- Fowl Manor, Ireland -
Angeline had been warned: "His name's Mulch and he's a dwarf," Kip had said before going upstairs to the study to be with Arty. She had some sort of strange book in her hand, turned so the title wasn't visible, but the cover itself was different. Anyway, the doorbell rang around ten o'clock and, Juliet being off somewhere, Angeline answered it.
"Dwarf" certainly seemed like a good warning: the man was three feet tall. "Good morning, Mrs. Fowl," he said pleasantly, flashing yellowish teeth from somewhere within his beard. "Is Narda available?"
Angeline had the feeling that Kip knew this man more than she was letting on, especially if he called her "Narda." Just that morning Juliet had addressed her as such and her eyes narrowed, correcting the servant to "Kip, please." "You must be Mulch. They're in the study."
"Thank you," Mulch said, insisting he knew the way himself. She didn't bother asking how.
"I don't believe it," Kip was saying, seated in the oversized window seat, head bent over a book.
"What?" Artemis asked. He was at a computer, for some odd reason playing hearts.
"This guy is an idiot!" She pointed at something in her book. "I mean, there was enough to come to that conclusion in your first criminal record - "
"I resent that!"
"But here, Chix Verbil sounds like a complete idiot, a guy who only thinks with his - oh, hey, Mulch."
Drat. Mulch wanted to know what she thought Chix used instead of a brain. "Hi, Narda."
"And?" Artemis prompted, clicking to close the window he was on, though not before Mulch noticed he was losing.
"This." Mulch gave him a Polaroid photograph. The owner of the camera would find it in the park's lost and found. "That was scratched on the wall. Thought you'd want to see it. I mean, I figured it's be for you, being in English and all."
Artemis frowned at it. "Well, obviously someone wasn't caught completely unaware, but didn't think he'd end up getting away."
"Well?" Kip asked, maneuvering around a printer, a monitor, and some computer cables in order to get out of the window seat. "And we'll end up going . . ."
The Mud Boy - oops, Mulch corrected; Mud Man - shook his head. "I honestly have no idea. This isn't a very good clue." He passed it to her as she sat cross-legged on the floor by his feet.
"What, the genius doesn't get it so he hands it to me?" She grinned at him, but couldn't help laughing as she looked at the picture. "Honestly, Arty, you need to get out more. Do you even own a TV?"
"What do you think that is?" he asked, pointing to a monitor that showed Butler going on his rounds.
"Cable, maybe. VCR. Video tapes. Nah, scratch that; with you it'd be DVDs. What do you do in our free time, anyway?"
"Write textbooks."
A light bulb seemed to go on over her head. "Oh my God. I wondered why that sounded familiar."
"Excuse me?" Artemis asked wearily, in case another insult was coming.
"You. You wrote the phycology book my counselor used at school. It's your fault I'm messed up."
He shrugged. "If this is what you call messed up, I'll gladly take all the credit."
"Arty!" She punched him lightly in the knee. "Don't you get it? They were using your method to analyze my brain. You shaped a rather large chunk of my childhood."
"Seems like you turned out all right, despite it all," Mulch chimed in. "Now, what's it mean?"
Kip rolled her eyes. "Right, Frankenstein. And our genius here doesn't get it."
"Narda!" Artemis was pretending to pout.
"Honestly, before this is over I'm going to rent a stack of all the best movies and make you watch them all! 'Ever After' -"
"Chick flick," Mulch chimed in.
"'The Princess Bride' -"
"Funny chick flick."
"Anything Mel Brooks -"
"I'll join you on those!"
"Katherine Tanardawen Anderson!"
"Artemis Fowl Junior!" she replied happily. "All right, all right. Look, Frankenstein was the doctor who built the humanoid monster, usually portrayed as green with a scar on his forehead and bolts coming out of his neck."
"I thought the thing was called Frankenstein."
"No, just his monster."
"Wait!" Mulch was thinking. It looked like hard work. "The Gremlins tried to do that a few centuries ago, make a better Mud Man."
"So Mary Shelley had some help with her book." Kip shrugged. "Anyway, that took place in Germany, in the Black Forest, because supposedly Dr. Frankenstein knew there were witches in the area and wanted their help."
