Disclaimer:

However much I wish it so,

I cannot take, I cannot steal,

To greed I give a hearty no!

Since copyrights are so real.

Bad disclaimer, I know. Give my unpoetic mind a chance.

This particular chapter was done with Telpyvien's assistance, since I don't know what normal people do in the morning. All I do is eat, wash my face, brush my teeth, and I'm ready to go (I'm adamantly against all forms of cosmetics). Obviously not how Juliet would act.

Chapter Twenty: Bar

Mondays were never Juliet's favorite day of the week. The fact that Mary barged into her room at four in the morning only made it worse.

She sat up in bed, half-glaring at the bright-eyed Sue before her. "Now what?" she snapped, rubbing her eyes blearily.

Mary smiled brilliantly, flashing teeth that would have put Lockhart to shame. "First day on the job! Come on, we need to get there by five!" She pulled on Juliet's green comforter, causing Juliet's legs to curl beneath her at the onslaught of cold air.

Juliet reached forward and snagged the covers from Mary's hand, throwing them up over her head. She dully noted that Mary's eyes were an uninteresting shade of gray. "No," she muttered from the warmth of the blankets, wrapping them firmly around her so she wouldn't be able to be bared to the air again. "And besides, I don't have work to go to."

She could practically see Mary's frown as she tried to puzzle things said. "But I thought," Mary started slowly, her voice muted through the thick comforter, "that you wanted a job at The Three Broomsticks. I arranged an interview with the chief bartender and everything."

Nerve impulses sluggishly began to move in Juliet's mind, struggling to wake against natural morning lethargy. Memory was pulled from whiny neurons, slowly putting together memories of the last few days. Yes, she had said early on that she wanted a job as a waitress to support herself. That was her cover story so she could stay relatively close to Artemis, under the name of Alice.

Her heart skipped a beat. She hadn't been doing anything at all to support her pseudonym—in fact, Mary-Sue even called her Juliet. The deed said, very specifically in flourishing calligraphy, ­Alice VanHartesveldt.

She was so screwed.

Juliet leapt out of bed, eliciting a yelp from Mary-Sue as the comforter was thrown over her head. Two long paces brought her to the shared bathroom at the other side of the room, and the door slammed behind her.

The bathroom was one of the few rooms Juliet had conceded the right of color choice to Mary-Sue. Violet was the perfect color for it; pale shades of lavender, blue-ish periwinkle, bolder indigo. It had been painted, of course, by Juliet, who could reach the ceiling and higher reaches of the wall far better then the petite Mary, but her roommate had a talent for decorating. Everything was muted and soft, so very unlike the bright pink and greens of Juliet's room and the gold intermixed in Mary's.

Juliet wiggled her toes in the chenille indigo carpet, inspecting herself in the mirror. Her face seemed relatively good, although a bit greasy; she snagged a cotton swab, wetted it, and scrubbed her face vigorously. When she was done, her face practically glowed with enraged capillaries.

She was about to reach for her toothbrush when a small white case caught her eyes. It was completely unmarked except for a sweeping V on the cover. Curious, she opened the case.

Two small disks spilled out on the counter, violet-hued against the creamy yellow of the counter.

"Contacts?" she murmured, holding the slender circlets between her fingers. That would certainly explain the beautiful eyes that glimmered indigo, heliotrope or amethyst, depending on which light she stood in.

­Honestly, Juliet thought, reaching for her hairbrush, basing the color scheme for half the house on vanity.

After a hundred strokes to each side, Mary-Sue pounded on the door. "Thirty minutes! Are you cooking breakfast or me?"

Juliet hastily dropped the brush and unlocked the door. She didn't want Mary-Sue cooking breakfast. After Butler's excellent food at Fowl Manor and the equally scrumptious meals at Ko's, Mary's burnt toast and soggy cereal certainly didn't appeal to her.

