So, here's the first chapter (well, prologue) of part two. Don't worry, It's a prologue, more will be explained in chapter one.

Prologue

Two year old Alexander Fowl sat on his bed at his mother's house in France with his blanket pulled firmly around him, at eleven o'clock at night, still wide awake and screaming.

Mark Hays tried his hardest to calm the boy down while Minerva just stood in the corner of her son's room looking lost at what to do. Her son hated her.

"Alexander come on, you have to go to sleep now. You won't be able to get up tomorrow you know. And we'll just have to take Dom, Sam and Matty out without you."

Alexander screeched just as hard, tears rolling down his face. He was confused byFrance, Matthew was horrible to him, and now, he decided, Mark didn't like him either. Even though the man never seemed to stop just trying to make him stop screaming, he just didn't like him for a reason he couldn't quite understand.

Didn't anyone understand? Why didn't anyone understand? In this weird new world, it was too hot at night, he couldn't understand what people said, and in place of his father was a Londoner with a broad Cockney accent and a light fingered son who picked on him.

His mother withdrew herself from him for reasons he didn't know. Yesterday, he'd been happily in Ireland. He'd barely seen his mother since he was a baby. She called for a few days every few months, but never long enough. He didn't know her as well, and never felt as comfortable with her, as he did with his father. Suddenly, his father had placed him and his siblings on a plane with his mother and he'd been carried thousands of miles away from his father only to find that there was someone new in his family to take his father's place.

Alexander didn't get it. Suddenly, he was living at his mother's house, and he had another dad. What was the deal? Was he never going to see his dad again?

Alexander sobbed harder. Would someone just come and give him a bloody hug? Why wouldn't his mum come and hug him?

Daddy would.

Didn't his mother love him, he wondered. Was that why she stood back, looking scared. Why was she scared? Was she scared of him?

Suddenly, Alexander's bedroom door banged open and Samantha stood in the doorway, looking extremely annoyed.

"What is the matter with him?"

Mark shrugged, looking utterly helpless. He didn't understand why Alexander had seemed to take an instant dislike to him.

"Where's Mam?"

Mark nodded to Minerva, who still stood in the shadowy corner with her head in her hands.

Samantha glanced at her mother, and, after having seen her mother fail to even try longer than a few minutes to empathise with her barely-more-than-a-baby brother, gave a disgusted look, rather than sympathy and went over to Alexander and sat on the bad next to him.

"Tried asking what's wrong with him?"

Mark shook his head. Samantha rolled her eyes at him. She wasn't prepared to love the man who her mother had fallen for after divorcing her father a year ago. Six months of therapy had her saddening past behind her and a new man in her life, but in the eyes of the Fowl children, he had replaced their father, and so he was the enemy.

Samantha took her brother's little hands, forcing him to look up at her.

"What's the matter? Are you sick?"

Alexander shook his head and allowed himself to flop onto his sister, wailing and soaking her pyjama top in tears.

"Well then, what are you screaming about?"

After a few minutes in which Alexander's cries quietened enough for his speech to be understood, he managed to sob out one word that was carefully selected out of the few that he could say. His speech was slow, even at two years old, he still didn't speak in sentences.

"Daddy!"

"What about him?"

Alexander wondered how he was supposed to tell his sister that he wanted to know where his father was, why Mummy didn't like him, and how long he had to stay here, and so he ran through his short list of words.

Mummy, Daddy, Dom, Sam, Chocolate, Hungry, No, Yes, Go, Hello, Bye, Alex, Please, Mark, Matty… Useless, useless, useless. Alexander went through about eighty words, very few of which would help him in his situation, finally, he picked out the most hopeful one.

"Home?"

"Yes, in a month we are going home. We are staying with Mummy for a month. That's thirty days. Can you manage that?"

"Daddy?"

"You'll see Daddy in thirty days."

Alexander thought for a moment. Thirty days. He could only count to twenty!

"Twenty…?" He said, trying to get across that he had no idea how much thirty was.

Samantha sighed. "Thirty is twenty with ten more added. All the fingers and thumbs on both your hands three times. Ten more than twenty. Okay?"

Alexander nodded. So every ten numbers, there was a special number? Okay.

Alexander had stopped crying by now and glanced at the corner that still held his mother, though she was looking at him now.

"Mummy…?"

Samantha glanced at her mother, frowning when Alexander wasn't looking in a way that made Minerva feel guilty in a way no nine year old should.

"I don't know what's got into Mummy." Samantha said in a tone that made it clear to Minerva that she didn't approve of her behaviour towards Alex. "Maybe she thought we were more forgiving than it turns out we are."

Alexander didn't understand his sister's last sentence, and nor did Mark, but Minerva, who had been hoping for custody of her children now that she was deemed mentally stable, was wondering if she could cope. They seemed to almost have turned against her. Was she that bad? What had she done when she'd slipped into that violent version of herself during that brief psychosis? Had her kids seen her knock Artemis around? Was Artemis a better parent than her? The kids had seemed more sad about leaving him than happy about seeing her when he'd dropped them off at the airport.

Minerva sobbed and fled from the room.

Samantha turned to Mark and gave him a pointed look that said 'follow her.' He obliged, scattering from the imposing nine year old's presence. There were times when she could be as scary as a fully grown woman.