Artemis sat back with a smile. Germany. Now they were getting somewhere.
* * *
Angeline Fowl thought it was cute how, in some ways, Kip and Arty were exact opposites. Within the first few days she picked up that Kip was much more casual. She would flop down on the floor when reading a book, head propped up on her hand, where Arty would always - always - sit carefully, back ramrod straight on a sofa or chair. He had made some comment about this to her and she had laughed. "Yeah, well, first off, your floors are probably a lot cleaner than the one in my apartment. That, and your shirts weren't three for five bucks at a Goodwill clearance sale." Actually, Angeline thought it was good for Arty to be around her in that aspect. He had never been very relaxed, not even in the few short years she could actually consider him a child.
Kip balanced him in other ways, too. While he was a complete whiz with anything technological, she was telling the truth when she said jokingly that she could barely turn on a computer without having it explode in her face. Something about her just made the things go haywire. And the fact that she was joking, often laughing and smiling - Angeline had seen her son laugh more in the few days he had been back with her than in his entire lifetime.
Angeline honestly liked the girl, partially because she seemed so devoted to Arty. When they were together, more often than not she would be holding his hand, touching his shoulder, or giving him a playful punch on the arm. The expression in her eyes when she looked at him - it made Angeline think back to when she and Tim had first met. It was exactly the same look, she was sure, and even more so because the looks Arty gave Kip when he thought she wasn't looking exactly imitated the looks Tim had given her.
She sighed happily, looking at the new picture standing on the mantelpiece in a frame of delicate silver filigree. It had been taken by one of the security cameras, so it was in black and white, but enlarged and printed on photo quality paper, it was priceless. Arty and Kip in the window seat, his arm around her and their heads bent together as they read over something. Angeline had felt like a spy when she froze the image, and perhaps even more so when she put the frame in such a prominent place, but this was the picture she wanted to send out on the wedding invitations.
Whoops. Better not mention that when Arty was around. He'd get all flustered and his ears would turn pink like they had when Juliet had flippantly asked him if he'd French kissed Kip yet. The thought made Angeline laugh. Arty, embarrassed? Before, she would not have thought such a thing possible. Then again, the thought of Arty in love would have made her scoff, until she met Kip.
The girl was definitely staying, Angeline decided. No ifs, ands, or buts. That firmly in her mind, she picked up a dog-eared romance novel and began to read it for the fifth time.
This might help the reader understand why, when Juliet knocked on her door and informed her, flicking her long blonde hair over her shoulder, that Arty and that girl wanted to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Fowl, Angeline had a pre- formed idea of what the matter of such importance would be. Therefore, when Kip took a deep breath, looked at her hands, and said, "My father has been kidnapped," neither Angeline nor her husband quite knew what to say.
Finally she asked, "You know it's him for sure?"
"Positive." Kip looked up. "And that's not all."
"Oh?" Artemis Senior raised an eyebrow. "And the rest would be . . ."
"He's a sprite and he was kidnapped by Gremlins intent on taking the world back from humans."
Artemis Junior would not have worded it quite that way, but he wasn't the one telling the story. Kip had said she would, and, in doing so, mention only his own second involvement with the LEP, leaving out the kidnapping story and all the baggage that entailed. So he was letting her do this her own way.
Angeline looked rather shocked. "Pardon me for asking, Kip, but have you ever undergone psychological counseling?"
Kip rolled her eyes. "The answer to that would be 'yes,' but pretend for a moment I'm not crazy, okay? Look, Mulch isn't human - he's seriously a dwarf. And he's met my - my father." Her nose wrinkled at that. "Anyway, all the fairies - that's the general term for magical people - seem to have been kidnapped by the Gremlins, who are intent on taking the earth back from the Mud Men - that's humans - and Artemis, Butler, Mulch and I are going to Germany to try and set them free.
"Fairies, Artemis?" the man asked his son.
"Seriously, yes," he said, leveling his gaze at his father. "They helped me rescue you."
He had to laugh at that. "Oh, really?"