Martin 'Martini Joe' Johnson raised an eyebrow at the newest interviewee. She certainly was pretty enough, for being a young teen at five-thirty in the morning, and was well-muscled.

"What was your name again?" he asked, trying to keep as little air as possible from escaping his mouth.

"Alice VanHartesveldt," she said, fluttering her heavily mascara-ed eyes coquettishly, "but my friends call me Juliet."

The man nodded. Well, ­Julietwould do better not to know about the three bottles of brandy he had a few minutes ago. The fact he wasn't wearing any pants beneath the desk only solidified his resolve to get Juliet out of here faster.

He scribbled something down on his notepad, hoping it looked somewhat more professional then his Qadafi cut. "Where do you live?"

She hesitated, causing Martin's hopes to drop a bit. Being a barmaid meant you had to have great memory, and if this girl couldn't even remember her own address…

"Which one?" she asked, blinking sparkling violet eyes. "My home here, or my Uncle's?"

The hopes skyrocketed again. She wanted specifics. Barmaids couldn't just accept 'Ale, and make it quick!' The whats mattered very much in this particular field. Light, or Dark? Ice or no?

"The one here in Hogsmeade."

She nodded, blinking slowly. Martin was presented with a handsome view of the thick layer of mauve eye-shadow. "I live with Mary-Sue, the employee here that rec'd me. Whatever you have on file for her will work for me, too."

Martin blinked. She used words bigger then 'cocktail'. This was getting better by the moment. "'ave you done anything like this before?"

Juliet smiled openly, briefly causing Martin to be reminded of her apparent roommate. They seemed almost like sisters, unusual eyes and all. "I can cook better then most pros. Private lessons, even."

Martin grinned, sticking out a filthy hand. "Welcome to The Three Broomsticks."

Holly frowned, watching the slow oscillations of the tall beech trees around her. She appreciated day in a forest more then night—in these conditions, the foliage more then covered enough UV to make it safe for her and Trouble—but that certainly did not mean night was ugly. Far from it.

Every time the sun slipped beneath the uneven horizon, the stars came out. Holly had rarely been given the chance to simply lie down and watch the stars, since the time that she was aboveground generally involved trolls, goblins, or Artemis Fowl.

They were beautiful beyond belief, calling to the part of Holly's ancient spirit that wanted to wrest the surface from Mud Men. Holly knew they were little more then balls of burning gas, but still… They were beautiful.

She smiled, fingering her helmet comm. Should she call Trouble back? Root forwarded a message from Foaly, saying that he wanted detailed diagrams of Hogwarts so he could plan out how they were going to get their hands on Fowl.

Na, she thought to herself, tracing the exposed side of Sagittarius through the sky. Trouble can take care of himself. If he couldn't, he wouldn't be doing this.

Another thought collided in her head, breaking her calm. Trouble had only gone because most of Recon and Retrieval were handling minor goblin troubles in the tunnels while he got stuck, as the leader of LEPRetrieval One, doing the paperwork. That left him in a convenient position for the Council to put together a strike team.

That had been one of the few things Holly understood about the Council's motives. After Retrieval's disastrous handling of Fowl Manor, they had told Root to put the teams in smaller squads, focusing more one stealth then strength. It had been a rare moment of military intelligence when they put out that order, something that a bunch of fattened bureaucrats could not possibly understand. Holly suspected Vinyáya, the LEP's representation on the Council, in that matter.

Her other hand reached out for the berry-bucket, groped around, then withdrew again with its catch of gooseberries. They were doing quite well here, as it turned out. Holly had even gained a little weight; her ribs didn't stick out anymore. Combined with the limited physical activity of walking twenty-or-so miles with no equipment, she suspected she might even have to cut down a bit on the snowdrop roots.

