AN: Another chapter of insanity. For those who don't know, a nest chair is kind of like a huge bowl, only with legs. It's impossible to sit up right in one unless you had four legs, which is why Foaly would probably like it. Just thought I'd mention it, as every person I know seems to call it something different. And, on a note, Kim's ghost story is true. Or at least she says it's true. Believe or disbelieve rests with you.

Kel's Rant:

Okay, we got a review saying that Artemis knows Gnommish, which is the common belief among fan fiction writers. It is, however, false. And I have proof! When Artemis first captured Holly and he was examining her locater in the back of the van, he had to run a scanner over it and translate it on his laptop to find out what it was. What's more, even if he could read it, he wouldn't have a clue how to speak it, because he's only seen hieroglyphic-like symbols, and he has no way of knowing how they are pronounced. When he told Holly he knew Gnommish, he was bluffing, like every other thing he said in that chapter. Thank you.

Foaly clip-clopped down the hall to the dining room, Kim following behind him. When they entered the large room, everyone was seated at the long table, on which a huge selection of food was laid out.

"Whoa," muttered the girl, sliding into a seat across from the commander. "A typical breakfast for me on Saturday is leftover pizza and orange juice."

Foaly settled himself into a nest chair Juliet had dragged in from the living room. "Hardly healthy for a growing teenager. I prefer organic carrot juice to your genetically altered fruit juice. You'd be surprised the amount of pesticides on Mud Man foods."

"Oh, a nutritionist now, are we?" she said, rolling her eyes. She considered taking an apple from the silver bowl in front of her, but if movies had taught her anything, they were probably wax. No need to give Fowl another reason to ridicule her.

"Want some bacon?" offered Juliet, passing a plate down.

Root snorted. "I can't believe you humans are so barbaric as to slaughter a helpless animal, just for food. It's disgusting."

"I know," agreed Kim, reaching for a blueberry muffin. "I read this thing in a book once on how they kill them. Get this, they take this hole puncher, only it's really, really big, and they line it up with the pig's head, and …"

"We're trying to eat, you know," snapped Artemis. "Kindly keep your opinions to yourself."

"Well sorry, Your Highness. If I was trying to gross you out, I'd just start telling The Bloodied Arm. Talk about gore, that story is disgusting. I mean, it's about…"

"I think we can guess what it's about from the title," said Holly, rolling her eyes. "Honestly, you humans are never happy unless blood is being shed. I mean, how can you eat meat? It's just gross."

"I'm a vegetarian actually. Well, sort of. I still eat seafood. Once you have Nova Scotia seafood, you don't give it up too easily. Anyway, fish aren't really animals anyway. Are all faeries vegetarian, or is it just you two?"

"Most are," replied Foaly, snatching an apple and taking a bite. Obviously not wax, then. "But it depends on the species. Sprites and centaurs are completely Vegan, due to biological reasons. Animal products don't agree with us, and I'll leave it at that. Except, of course, for insects. Elves and pixies are mostly all vegetarian, but a fair number eat fish, like Commander Root. Some are Vegan, but it's a personal choice. Dwarves, gnomes, and goblins are mostly insectivores, but a lot eat meat."

"Oh," she muttered, having not caught most of the centaur's rapid explanation. She broke the muffin in half, spreading a layer of butter on it. It was real butter, not the margarine crap her mother usually bought because it was "healthier". She had read somewhere that they put plastic in the stuff.

Commander Root interrupted her train of thought. "Foaly, Kelp's going to be at Tara to take you back to Haven. Juliet's driving you, as Butler's needed here."

"Good," said the centaur, around a mouthful of apple. "I've got data I need to get into my computers, and I'll be more helpful when I can access my main hard drive."

"Hey," asked Kim, taking a bite of her muffin. "How come you guys haven't been discovered already? I mean, the government has all that sonar detection stuff, plus there's all the oil drilling and crap. Why hasn't anyone found you?"

"That would be thanks to me," Foaly said proudly. "My technology is centuries ahead of you humans, and can baffle any invention you make that could detect us."