"Trust me." Kip slid a paper clipped stack of papers toward him, the People's second book on Arty, translated and edited so it did not appear to be the second. "That's the whole thing, if you're interested, but we actually need to leave soon, since we've no idea what we're getting into."
Angeline was giving Kip a piercing look. "You actually believe all this."
"Yes."
"A fairy. Your father, a fairy." Angeline couldn't help it; she cracked up.
Kip sighed, rolled her eyes, and disappeared. Well, "disappeared" was the Mud Man term; a fairy would have known she was shielding, and in doing so breaking about seventeen different fairy codes. Not like Kip usually lived by them, anyway.
Artemis Senior's teeth clenched. "Explain," he barked.
Artemis Junior shrugged. "She's using her magic. They call it shielding. Actually, she's just vibrating too quickly for our eyes to notice."
"You're joking," Angeline said softly, eyes glued to Kip's seemingly empty chair.
"No." Kip popped back into view. "We're telling the truth and, if any of the rest of them find out, we'll be in big trouble for giving away fairy secrets. But the truth is we have to go to Germany and rescue my father's people because, if the Gremlins succeed, they'll have managed to wipe out all humans rather violently."
"Wait, wait." Mister Fowl held up a hand. "If the Gremlins can do this, why haven't your father's people done this yet?"
"Fairies are generally peace-loving people and would rather not get into a turf war about all this."
"But the . . . the Gremlins . . . are dangerous." Angeline still looked a bit pale.
"Yes. That's why Butler's coming," Arty explained.
"But that's one bodyguard for the two of you," Artemis Senior pointed out.
"Three; you forgot Mulch."
"Three, then." Artemis waved his son's comment away. "You know we don't operate like that. Every Fowl family member - or soon to be family member" - his eyes challenged anyone to speak out against that - "goes under the protection of a Butler."
"But -"
"No buts!" he commanded, voice resonant with authority. "Juliet! Get in here."
Artemis sighed. "Why don't you just use the Mesmer?" he muttered quietly.
Kip didn't answer, sitting stonily silent as Mister Fowl explained to Juliet that, because of certain circumstances, she would be accompanying Kip to Germany. Juliet looked smug. In case this was not clear before - and it probably was not - Juliet, though four years his elder, had a gigantic crush on Artemis Junior, and therefore felt nothing but jealousy toward Kip. As if she was going to let them go anywhere alone.
Juliet smiled through her lipstick. "Of course I'll protect her," she said sweetly. "She obviously needs it."
"And if she didn't?" Butler asked lightly. As much as he loved his baby sister, he was sure his employer would never look at her the way he looked at Kip.
"Then I'd have no need to go."
This was a mistake, especially because Butler nodded. That was the cue. Within thirty seconds Kip had expertly pinned Juliet three times, the second and third because the younger Butler had come after her, begging for more. "Looks like you have no need to go," Butler said lightly after Juliet got up, flinging her hair furiously over her shoulder.
The Fowls were more than a little shocked. Butler, you see, had caught Kip practicing one day and the two of them had sparred. What she lacked in size, Kip made up for in speed.
Finally Angeline managed a "Where did you learn that?"
"The nuns," Kip said, sitting back down.
"Nuns?"
"At the orphanage. Because they were all positive that, one day, we would go into a big city and be 'set upon by men with unclean intentions.'" She shrugged. "And it was something to do."
The elder Mister Fowl cleared his throat. "I, uh, suppose it will be the four of you, then. When are you leaving?"
"Tomorrow," Butler said smoothly.
"And when will you be back?" Mrs. Fowl asked weakly. She could handle Kip being part - er, fairy, or being as skilled in hand-to-hand combat as a Butler who had really had no chance to hone her skills on the job, but both? Even Arty seemed surprised that Kip was a regular Jackie Chan.
Kip shrugged. "After we've succeeded."
"And if we fail, then it won't really matter, anyway," Artemis said bluntly.
Angeline winced. But she didn't say anything else. She decided all she wanted right then was another romance novel and a cup of strong tea. Artemis Senior decided to join her on the tea.
Artemis Junior, however, looked at Kip with as much amazement and admiration as Juliet was shooting hatred across the room. "Wow," was all he could think of to say to her.
