left hand was longer than the second finger. Or more accurately, the index finger had swapped places with the second finger.
He flexed the fingers experimentally.
“Hmm,” noted Artemis Fowl. “I am unique.”
Butler grunted.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
CHAPTER 2
Holly Short’s career as an elfin private investigator was not working out as well as she’d hoped. This was mainly because the Lower Elements’ most popular current events show had run not one, but two specials on her over the past few months. It was difficult to go undercover when her face was forever popping up on cable reruns.
“Surgery?” suggested a voice in her head.
This voice was not the first sign of madness. It was her partner, Mulch Diggums, communicating from his mike to her earpiece.
“What?” she said, her voice carrying to her own microphone, a tiny flesh-colored chip glued to her throat.
“I’m looking at a poster of your famous face, and I’m thinking that you should have some cosmetic surgery if we want to stay in business. And I mean real business, not this bounty hunting game. Bounty hunters are the lowest of the low.”
Holly sighed. Her dwarf partner was right. Even criminals were considered more trustworthy than bounty hunters.
“A few implants and a reshaped nose, and even your best friend wouldn’t recognize you,” continued Mulch Diggums. “It’s not as if you’re a beauty queen.”
“Forget it,” said Holly. She was fond of the face she had. It reminded her of her mother’s.
“What about a skin spray? You could go green, disguise yourself as a sprite.”
“Mulch? Are you in position?” snapped Holly.
“Yep,” came the dwarf’s reply. “Any sign of the pixie?”
“No, he’s not up and about yet, but he will be soon. So stop the chatter and just get ready.”
“Hey, we’re partners now. No more criminal and police officer. I don’t have to take orders from you.”
“Get ready,
please
.”
“No problem. Mulch Diggums, low-life bounty hunter, signing off.”
Holly sighed. Sometimes she missed the discipline of the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance Squad. When an order was given, it was followed. Although, if she were honest, Holly had to admit she had gotten herself into trouble more than once for disobeying a direct command.
She had only survived in LEPrecon for as long as she had because of a few high-profile arrests.
And
because of her mentor, Commander Julius Root.
Holly felt her heart lurch as she remembered, for the thousandth time, that Julius was dead. She could go for hours without thinking about it, then it would hit her— every time like the first time.
She had quit the LEP because Julius’s replacement had actually accused her of murdering the commander. Holly figured with a boss like that, she could do the Fairy People more good outside the system. It was starting to look like she had been dead wrong. In her time as LEPrecon Captain she had been involved in putting down a goblin revolution, thwarting a plan to expose the subterranean fairy culture to the humans, and reclaiming stolen fairy technology from a Mud Man in Chicago. Now she was tracking a fish smuggler who had skipped out on his bail. Not exactly national security stuff.
“What about shin extensions?” said Mulch, interrupting her thoughts. “You could be taller in hours.”
Holly smiled. As irritating as her partner was, he could always cheer her up. Also, as a dwarf, Mulch had special talents that came in very handy in their new line of business. Until recently, he had used these skills to break
into
houses and
out
of prisons, but now he was on the side of the angels, or so he swore. Unfortunately, all fairies knew that a dwarf’s vow to a non-dwarf wasn’t worth the spit-sodden handshake that sealed the deal.
“Maybe you could get a brain extension,” Holly retorted.
Mulch chortled. “Oh, brilliant. I must write that one down in my witty retorts book.”
Holly was trying to come up with an actual witty retort, when their target appeared at the motel room door. He was a harmless-looking pixie, barely two feet high, but you didn’t have to be tall to drive a truck of fish. The smuggling bosses hired pixies as drivers and couriers because they looked so innocent and childlike. Holly had read this pixie’s profile, and she knew that he was anything but innocent.
Doodah Day had been smuggling livestock to illegal restaurants for more than a century. In smuggling circles he was something of a legend. As an ex-criminal, Mulch was privy to criminal folklore and was able to supply Holly with all kinds of useful information that wouldn’t find its way into an LEP report. For instance, Doodah had once made the heavily patrolled Atlantis–Haven run in under six hours without losing a fish from the tank.
Doodah had been arrested in the Atlantis Trench by a squad of LEP water sprites. He had skipped out en route from a holding cell to the courthouse, and now Holly had tracked him here. The bounty on Doodah Day was enough to pay six months’ rent on their office. The plaque on their door read:
Short and Diggums. Private Investigators
.
