Chapter Three: Lilies and Lies

Butler had never been a hard sleeper. It came from intense training and a hard earned awareness of everything that happened in the Fowl household. So it was no shock when something woke him in the middle of the night. He sat up in bed, listening for the cause of the disturbance. As Artemis' bodyguard, he had a room right next to the boy. From the bedroom next door, he heard Artemis speaking, but no one spoke back. Must be on the phone. Butler glanced at the clock. One the phone… at 3 A.M. He stood slowly and silently, debating on whether he should listen in. Finally his protective nature won out. Sometimes Master Fowl failed to set good limits for himself. It was Butler's job to see the danger before it fell on them.

He pressed his ear against the wall to listen.

On the other side, Artemis sat at his desk, his phone pressed carefully between his shoulder and his ear. He listened to the voice on the phone with growing impatience, drumming his fingers on the desk in front of him.

It was a call from an elf in LEP. He talked quickly and sounded worried and scared. "Hello, Master Fowl. I was, uh, ordered to make this call by the Commander. She told be that you might want to come down, seeing as it involved Captain Short…"

Artemis' fingers stopped drumming. He could feel a piece of bad news coming. "What about Captain Short?" he asked coldly.

"Well, ah, you see sir, she's been injured. Hadn't performed the Ritual lately. She was on patrol near an area with a lot of goblin activity. They caught one stealing something from a store and moved to intervene, but the goblin had others with him. Two were contained, but Captain Short had to go after the last one and ran into a group of them. She's badly hurt, and there aren't any warlocks in the area… We don't know how long she can hold on. The Commander knew about your particular talents and wondered if you might have some way to help."

Artemis was frozen. How could this happen? Holly was experienced. She knew how to fight, and was the best shot Artemis knew. How could she let herself be bettered by goblins?

The answer flashed across his mind. Opal.

Artemis spoke stiffly into the receiver. "You know where I live. Have a shuttle ready in fifteen minutes." Then he snapped the phone shut. He was dressed in little under two minutes, his jacket flapping around him as he raced past Butler, who had just come out of his room. Artemis supposed that he'd been listening the whole time.

"Artemis, where are we going?" he asked, following his young charge outside. He was already dressed as well, having heard Artemis request a shuttle.

"Holly has been fatally wounded," Artemis called back, the words burning his throat. "I have to go to Haven and see what I can do.

Butler nodded and followed Artemis to the garage. He was leaving the house unguarded, but there was no one to watch out for. Artemis's father was still in Germany, and his mother was visiting a couple of old friends. The younger Fowls were at a babysitter's house until Angeline was done, as the woman claimed that she didn't want the responsibility on her oldest son.

"Knowing you, you'll probably have to leave in the middle of the night at a moment's notice," she had told him. "Then where would the twins be?"

How right you were, Mother.

The twenty minute drive to the shuttle was agonizing. Artemis was trapped into imagining all kinds of gruesome wounds that Holly could be suffering from. He shuddered and forced himself to stare ahead and not think while Butler drove them to the shuttle port.

The elf from the phone was waiting for him. "Right in here, sir," he said, stumbling over his words as he opened the shuttle. Artemis climbed inside and Butler followed. They were cramped inside, due to Butler's large physical presence, but they survived the bumpy, grueling ride to the underground. Barely.

Artemis jumped out of the shuttle, Butler following a little more slowly. The boy looked back at the nervous elf in the shuttle. "Where?" he asked sharply.

"Just head to the police plaza," he said, climbing out of the shuttle. "It's down this street a ways."

Artemis nodded his thanks and set off quickly down the street. No one was out; who would be at three in the morning? He saw the lights of the Police Plaza ahead, and his heart clenched. Holly was there, wounded and, according to the LEP agent, possibly dying… He shook his head. She would live. Holly was strong, strong enough to wait for the warlocks who could heal her.

He raced into the Plaza, where there were more people, LEP on duty. They raised their guns to train them on him. He raised his hands in front of him, and Butler did the same. A universal message: We are weaponless, we mean no harm.

One of the LEP suddenly uttered a little sound of exclamation and stepped forward. "Artemis?" a familiar voice asked. "Artemis, what are you doing here?" The visor came up.

The LEP who had stepped forward was none other than Holly Short.

Artemis felt his knees go weak with relief. Holly was obviously alive and well. He could see nothing wrong with her. She just looked at him, a confused expression clouding her face. He tried to explain. "I got a call," he told her. "A LEP agent told me that you'd been patrolling in an area with high goblin activity, and that you'd been injured." The other LEP officers were wandering away, still throwing the humans dirty looks. "They said that you were too low on magic to heal yourself, and that no warlocks were nearby." He blushed slightly. "I was… concerned."

Holly held up a finger and Artemis watched a small spark leap off of the end. "I'm fine on magic. I competed the Ritual just a few days ago. And besides that, there hasn't been any high goblin activity. Most of it's died down since the revolution. No major activity in a while." She held out her arms to demonstrate. "I'm fine."

Artemis was speechless. It seemed that the LEP agent that had phoned him and brought him here had been blatantly lying. As happy as he was that Holly was alright, he had to wonder why a LEP fairy had wanted him down in the Haven so badly. "I thought that maybe Opal had gotten you," he admitted. "It seemed to me that it would take a little more than a rouge group of goblins the finish you off, honestly."

"I'll take that as a compliment," she said as a form of agreement. "So, if I'm living - which I obviously am - then why would someone sell you that story?" she asked.

"To get us into the Haven for some reason?" Butler suggested.

Artemis felt his stomach drop. "Or to get us away from the Manor."

No. It was impossible. How could anyone have discovered? The boy turned around and raced back to the shuttle port. Holly and Butler followed him, both equally unnerved by the idea that someone had wanted Artemis and Butler away from the house. And though Butler looked concerned, Holly noted, Artemis seemed positively frantic.