"So you remain as mysterious as Stonehenge. Cool."

"Actually, Stonehenge isn't a mystery," said Holly. "It's a pizza joint."

"Really? Damn. I thought it was an alien landing pad or something," she muttered, slightly disappointed.

"Completely and utterly paranoid," sighed Artemis. "It's a wonder you haven't been assigned a padded cell yet."

"I hate to be the one to fuel your obsession with the paranormal," said Foaly. "But aliens do exist."

"Really?" she practically shouted, blue eyes lighting up. "Have you ever met one?"

"Not in, er, person, but I had an e-conference with one. One of our LEP officers stumbled upon one of their ships, and the aliens, to put it bluntly, captured him. They released him, though, and the corporal only needed three months of therapy."

"Do they really abduct humans?" she asked, sounding hopeful.

"No. If they took people away from Earth to live on another planet, I'd be the first to grab a towel and be sticking out an electronic thumb."

"Tell me about it. I mean… Wait a minute. You read Douglas Adams?"

"Of course," he snorted. "It's one of the only good things that humans have put out in the past century."

"What did you think of the part where…"

What came from this was what seemed like pointless babble between the centaur and the human. Only a few words could be caught, such as "Forty-Two" and "missing the ground".

"D'Arvit," sighed Holly, chewing tiredly on an apple slice. "And just when we had him trained not to sound like a sci-fi freak. Now he'll be going on about The Salmon of Doubt for weeks, whatever that is."

"You two can discuss your pointless books sometime other than the present!" barked Root, spiting out the word books like it was a swear. "Holmes, have you had any experience with the paranormal before now? There could be a reason why you can touch that stupid stone."

"Of course I've had experience in the paranormal," she said haughtily, breaking off a piece of her muffin and popping it in her mouth. "I live in Nova Scotia, Julius. The maritime provinces are teeming with ghosts."

The commander gritted his teeth, turning red. "Do. Not. Call. Me. Julius."

Holly interrupted before her boss could explode. "What kind of experience?"

"Well, I've seen the North Shore ghost ship more than a few times, of course. My cottage is right next to one of the more common appearance places. I've seen a few spirits kicking around the building near the seed shed. I'm pretty sure they're people who were killed in the fire that happened fifty years ago. Oh, and there's that run-in my and my cousin had with Smoker."

"Ghosts don't exist," Artemis said coolly. "They are merely the products of overactive imagination or overdoses of alcohol."

"Look, Fowl," she said, leaning towards him. "Don't you tell me what does and doesn't exist. Yesterday, faeries didn't exist in my world. But I'm sitting beside a centaur, and across from an extremely angry elf. I've seen ghosts, and believe me, they're real."

"Who is Smoker?" asked Foaly, before the girl could hit Artemis.

She slumped back into her seat, still glaring at the boy. "He's the ghost of a bootlegger up in Newfoundland. And he saved me and Sarah's life last year."

Holly was slightly interested. "How'd that happen?"

"Okay, here's the story. I was up in Newfoundland last year, staying at my grandparent's place for the holidays. It was the day after Christmas, actually. Anyway, our little cousins were driving us insane, so me and my cousin Sarah decide to take the snowmobiles out for a spin. My grandfather told us this was a bad idea because he said a storm was coming, but…"

"You went anyway?" asked Foaly, smirking.

"Look, we were eleven and twelve. Not the most compliant creatures in the world."

"Your parents let you take heavy machine out, into a storm, in rough terrain, when you were twelve?" said Butler, raising an eyebrow.

"We've both being driving ski-doos since we were nine, and we weren't planning to go far. Anyway, we end up so far away that we can't see any houses, so we figure we'll just turn around and follow our tracks. This goes great for a bit, but then this huge blizzard rolls in out of nowhere. All you could see was the other snowmobile's headlight, and our tracks were gone."

"Out in the wilderness, lost and unprepared," commented Artemis. "Very smart."