Kip shrugged. She realized she would have to seem to him like Princess Fiona seemed to Shrek while battling Robin Hood and his Merry Men, except Artemis probably hadn't seen that movie. So she just laughed, going upstairs to finish packing her things, still chuckling to herself all the while.
- En route to Freiburg, Germany -
"Something wrong?" Artemis asked. Kip had been quiet all through the plane ride and now, speeding along a highway in a rather subdued limo, she was keeping her silence.
"Arty. He did a bomb check before we got in the car."
She was referring to Butler, of course. "You, ah, noticed?"
Kip shot him a look. "Ah, yeah."
"He does that all the time," Artemis said, trying to sound nonchalant.
"I don't know what scares me more, the fact that he feels the need to do it or the fact that he does it so naturally." She leaned back on the plush seats, glad the privacy glass was up and that Mulch had been convinced he should sit in the front seat. "Is it really necessary?"
"You mean, are people routinely trying to kill me?" he asked, sliding an arm around her shoulders. "Only when I'm working with Holly."
"What are we going to find out there, Arty?" she asked softly, gaze searching the countryside as it whipped by. "We don't even really know what we're looking for."
Artemis said nothing. For once, he didn't have all the answers.
- Place Unknown -
Foaly flicked his tail in annoyance. "So, what do we do?" he asked tersely.
"I wouldn't talk, horse boy," Root grunted, lying on his back and gritting his teeth in pain. "You're lucky you don't have any magic for them to take."
Holly was as far away from the commander as it was possible to get and not feel too uncomfortable. "They've won," she said softly.
"What?"
"They've won, Foaly." Her eyes turned to him. "The Gremlins have won."
That was enough even to make Chix lift up his head. Holly, giving in?
"It's true," she said wearily. "They have our magic, and an intelligence we didn't even think they had . . . and Artemis is gone; he's not coming to rescue us . . . we're going to die here, used up, waste away . . . and the world will belong to the Gremlins, at least, if there's anything left after the fight . . . it's over," she said, voice seeming to be firm, because she knew it to be true.
Foaly didn't have anything to say to that. Sarcasm didn't seem appropriate.
Angeline had been warned: "His name's Mulch and he's a dwarf," Kip had said before going upstairs to the study to be with Arty. She had some sort of strange book in her hand, turned so the title wasn't visible, but the cover itself was different. Anyway, the doorbell rang around ten o'clock and, Juliet being off somewhere, Angeline answered it.
"Dwarf" certainly seemed like a good warning: the man was three feet tall. "Good morning, Mrs. Fowl," he said pleasantly, flashing yellowish teeth from somewhere within his beard. "Is Narda available?"
Angeline had the feeling that Kip knew this man more than she was letting on, especially if he called her "Narda." Just that morning Juliet had addressed her as such and her eyes narrowed, correcting the servant to "Kip, please." "You must be Mulch. They're in the study."
"Thank you," Mulch said, insisting he knew the way himself. She didn't bother asking how.
"I don't believe it," Kip was saying, seated in the oversized window seat, head bent over a book.
"What?" Artemis asked. He was at a computer, for some odd reason playing hearts.
"This guy is an idiot!" She pointed at something in her book. "I mean, there was enough to come to that conclusion in your first criminal record - "
"I resent that!"
"But here, Chix Verbil sounds like a complete idiot, a guy who only thinks with his - oh, hey, Mulch."
Drat. Mulch wanted to know what she thought Chix used instead of a brain. "Hi, Narda."
"And?" Artemis prompted, clicking to close the window he was on, though not before Mulch noticed he was losing.
"This." Mulch gave him a Polaroid photograph. The owner of the camera would find it in the park's lost and found. "That was scratched on the wall. Thought you'd want to see it. I mean, I figured it's be for you, being in English and all."
Artemis frowned at it. "Well, obviously someone wasn't caught completely unaware, but didn't think he'd end up getting away."
"Well?" Kip asked, maneuvering around a printer, a monitor, and some computer cables in order to get out of the window seat. "And we'll end up going . . ."
The Mud Boy - oops, Mulch corrected; Mud Man - shook his head. "I honestly have no idea. This isn't a very good clue." He passed it to her as she sat cross-legged on the floor by his feet.