"Holly, can you get us back to the surface?" Artemis asked, jumping into the abandoned shuttle and strapping himself in quickly. Holly crawled into the pilot's seat.

"Of course," she muttered, engaging the shuttle. After another bone jarring ride, they were back to the surface.

Butler climbed into the front seat of the car while Artemis told Holly, "Wait here, please. I will call you if I need your assistance." And then he ran to the car, jumped in, and the two drove away.

Holly stared after them. Weird day, she thought, and sat down to wait.

The lights of Fowl Manor were just as they'd left them. Butler and Artemis's lights were on, no others. That meant nothing, Artemis knew. It only meant that, if someone was in or had been in the house, they were not total idiots.

He leapt from the passenger seat and took the stairs up to his room two at a time. Please, please, please, please, please don't let this be what I think it is… he thought desperately.

He flung open the door to his room. Everything was just where he'd left it, accept now he could detect the faintest hint of lilies. Odd, he thought. What kind of intruder wore perfume? He peered into the corners of the room, searching for heat waves that would mark invisible fairies. Finding none, he ran over to the hidden safe, whipping through the locks in seconds. Finally he pulled the last door back.

There was nothing inside.

Artemis had to force himself to breath.

Think, he told himself furiously. Who have you talked to about this? No one. Who had seen you with this? No one, unless there were hidden fairies in the room, which there were not. You have no files about this that anyone could hack into. So, how is the vial gone?

It was impossible. He ran a hand through his hair in agitation. Impossible. He had moved the vial because they had discovered where it was. To protect it. And yet now it was gone, surely in the hands of those who could use it for the worst purposes. They'd wanted it bad enough.

After all, inverse magic was hard to come by.

Artemis shut the safe slowly, his mind whirling. They must have shown up on the cameras. They must have. He could find them, and track them down. Get the magic back…

It was then that he heard the click of the door shutting.

He flipped around, but no one was there. The room was utterly empty but for himself. He focused his eyes on section of the wall, watching for movement. There! By the foot of the bed. A slight shimmer. He switched his gaze to the hidden fairy.

A light laugh rang through the room, and the fairy switched off her shield. Artemis stared into the grinning face of Opal Koboi, not surprised in the least.

"Hello, Fowl," she said, her tiny teeth clenching. Her gaze was filled with absolute hate. The deranged pixy stood up, walking around the room, examining everything. Artemis followed her movements, totally still. "I must thank you for removing that lovely little trinket from its hiding place," she drawled. "I could never have found it without you."

Artemis narrowed his gaze. "You don't know what inverted magic can do, Opal," he said. "Give it back. I have it safe here. It's too dangerous, even for you."

The pixy sneered. "You got in my way once, Mud Boy, you won't again. I have already dealt with the bodyguard."

Artemis swallowed. "You killed him?"

She flapped a hand. "I did that once already. It didn't turn out so well. I've put a heavy sedative on him. He'll wake up in a few hours, but he will be too late to meddle with my plans."

Artemis contained a sigh of relief. Butler was alive, at least. "Give the spark to me, Opal. It could destroy you. It's too much power." He felt like he was grasping at straws, even though what he said was true. The amount of power in the vial was astronomical. It would destroy the pixy before she ever got to use it.

Opal laughed. "It's not for me, you sniveling human fool. I will be granted enough power if I secure this spark." She twirled the vial. "Which I have."

Opal Koboi was working for someone?

Artemis couldn't believe it.

He was trying to form another question when Opal pulled out the gun. He froze, aware that Opal would not hesitate to shoot him. Undoubtedly the death would be a slow and painful one. The gun was, shockingly, one of his own models. She must have taken it from the weapon room, he thought. It was small and slim, with a flap on the side for inserting some long object. Not bullets. Artemis had developed these guns some time back, to sell to snipers. The objects that went into these guns were loaded with poison.

Opal ran her thumb down the side of the gun. "I love this," she confided to him. "I much prefer slow acting poisons to quick deaths. I believe that the poison is also your own concoction? It was a brilliant stroke of luck, finding it in your lab. Something labeled H5?"

Artemis fell against the wall. My most successful poison, he thought glumly. H5, as he had labeled it, was a little bit like Spelltropy, but it acted much faster. The poison spread through the blood stream, leaking into the vital organs and shutting them down. The first to go would be the lungs, and then the heart. Without oxygen pumping through it, the brain would die before the poison even reached it. The poison terminated its host after fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes. It would have to do.

Opal smiled at him. "I was too hasty last time," she told him. "This time I made sure to plan. Hack into your systems, your cameras, your audio feeds. Find out where you would be, what you were doing. I already knew your weakness was that stupid elf girl. It was too easy to get you out of the house. Naturally I knew that you would quickly return, but then I would be waiting." She cocked the gun at him. "It will probably work fastest through the heart, don't you think?" Opal grinned and pulled the trigger.

Artemis dodged to the left, but the dart was too fast for him to evade. At least it didn't catch him in the heart. He pulled the cartridge from his shoulder, but it was already empty. He looked up as Opal disappeared from view.

"Bye, Arty," she said. "I hope that poison is painful. I have to catch up with a certain elf friend of yours, and then a pompous centaur that you know I can't stand. I'll look forward to killing them."

Then she was gone.

Artemis could feel the effects of the poison right away. It was painful. His shoulder was on fire, and it was spreading quickly. He lunged for his phone, which was right where he'd left it before the idiotic trip to the underground. He fumbled with it for a moment before he could open it up. He sent a quick message to Holly, and then threw the phone down onto the bed.

Fifteen minutes, and he would need every one of them.