Nine: Afternoon
"Mulch Diggums, private investigator." Though he'd had the title for a good six years now, he still liked it enough to want to just feel it roll off his tongue every now and again. It was a good feeling. Finally legit... but not too legit.
He held his finger down on the buzzer about a second longer than he needed to – just for kicks – and then waited to be buzzed in. He could have shorted the lock in a matter of seconds, of course, but he was visiting a friend so a little politeness was in order.
When he walked through the door, he could not suppress a smirk – nor did he really want to if truth be told. "I didn't believe it when Foaly told me. Holly Short taking an honest to Frond vacation. What's the world coming to?"
"Hello, Mulch," Holly said as she peered into the travel bag that rested on her kitchen table in the centre of a ring of miscellaneous travel items, such as a hair brush and shampoo.
"And here I thought trolls would fly before you actually took time off from work."
Holly cast him a scathing glance and then returned to packing her bag. "It isn't easy trying to book vacation time when there are two Opals running around on the surface, you know."
"Right. LEP business and all that saving the world mumbo jumbo." He picked up a jar of moisturiser and, unscrewing the cap, sniffed it once and grimaced before putting it back down. "So where are you off to then?"
Holly screwed the cap back on and placed the moisturiser into her bag. "I'm going to visit Artemis."
"A romantic weekend with little Arty. How sweet," Mulch cooed, only barely holding back a snigger. Holly did not look up and only scowled at her travel bag. "This is where you're supposed to protest that you'd never date a Mud Man," Mulch added.
"Oh?" Holly said. "I guess I didn't study my script enough."
Mulch snorted. "The last time I said you had the hots for someone, I ended up on the wrong side of your buzz baton."
She glared at him. "It was Grub Kelp. I'd sooner date a troll."
"Or a Mud Man?"
"What are you getting at, Mulch?"
"Oh nothing, nothing. Just wondering why you packed these." As he spoke, he darted a hand into her bag and when he withdrew it, a pair of lacy black panties dangled off his index finger.
She snatched them back and the look she shot Mulch could have frozen a magma flare. "There is a line, Mulch," she said very slowly, elongating each syllable. "You are on the wrong side of it."
"Now now, Holly," he said, backing up, hands raised, palms held outward. "No need to look like that. It was only a bit of fun between old friends."
"Keep it up and you won't be getting much older."
"I'm an investigator now. It's just second nature to me these days."
"Why don't you just investigate my refrigerator instead of my bag?" she snapped, pointing to the appliance in question.
"Well if you insist," he said.
Still, this was clearly something that he'd have to follow up on. Maybe if he figured it out he'd be able to get "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" to stop playing in his head whenever someone mentioned Artemis and Holly in the same sentence. It had been three years now and he was really beginning to dislike that song...
ooo
In the afternoon gloom, Artemis waited beneath the cover of a large, black umbrella as the leaden sky let forth a deluge of rain. The pattering of fat drops as they slid down the ribs of the umbrella to the ground, ticked off the seconds with steady precision. Where was she?
In the Tara visitors centre parking lot, Butler was idling the Bentley, and Artemis could have waited in its heated interior. Instead, here he was, watching his breath crystalize in the air before his face and feeling the damp cold burrow into his Armani jacket. She had insisted on meeting him here, at the touristy Tara visitor's centre, rather than near the actual terminal which lay on the McGraney's farm.
Artemis busied himself with running calculations on Blanding's turtle populations and the likelihood of the LEP surveillance teams actually locating Opal. She could well have moved on to another species. If she were studying lobsters then there was no hope they would be able to track her down, though it seemed unlikely that she would revert to studying invertebrates as that would be a step backwards. Bowhead whales were also an option for senescence research, but hard to come by in the wild and next to impossible to study in laboratory conditions due to their enormous size.
He stopped himself when he saw a slim figure emerge from behind a hillock. Draped in a dark green jacket with a hood pulled over her face, she could easily have passed for a child separated from her parents during their family vacation. His pulse rate jumped as he noted the black travel bag gripped in her hand. Two weeks together. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours. Twenty thousand, one hundred and sixty minutes – give or take.
His impatience grew as he counted the seconds it took for her to cross the space between them. Even at a trot, it seemed to take an age and he certainly wasn't getting any warmer. Already the hand that gripped the umbrella was chilled, leather glove or no, and his toes were beginning to ache in his loafers. Not that he imagined Holly was enjoying it any more than he, as fairies had a natural aversion to the cold and today she would not have the insulation of an LEP Shimmer Suit to keep her warm. His suspicions were confirmed a minute later when she finally got within earshot.
"Walk now, talk later," she said in a clipped tone as she came stand beneath his umbrella.
"As you wish," he said and led them back towards the parking lot where Butler would be waiting. It had taken a great deal of convincing to get Butler not to wait with him, but as a) a sniper waiting for Artemis at Tara was extraordinarily unlikely; b) he carried a panic button in his jacket pocket should any sort of emergency arise; and c) Butler would be able to see him through the rearview mirrors, he had finally relented.