Doodah Day stepped out of his room, scowling at the world in general. He zipped his jacket then headed south toward the shopping district. Holly stayed twenty steps back, hiding her face underneath a hood. This street had traditionally been a rough spot, but the Council was putting millions of ingots into a major revamp. In five years, there would be no more goblin ghetto. Huge, yellow multi-mixers were chewing up old sidewalks and laying down brand new paths behind them. Overhead, public service sprites unhooked burned-out sun strips from the tunnel ceiling and replaced them with new molecule models.
The pixie followed the same route that he had for the past three days. He strolled down the road to the nearest plaza, picked up a carton of vole curry at a kiosk, then bought a ticket to the twenty-four hour movie theater. If he stayed true to form, Doodah would be in there for at least eight hours.
Not if I can help it, thought Holly. She was determined to get this case wrapped by close of business. It wouldn’t be easy. Doodah was small, but he was fast. Without weapons or restraints, it would be almost impossible to contain him.
Almost
impossible, but there was a way.
Holly bought a ticket from the gnome attendant, then settled into a seat two rows behind the target. The theater was pretty quiet at this time of day. There were maybe fifty patrons besides Holly and Doodah. Most of them weren’t even wearing theater goggles. This was just somewhere to put in a few hours between meals.
The theater was running The Hill of Taillte trilogy nonstop. The trilogy told a cinematic version of the events surrounding the Hill of Taillte battle, where the humans had finally forced the fairies underground. The final part of the trilogy had cleaned up at the AMP Awards a couple of years ago. The effects were splendid, and there was even a special edition interactive version, where the player could become one of the minor characters.
Looking at the movie now, Holly felt the same pang of loss as she always did. The People should be living aboveground; instead they were stuck in this technologically advanced cave.
Holly watched the sweeping aerial views and slow motion battles for forty minutes, then she moved into the aisle and threw off her hood. In her LEP days, she would simply have come up behind the pixie and stuck her Neutrino 3000 in his back, but civilians were not allowed to carry weapons of any kind, and so a more subtle strategy would have to be employed.
She called the pixie from the aisle. “Hey, you. Aren’t you Doodah Day?”
The pixie jumped from his seat. He fixed his fiercest scowl on his features and threw it Holly’s way. “Who wants to know?”
“The LEP,” replied Holly. Technically, she had not identified herself as a member of the LEP, which would be impersonating a police officer.
Doodah squinted at her. “I know you. You’re that female elf. The one who tackled the goblins. I’ve seen you on digital. You’re not LEP anymore.”
Holly felt her heartbeat speed up. It was good to be back in action. Any kind of action.
“Maybe not, Doodah, but I’m still here to bring you in. Are you going to come quietly?”
“And spend a few centuries in the Atlantis pen? What do you think?” said Doodah Day, dropping to his knees.
The little pixie was gone like a stone from a sling, crawling under the seats, jinking left and right.
Holly pulled up her hood and ran toward the fire exit. That’s where Doodah would be going. He went this way every day. Every good criminal checks the exit routes in whatever building he visits.
Doodah was at the exit before her, crashing through the door like a dog through a hatch. All Holly could see was the blue blur of his jumpsuit.
“Target on the move,” she said, knowing her throat mike would pick up whatever she said. “Coming your way.”
I hope, thought Holly, but she didn’t say it.
In theory, Doodah would make for his bolt hole, a small storage unit over on Crystal Street, which was set up with a small cot and air-conditioning unit. When the pixie got there, Mulch would be waiting. It was a classic human-hunting technique. Beat the grass and be ready when the bird flies. Of course, if you were human, you shot the bird, then ate it. Mulch’s method of capture was less terminal, but equally revolting.
Holly stuck close, but not too close. She could hear the pitter-patter of the pixie’s tiny feet scurrying along the theater’s carpet, but she couldn’t see the little fellow. She didn’t want to see him. It was vital that Doodah believe he had gotten away; otherwise he wouldn’t make for his bolt hole. In her LEP days, there would be no need for this kind of close-up pursuit. She would have had complete access to five thousand surveillance cameras dotted throughout Haven, not to mention a hundred other gadgets and gimmicks from the LEP surveillance arsenal. Now there was just her and Mulch. Four eyes and some special dwarf talents.
