"Voodoo death is the ultimate example of the nocebo effect. It would be more effective to make your intended target believe that he has been successfully hexed than to sit around torturing a doll and hoping for results. Although, torturing a replica of the person you hate enough to want to torture will relieve an unbelievable amount of stress…"
Quinn closed the window she had been looking at and replaced it with an essay she had been working on in Microsoft Word. "Is there a reason that you're here, mother, and not out there with your boyfriend?"
Quinn's mother rolled her eyes as she ventured further into her daughter's room. It contrasted deeply with her daughter's actual character with its stuffed animals, pink pony wallpaper and pink, fluffy heart pillows. If Ms. Davidson had allowed her daughter to decorate her room, she probably would have been looking at a library rather than a child's bedroom. Quinn hated the frivolous items that her mother had equipped her room with, pointing out that she wouldn't be playing with stuffed panda bears or admiring pictures of 'adorable little kitties' anytime soon.
Quinn was unbelievably conservative for a twelve year-old and sometimes she acted so much like Ms. Davidson's mother, Grandma Helen, it was uncanny. She wondered for a moment if they were having clandestine meetings behind her back where Quinn learned to eat, speak and disapprove of things like Ellen, but she quickly pushed the thought away.
"I'm going to dinner with Rob and I'll probably be home late…"
"Last time I checked, dinner takes only an hour or two…unless you're planning to do something else?" Quinn adjusted her glasses and fixed her mother with a look. An I-may-be-twelve-but-I'm-not-stupid kind of look.
Before Ms. Davidson could respond, "Have fun then."
Her daughter's hands flew over the key board and Ms. Davidson knew that she had been dismissed. She wanted to say something but what? The way she sat rigidly in her chair, her back steel rod straight and the way her eyes seemed cold and distant…thoughts of covert meetings ran through Ms. Davidson's head as she got into the car with Rob and drove off to Lobster John's.
"You made your mother very uncomfortable there," remarked Artemis. He was sitting on Quinn's bed again. "Maybe you're being a bit too hard on her?"
Quinn didn't answer him for a while. The sound of typing filled the silence before Quinn turned around in her purple swivel chair to fix Artemis with a glare. Artemis noticed that her nails were piercing her skin and that tiny beads of blood were leaking out of her self-inflicted wounds. He knew that it was a habit she had developed when she was ten and angry but didn't want to dissolve into a screaming, neglected feeling child but it didn't stop him from flinching at the self-mutilation.
"Maybe you should go," she said quietly.
"You've been dismissing me a lot lately," said Artemis. "Why?"
"Maybe because you haven't been acting like Artemis a lot lately," said Quinn. "The Artemis I know would have been on my side."
"The Artemis you know," repeated Artemis. "The Artemis you knew really. You're growing up Quinn. The Artemis you knew was there to protect you from seeing that you were alone. This Artemis is the twelve year-old Quinn Harley Davidson's Artemis. And the twelve year-old Quinn knows that she's alone… And you can't help but point out to yourself reasons why you might be alone. You may not want to admit it to yourself, so you use me to point out your flaws and…um…could you stop that?"
Artemis noticed that the nails were sinking deeper into her skin.
"Leave…now."
Artemis began to fade away reluctantly. "Maybe it's time to get over your dad's death and stop isolating yourself from people…most of all your mother."
Quinn couldn't hold back the tears anymore.
"I'm not alone," she screamed. It was to convince herself but to mostly shatter the silence of an empty house.
Mr. Davidson looked up at God who sat back in his throne with his head propped up on a large hand.
"So what would you have me do, Davidson? It's your call." God watched the angel flap its wings as it thought.
"We wouldn't be able to send an angel down now, would we?" asked Davidson. "One for guidance?"
"Good idea…but no. I can feel it in my bones. The Devil is up to something down below. We can't afford to spare any angels if Lucifer decides to start anything. Maybe we should send someone else?"
"But who?" Mr. Davidson was fully bewildered.
"I was thinking of something...other worldly. Someone that Quinn admires very much."
Once again Mr. Davidson treated God to a confused look. "Who?"
"Artemis Fowl."