"What, the genius doesn't get it so he hands it to me?" She grinned at him, but couldn't help laughing as she looked at the picture. "Honestly, Arty, you need to get out more. Do you even own a TV?"
"What do you think that is?" he asked, pointing to a monitor that showed Butler going on his rounds.
"Cable, maybe. VCR. Video tapes. Nah, scratch that; with you it'd be DVDs. What do you do in our free time, anyway?"
"Write textbooks."
A light bulb seemed to go on over her head. "Oh my God. I wondered why that sounded familiar."
"Excuse me?" Artemis asked wearily, in case another insult was coming.
"You. You wrote the phycology book my counselor used at school. It's your fault I'm messed up."
He shrugged. "If this is what you call messed up, I'll gladly take all the credit."
"Arty!" She punched him lightly in the knee. "Don't you get it? They were using your method to analyze my brain. You shaped a rather large chunk of my childhood."
"Seems like you turned out all right, despite it all," Mulch chimed in. "Now, what's it mean?"
Kip rolled her eyes. "Right, Frankenstein. And our genius here doesn't get it."
"Narda!" Artemis was pretending to pout.
"Honestly, before this is over I'm going to rent a stack of all the best movies and make you watch them all! 'Ever After' -"
"Chick flick," Mulch chimed in.
"'The Princess Bride' -"
"Funny chick flick."
"Anything Mel Brooks -"
"I'll join you on those!"
"Katherine Tanardawen Anderson!"
"Artemis Fowl Junior!" she replied happily. "All right, all right. Look, Frankenstein was the doctor who built the humanoid monster, usually portrayed as green with a scar on his forehead and bolts coming out of his neck."
"I thought the thing was called Frankenstein."
"No, just his monster."
"Wait!" Mulch was thinking. It looked like hard work. "The Gremlins tried to do that a few centuries ago, make a better Mud Man."
"So Mary Shelley had some help with her book." Kip shrugged. "Anyway, that took place in Germany, in the Black Forest, because supposedly Dr. Frankenstein knew there were witches in the area and wanted their help."
Artemis sat back with a smile. Germany. Now they were getting somewhere.
* * *
Angeline Fowl thought it was cute how, in some ways, Kip and Arty were exact opposites. Within the first few days she picked up that Kip was much more casual. She would flop down on the floor when reading a book, head propped up on her hand, where Arty would always - always - sit carefully, back ramrod straight on a sofa or chair. He had made some comment about this to her and she had laughed. "Yeah, well, first off, your floors are probably a lot cleaner than the one in my apartment. That, and your shirts weren't three for five bucks at a Goodwill clearance sale." Actually, Angeline thought it was good for Arty to be around her in that aspect. He had never been very relaxed, not even in the few short years she could actually consider him a child.
Kip balanced him in other ways, too. While he was a complete whiz with anything technological, she was telling the truth when she said jokingly that she could barely turn on a computer without having it explode in her face. Something about her just made the things go haywire. And the fact that she was joking, often laughing and smiling - Angeline had seen her son laugh more in the few days he had been back with her than in his entire lifetime.
Angeline honestly liked the girl, partially because she seemed so devoted to Arty. When they were together, more often than not she would be holding his hand, touching his shoulder, or giving him a playful punch on the arm. The expression in her eyes when she looked at him - it made Angeline think back to when she and Tim had first met. It was exactly the same look, she was sure, and even more so because the looks Arty gave Kip when he thought she wasn't looking exactly imitated the looks Tim had given her.
She sighed happily, looking at the new picture standing on the mantelpiece in a frame of delicate silver filigree. It had been taken by one of the security cameras, so it was in black and white, but enlarged and printed on photo quality paper, it was priceless. Arty and Kip in the window seat, his arm around her and their heads bent together as they read over something. Angeline had felt like a spy when she froze the image, and perhaps even more so when she put the frame in such a prominent place, but this was the picture she wanted to send out on the wedding invitations.
Whoops. Better not mention that when Arty was around. He'd get all flustered and his ears would turn pink like they had when Juliet had flippantly asked him if he'd French kissed Kip yet. The thought made Angeline laugh. Arty, embarrassed? Before, she would not have thought such a thing possible. Then again, the thought of Arty in love would have made her scoff, until she met Kip.