Holly's eyes raked the stars again. She could pick out Mud Men and Fairy constellations alike in the cloud of crystalline light, thanks to her multi-cultural training, and even a few of the Wizard's. They were all just variations of each other, when one thought about it. Sagittarius became Arcus became Savataur…

She blinked, popping a few more gooseberries into her mouth. The wind whistled through the golden canopies. It was a disturbing thought, thinking that they weren't all that different. Especially after going through all the trouble to make sure that their common roots were now nonexistent.

R. C. Jones staggered into his cluttered office, clutching his battered wand. He had been through Hell to get it back, and he had no intention of forking it over to the monster of a man again.

He shuddered, plopping down in his plush seat by the fireplace. As he soon as he sat down the fire blazed into life, warming his bruised limbs.

Jones realized his mistake too late, jumping back as fast as his battered body would allow. A spell was half-formed in his mouth when the fire flickered into a violet storm, darkness flickering at it center. After several minutes of crackling, a tentative voice asked, "Hello? Anybody there?"

Jones sat sullenly back down in his chair. "Yes, I'm here, Cornelius."

The pudgy face brightened up, and a head reached up through the fire to adjust the bowler hat. "Anything new on Fowl?" Although the Minister didn't openly support reporters like him, he sent money from his own hefty paycheck every so often to encourage articles on his selected targets. Jones set it aside as politics as usual, but sometimes he had his doubts.

Jones thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No. The bodyguard threw me out before I could see anything." His face screwed up in frustration. "And he took my notebook."

Cornelius nodded, although he looked similarly frustrated. He knew, probably quite a bit better then Jones, how he couldn't remember anything if it wasn't written down. His address was scrawled on the inside of his arm. "Pity." He was silent for a moment, then asked cheerily, "But did he abuse you at all? Kick? Punch? Torture? Ele—Elca—Ecle—"

"Electrocute?" Jones provided, trying to redeem himself in Fudge's eyes. Although the Minister never showed outwardly how much he was disappointed, word always came 'round to his mother when the check didn't come. Always. And it hurt.

"Yes, yes, the very thing!" Cornelius beamed at Jones. "Well, did he?"

Jones shook his head. He was a regular supplier to Witch Weekly, yes, but he was not a liar. "No. I wasn't awake for most of it."

"Oh," Cornelius said, obviously disappointed. Then, by way of explanation, "No one's been able to get me anything on Fowl. Not even Skeeter."

Jones was impressed. Skeeter was the best in the field. No one ever found out how she got into the Louvre at night to interview the Mona Lisa—Wizards were proud to call DaVinci one of their own—and Jones doubted they ever would. Even magically-armed robbers had a hard time breaking into the Louvre.

"I'll try again," Jones offered, much to the outcry of his aching muscles. "I know the layout now, and how to avoid the half-giant guard."

Fudge smiled, and his head disappeared from the flames. "I'll remember that," his vaguely discombobulated voice said, and the flames receded to their normal hues.

He paused to reflect on how he came into a first-name basis friendship with the Minister. Cornelius discreetly asked undercover reporters to 'push' articles on selected characters, and since Fóle's brood Fowl was brought into the picture he had asked for him in particular—with no results. The Daily Prophet had to dig up previously tossed stories when half their reporters suddenly broke various limbs.

So Fudge had called him. Jones was not ashamed to say that he was an underdog, but the research he had done on the latest version of the Elf Shoes had revealed embezzlement within the Loafin' Around casual wear company. Mother had baked him a cake that week for being such a good boy. He was a rising star.

Still, Fudge could be a pain at times. He had put a spell on Jones' fireplace so he could talk to Jones at any time, and an alarm spell to boot. He had figured out the radius of the alarm—two meters around his fireplace—but he forgot about it. A lot.

Sughing inwardly, Jones picked up a copy of The Daily Prophet from his desk. It was still hot. And had Artemis Fowl's scowling picture across the front.

"Damn!"

Sorry about how these three chapters are a bit short. It's harder to keep length in perspective when writing multiple chapters at the same time.

Namárië,

Nallasariel the Weeper