Holding the umbrella , Artemis opened the Bentley's backseat door and allowed Holly to get in first before following himself – just as Butler had reminded him to do. While she pulled off her sodden jacket with an air fo disgust, Artemis set aside the umbrella and reached for two thermoses. He opened the first and poured the steaming liquid into the metal cap and handed it to her; he then opened the second and poured himself a capful of steaming espresso, revelling in the warmth of it on his tongue.
"What is this?" Holly said, peering into the thermos cap he had handed her.
"It's a spiced pineapple concoction Butler made up for you since, I believe, you don't drink coffee?"
She took a sip and he was pleased to see the smile that lit up her features. "It's wonderful. But then I can't be surprised if it was Butler's doing. Thank you," she said, catching the bodyguard's eye in the rearview mirror.
"Artemis wanted to make sure you were comfortable as soon as you got here."
Artemis was gratified when she turned then to smile at him as well. "You look tired," he said, noting the bags under her eyes.
She nodded. "I'm usually sound asleep at this time of day. I downed a couple of energy drinks on the shuttle, but the change in schedule's going to take a few days to adjust to."
Savouring the sensation of the hot coffee sliding down his esophagus and into his stomach, Artemis took in the sight before him: Holly Short, dressed not in an LEP standard issue Shimmer Suit or a pilfered human child's outfit to be used as a hasty disguise, but in a fitted green shirt and khaki slacks, topped off with a pair of athletic shoes inscribed with the Gnommish letters of the manufacturer's logo.
"I'm very glad to see you," he said. She smiled once again and settled herself in the crook of his arm.
Two weeks and he intended to make the best of every minute of it. All twenty thousand, one hundred and sixty minutes of it.
ooo
Shielded, Holly hovered in the shadowy corridor, watching him. Not because he was up to anything suspicious (she had made it quite clear that if she found him doing anything sneaky she would pack up and head home without a word), but for the simple pleasure of watching him move.
Upon arriving at Fowl Manor, she had dropped her bag in Artemis's room and promptly fallen asleep on his bed. The few hours' rest had done her good and it was dusk when she woke and got up in search of him. The silence had been unnerving; it reminded her far too much of her first visit to Fowl Manor when she had freed herself from her cell and wandered the corridors, past vaulted rooms, all empty. The manor had seemed mausoleum-like then, all the more so for the blue rinse she had known was coming. It had been a tomb in the making.
Things were different now, but the silence remained unsettling and she had been relieved when she had heard notes of music begin wafting through the hallways. She had followed them like breadcrumbs to a parlour where Artemis sat at a grand piano set at an angle to the door. From where she stood, he was outlined in profile against the pale curtains in the window behind him, and she had a fine view of his hands as they traipsed along the black and white keys.
On her way here, she had passed the Fowl family portraits again. They still had an unpleasant effect as they scowled down at her, but the pairs of blue eyes that she had once thought to be suspicious and glittering now seemed only sharp and attentive. She had one of those eyes herself now.
His fingers danced lightly over the keys. Something classical, she imagined, but she didn't keep track of that sort of thing. Instead, she all but ignored the music itself as her eyes traced the movements of his hands. He had beautiful hands, his fingers long and slender – elfin really. They were different species, it was true, but human proportions were nearly identical to that of elves, though on a larger scale of course.
The way his fingers gently caressed the keys made her shiver, the lightest touch calling out the soft, fleeting notes or, as his feet pumped the pedals, lingering, drawn out tones. He teased out their deepest secrets, calling from the instrument something resonant and powerful – or something fragile as his fingers darted up the white spine of the keyboard to flit over the highest notes.
His caresses increased in ardour as the music came to a crescendo, fingers moving at a quickened pace over the white tabs. His hands rose and dipped, alternately stroked and pounded the keys, moving with such quickness that even Holly, who by no means considered herself an afficionado of classical music, could not but admire his dexterity.
It was only as the final notes of the piece faded away that Holly moved out of the shadows, striding across the room, slowing the vibration of her molecules as she did, to once again reenter the visible spectrum. Artemis turned to face her a smile on his lips, apparently unfazed by her abrupt appearance. "Good evening, Holly. Did you sleep well?"
She nodded but her eyes were drawn again to those slender fingers, his hands resting now in his lap. She reached out and took his left hand in hers, inspecting it. It was the hand that had been altered during his first venture into the time stream, so that his index and middle fingers had switched places. "Is it more difficult to play with your hand like this?" she asked.
He titled his head, brow slightly furrowed. "It required some getting used to initially, but over the subsequent years it's had a negligible impact on my coordination." For a few moments, she continued to inspect his hands. "Holly," he said, reaching out to tilt her chin up so he could look her in the face, "is there something on your mind?"
"Yes," she said, an impish smile curling her lips. "Something." She tugged him to his feet. "Come on, let's put those beautiful hands of yours to good use."