The girl was definitely staying, Angeline decided. No ifs, ands, or buts. That firmly in her mind, she picked up a dog-eared romance novel and began to read it for the fifth time.
This might help the reader understand why, when Juliet knocked on her door and informed her, flicking her long blonde hair over her shoulder, that Arty and that girl wanted to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Fowl, Angeline had a pre- formed idea of what the matter of such importance would be. Therefore, when Kip took a deep breath, looked at her hands, and said, "My father has been kidnapped," neither Angeline nor her husband quite knew what to say.
Finally she asked, "You know it's him for sure?"
"Positive." Kip looked up. "And that's not all."
"Oh?" Artemis Senior raised an eyebrow. "And the rest would be . . ."
"He's a sprite and he was kidnapped by Gremlins intent on taking the world back from humans."
Artemis Junior would not have worded it quite that way, but he wasn't the one telling the story. Kip had said she would, and, in doing so, mention only his own second involvement with the LEP, leaving out the kidnapping story and all the baggage that entailed. So he was letting her do this her own way.
Angeline looked rather shocked. "Pardon me for asking, Kip, but have you ever undergone psychological counseling?"
Kip rolled her eyes. "The answer to that would be 'yes,' but pretend for a moment I'm not crazy, okay? Look, Mulch isn't human - he's seriously a dwarf. And he's met my - my father." Her nose wrinkled at that. "Anyway, all the fairies - that's the general term for magical people - seem to have been kidnapped by the Gremlins, who are intent on taking the earth back from the Mud Men - that's humans - and Artemis, Butler, Mulch and I are going to Germany to try and set them free.
"Fairies, Artemis?" the man asked his son.
"Seriously, yes," he said, leveling his gaze at his father. "They helped me rescue you."
He had to laugh at that. "Oh, really?"
"Trust me." Kip slid a paper clipped stack of papers toward him, the People's second book on Arty, translated and edited so it did not appear to be the second. "That's the whole thing, if you're interested, but we actually need to leave soon, since we've no idea what we're getting into."
Angeline was giving Kip a piercing look. "You actually believe all this."
"Yes."
"A fairy. Your father, a fairy." Angeline couldn't help it; she cracked up.
Kip sighed, rolled her eyes, and disappeared. Well, "disappeared" was the Mud Man term; a fairy would have known she was shielding, and in doing so breaking about seventeen different fairy codes. Not like Kip usually lived by them, anyway.
Artemis Senior's teeth clenched. "Explain," he barked.
Artemis Junior shrugged. "She's using her magic. They call it shielding. Actually, she's just vibrating too quickly for our eyes to notice."
"You're joking," Angeline said softly, eyes glued to Kip's seemingly empty chair.
"No." Kip popped back into view. "We're telling the truth and, if any of the rest of them find out, we'll be in big trouble for giving away fairy secrets. But the truth is we have to go to Germany and rescue my father's people because, if the Gremlins succeed, they'll have managed to wipe out all humans rather violently."
"Wait, wait." Mister Fowl held up a hand. "If the Gremlins can do this, why haven't your father's people done this yet?"
"Fairies are generally peace-loving people and would rather not get into a turf war about all this."
"But the . . . the Gremlins . . . are dangerous." Angeline still looked a bit pale.
"Yes. That's why Butler's coming," Arty explained.
"But that's one bodyguard for the two of you," Artemis Senior pointed out.
"Three; you forgot Mulch."
"Three, then." Artemis waved his son's comment away. "You know we don't operate like that. Every Fowl family member - or soon to be family member" - his eyes challenged anyone to speak out against that - "goes under the protection of a Butler."
"But -"
"No buts!" he commanded, voice resonant with authority. "Juliet! Get in here."
Artemis sighed. "Why don't you just use the Mesmer?" he muttered quietly.
Kip didn't answer, sitting stonily silent as Mister Fowl explained to Juliet that, because of certain circumstances, she would be accompanying Kip to Germany. Juliet looked smug. In case this was not clear before - and it probably was not - Juliet, though four years his elder, had a gigantic crush on Artemis Junior, and therefore felt nothing but jealousy toward Kip. As if she was going to let them go anywhere alone.