The main door was still flapping when Holly reached it. Just inside, an outraged gnome was flat on his behind, covered with nettle smoothie.
“A little kid,” he complained to an usher. “Or a pixie. It had a big head, I know that much. Hit me right in the gut.”
Holly skirted the pair, shouldering her way onto the plaza outside. Outside—relatively speaking. Everything was inside when you lived in a tunnel. Overhead, the sun strips were set to midmorning. She could trace Doodah’s progress by the trail of chaos in his wake. The vole kiosk was overturned. Lumpy gray-green curry congealed on the flagstones. And lumpy gray-green footsteps led to the plaza’s northern corner. So far, Doodah was behaving very predictably.
Holly pushed her way through the ragged line of curry customers, keeping her eyes on the pixie’s footsteps.
“Two minutes,” she said for Mulch’s benefit.
There was no reply, but there shouldn’t be, not if the dwarf was in position.
Doodah should take the next service alley and cut across to Crystal. Next time, she resolved, they would go after a gnome. Pixies were too fast. The fairy Council did not really like bounty hunters, and tried to make life as difficult for them as possible. There was no such thing as a licensed firearm outside the LEP. Anyone with a weapon, without a badge, was going to prison.
Holly rounded the corner expecting to see the tail end of a pixie blur. Instead she saw a ten-ton yellow multi-mixer bearing down on her. Obviously Doodah Day had finished being predictable.
“D’Arvit!” swore Holly, diving to one side. The multimixer’s front rotor chewed through the plaza’s pavement, spitting it out at the rear in inch-perfect slabs.
She rolled into a crouch and reached for the Neutrino blaster, which had been on her hip, until recently. All she found was air.
The multi-mixer was swinging around for a second run, bucking and hissing like a mechanical Jurassic carnivore. Giant pistons thumped, and rotor blades carved scythe-like through whatever surface fell beneath their blades. Debris was shoveled into the machine’s belly to be processed and shaped by heated plates.
It reminds me a bit of Mulch, thought Holly. Funny what crosses your mind when your life is in danger.
She backpedaled away from the mixer. Yes it was big, but it was slow and unwieldy. Holly glanced upward to the cab, and there was Doodah expertly manipulating the gears. His hands flashed across the knobs and levers, dragging the metal behemoth toward Holly.
All around was pandemonium: shoppers howling, emergency sirens sounding. But Holly couldn’t worry about that now. Priority one. Stay alive. Terrifying as this situation might be to the general public, Holly had years of LEP training and experience. She’d escaped the grasp of far quicker enemies than this multi-mixer.
As it turned out, Holly was mistaken. The multi-mixer was slow as a whole, but some of its parts were lightning fast. For example, the containment paddles—two ten-foot-high walls of steel that slotted out on either side of the front rotor to contain any debris that might be thrown up by the rotor blades.
Doodah Day, an instinctive driver of any vehicle, saw his opportunity and took it. He overrode the safety and deployed the paddles. Four pneumatic pumps instantly pressurized and literally blew the paddles into the wall on both sides of Holly. They bit deep, sinking six inches into the stone.
Holly’s confidence drained down into her boots. She was trapped with a hundred curved strip blades tearing up the ground before her.
“Wings,” said Holly, but only her LEP suit had wings, and she had given up the right to wear that.
The paddles contained the vortex created by the blades and turned it back on itself. The vibration was terrific. Holly felt her teeth shake in her gums. She could see ten of everything. Her whole world was bad reception. Beneath her feet the blades greedily chewed the pavement. Holly jumped at the left-hand paddle, but it was well lubricated and slipped out of her grasp. Her luck was equally bad with the other paddle. The only other possible avenue was straight ahead, and that wasn’t really an option, not with the deadly rotor waiting.
Holly shouted at Doodah. Maybe her mouth formed actual words, but she couldn’t be certain, not with the shaking and the noise. Blades snicked through the air, grabbing for her. With each pass they tore strips from the ground beneath her feet. There wasn’t much ground left. Soon she would be feeding the multi-mixer. She would be shredded, passed through the machine’s innards, and finally laid as a pavement slab. Holly Short would literally be part of the city.