"You shut up. We were getting panicky, because we had gotten mixed up in the storm, and we had no idea which way home was. We couldn't see anything but each other and white. We'd both seen people who'd gotten lost in Newfoundland in the winter, and they usually weren't moving when they were found. So, we're flipping out and praying to the Great Spirit and God. Suddenly, this grey shape appears out of nowhere, and when it gets closer we can see it's a dogsled."

"A dogsled?" interrupted Holly. "Nowadays?"

"They're not as common as they used to be, but people use them way up North, and we knew a few people around that kept dogs. The musher came right up close to us, but he had this thick parka on, and his hood was down so we couldn't see his face. Something we found odd was his sled was painted white, his jacket was white, and his dogs were all white. Anyway, he gestured at us to follow him, so we did. I know, I know, never listen to strangers, and this guy was strange enough. But we figured that we couldn't get any worse, so he signalled to his dogs to go, and we followed him."

"I'm not even going to comment on how unbelievably stupid that it."

"I said shut up, Fowl. We trailed him for a bit, and finally we saw this red light. We both knew it was the Johnson's porch light; they turn it on during storms so it's kind of like a lighthouse for snowmobliers. We turn around to thank the man, and he's gone. We get to the Johnson's, stumble inside, and next thing I know I've got a mug of tea and brandy in my hands, and a huge Labrador dog sitting on my feet. We stayed there the night, and went back to my grandfather's place the next morning."

"But what does that have to do with ghosts?" asked Root, interested despite himself.

"When I got home, I started reading this book I had gotten for Christmas called Haunted Canada. One of the true stories in it described a trapper who became a bootlegger selling a drink called Smoke. He dressed in white, painted his sled white, and kept only white dogs so he could travel across the snow to sell his moonshine without the Mounties catching him. He was half nuts, because he drank his own drink which was pretty much pure toxin, therefore earning the name Smoker. Eventually, he got caught and thrown in jail. He fell and cracked his head, and died in his cell. Everyone says he drives his dogs, even after death, around Newfoundland, helping lost people and trying to make up for his evils in life. And me and Sarah are both certain that it was Smoker who led us back home."

"That," proclaimed Artemis. "Has got to be the biggest load of rubbish I have ever heard in my life. You seem to have a gift for lying, Miss Holmes."

"It's true!" she protested. "Why in the hell would I make something like that up?"

"Did the ghost touch you at any time?" asked Foaly.

"No, he didn't speak either. His dogs didn't even bark, which probably should have been our first clue. Then again, we were more than half frozen at the time."

"Then it couldn't be a Spirit Mark, and it shoots down our latest theory."

"Foaly, I tried to tell you that a ghost must be emotionally connected to the person they give the Mark to," sighed Holly. "Unless Kim was related to Smoker, it wouldn't work."

"Actually there's a chance of that," said the girl. "There's also a theory that says one of my ancestors captains a crew of the damned on the North Shore ghost ship, which, some say, used to be a rumrunner. I've got a lot of heritage when it comes to illegal alcohol and ghosts, for some odd reason."

"Still, he didn't touch you," Root said. "And we'd notice if she had a Spirit Mark."

"What's a Spirit Mark?" she questioned.

"None of your damn business," he snapped.

"The language, Julius. It's burning my poor little ears."

"Oh, sure. I've heard plenty of Newfoundlanders curse during my days on stakeout, and anyone descendant from them is plenty used to cursing."

"Very true. Still, it's improper to swear in front of a lady, you know."

Root wanted to hit her. He really did. If he had one wish at that very moment, it would be one clean shot at the girl's face. But he knew that if he laid a finger on her, the human rights activists would be on him so fast it would make his pointed ears ring. So he settled for glaring viciously at her.

She glared back just as viciously.

Artemis slipped into a state that was somewhere between plotting and sulking.

Butler sighed as he cleared the table. Nowhere in his training was he taught what to do if one's prodigy charge is caught in the middle of a grand magical scheme involving glowing rocks, hyperactive mood-swing prone teenage girls, and stubborn elfin commanders. He would really have to mention it to Madame Ko the next time he saw her.