Juliet smiled through her lipstick. "Of course I'll protect her," she said sweetly. "She obviously needs it."
"And if she didn't?" Butler asked lightly. As much as he loved his baby sister, he was sure his employer would never look at her the way he looked at Kip.
"Then I'd have no need to go."
This was a mistake, especially because Butler nodded. That was the cue. Within thirty seconds Kip had expertly pinned Juliet three times, the second and third because the younger Butler had come after her, begging for more. "Looks like you have no need to go," Butler said lightly after Juliet got up, flinging her hair furiously over her shoulder.
The Fowls were more than a little shocked. Butler, you see, had caught Kip practicing one day and the two of them had sparred. What she lacked in size, Kip made up for in speed.
Finally Angeline managed a "Where did you learn that?"
"The nuns," Kip said, sitting back down.
"Nuns?"
"At the orphanage. Because they were all positive that, one day, we would go into a big city and be 'set upon by men with unclean intentions.'" She shrugged. "And it was something to do."
The elder Mister Fowl cleared his throat. "I, uh, suppose it will be the four of you, then. When are you leaving?"
"Tomorrow," Butler said smoothly.
"And when will you be back?" Mrs. Fowl asked weakly. She could handle Kip being part - er, fairy, or being as skilled in hand-to-hand combat as a Butler who had really had no chance to hone her skills on the job, but both? Even Arty seemed surprised that Kip was a regular Jackie Chan.
Kip shrugged. "After we've succeeded."
"And if we fail, then it won't really matter, anyway," Artemis said bluntly.
Angeline winced. But she didn't say anything else. She decided all she wanted right then was another romance novel and a cup of strong tea. Artemis Senior decided to join her on the tea.
Artemis Junior, however, looked at Kip with as much amazement and admiration as Juliet was shooting hatred across the room. "Wow," was all he could think of to say to her.
Kip shrugged. She realized she would have to seem to him like Princess Fiona seemed to Shrek while battling Robin Hood and his Merry Men, except Artemis probably hadn't seen that movie. So she just laughed, going upstairs to finish packing her things, still chuckling to herself all the while.
- En route to Freiburg, Germany -
"Something wrong?" Artemis asked. Kip had been quiet all through the plane ride and now, speeding along a highway in a rather subdued limo, she was keeping her silence.
"Arty. He did a bomb check before we got in the car."
She was referring to Butler, of course. "You, ah, noticed?"
Kip shot him a look. "Ah, yeah."
"He does that all the time," Artemis said, trying to sound nonchalant.
"I don't know what scares me more, the fact that he feels the need to do it or the fact that he does it so naturally." She leaned back on the plush seats, glad the privacy glass was up and that Mulch had been convinced he should sit in the front seat. "Is it really necessary?"
"You mean, are people routinely trying to kill me?" he asked, sliding an arm around her shoulders. "Only when I'm working with Holly."
"What are we going to find out there, Arty?" she asked softly, gaze searching the countryside as it whipped by. "We don't even really know what we're looking for."
Artemis said nothing. For once, he didn't have all the answers.
- Place Unknown -
Foaly flicked his tail in annoyance. "So, what do we do?" he asked tersely.
"I wouldn't talk, horse boy," Root grunted, lying on his back and gritting his teeth in pain. "You're lucky you don't have any magic for them to take."
Holly was as far away from the commander as it was possible to get and not feel too uncomfortable. "They've won," she said softly.
"What?"
"They've won, Foaly." Her eyes turned to him. "The Gremlins have won."
That was enough even to make Chix lift up his head. Holly, giving in?
"It's true," she said wearily. "They have our magic, and an intelligence we didn't even think they had . . . and Artemis is gone; he's not coming to rescue us . . . we're going to die here, used up, waste away . . . and the world will belong to the Gremlins, at least, if there's anything left after the fight . . . it's over," she said, voice seeming to be firm, because she knew it to be true.
Foaly didn't have anything to say to that. Sarcasm didn't seem appropriate.