Er, so, I somehow managed to get my chapters mixed up and posted chapter 14 instead of 13. Ad then of course the site wouldn't let me log in. Ah well. Think of it as two for one...? This is for all of you who wondered where the heck Amsterdam went.

And heaps of thank yous to ilex-ferox for betaing and not even making fun of me when I forgot my own chapters.

Chapter Thirteen: Keeping it Casual

'You know, I don't think I'm ever going to have the opportunity use any of the new stuff Butler's taught me.' She slips her feet between the railings of the bridge, resting her forearms on the top rail and leaning out over the water.

'Be careful that you don't fall,' he says. Then, 'Are you saying I should try harder to get myself killed? Butler usually said the opposite.'

She laughs, shifting her weight onto her arms and kicking her legs out behind her. 'It's just a bit ironic, don't you think? Now that I'm supposed to be keeping you safe, all I do is play tourist. Not that I mind, it makes a nice change.' She knocks superstitiously on the wooden rail.

'However, it's not quite as thrilling, is it?'

She turns to face him, leaning a hip against the railing. 'Maybe there aren't as many goblin gangs or hungry trolls or crazed megalomaniacs running after us but, honestly, I think we've got enough mind games on the go to keep things from getting dull.'

'Oh really? And what are we playing right now?' He raises an eyebrow. The one above his hazel eye.

She brushes his hair off his forehead. 'A waiting game,' she says.

'Your hair is getting long,' he comments, stepping back from her. Let her come to him for once. Make her realise she wants to.

Chuckling, she turns back to the canal. 'You never play fair. You're supposed to be the one waiting, not me. You're not supposed to step away, you're supposed to step forward. Don't switch roles like that.'

'All's fair in love and war.'

'Remind me – which one is this, again?'

'A bit of both.'

The light is playing tricks with her skin again. Gold swims just below the brown. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, wanting to step forward but unwilling lose what ground he's gained.

Abruptly, she turns, taking him by the chin – like he has done to her – and kissing him. It isn't the soft, surprised acquiescence he's used to; one arm hooks around his neck, snapping their bodies together and the hand on his chin falls to his chest, clutching the material of his shirt.

Then, as suddenly as it started, it's over. She steps back, taking in his wide eyes, and the corners of her lips twitch.

'You won this one,' she tells him, 'but that doesn't mean you've won the war.' And she turns on her heel, starting back towards their hotel.

Still reeling from her kiss, he swallows, his throat dry, and calls after her, 'I only fight wars I already know I'll win.'

She just laughs.

Hurrying to catch up with her, he presses a hand to his lips and wonders if he has, in fact, won this particular battle.

'You're right,' she comments nonchalantly as he joins her, 'my hair is getting long. I can nearly tuck it behind my ears.'

Holly wakes a second time to the smell of fresh bread and sliced fruit.

'Nng,' she props herself up on an elbow. That's one good thing about Artemis, she thinks groggily, I'll never have to worry about how I look in the morning – he's already seen me looking my worst.

'That suit is going to need to be pressed,' Artemis speaks across a coffee table laden with food.

'Managed to call room service on your own, did you?' Holly peels herself off the sofa, rubbing both hands over her face and giving her head a quick shake.

'It was difficult, but I persevered,' Artemis' lips twitch.

'Uh oh, he's making jokes again. 10-4, code red, code red.' Holly feigns terror, 'Someone is going to end up in tears by tonight - if not in pieces.'

Artemis looks up at the ceiling and sighs. 'Tea?'

'Please,' Holly sheds her jacket and rolls up her sleeves, preparing to eat a delicious breakfast. 'What time is it?' she asks, taking a brioche from the basket.

'7:30. If we're quick we'll be just in time for rush hour.'

Holly pauses, brioche half-way to her mouth. 'Rush hour?' she repeats.

'Yes, that's what I said,' Artemis hands her a cup of tea. 'Hurry and eat, or we'll miss it.'

'We want to be out in rush hour?' Holly frowns.

'Yes.' Artemis nibbles a slice of peach, 'Well, at least as pedestrians.'

'Artemis,' Holly takes a bite of her bun, then waves it for emphasis, 'have I ever told you that you make no sense?'

'Frequently. Eat your breakfast.'

Holly rolls her eyes. 'Yes, mother.'

Half an hour later, fed, showered, changed and heavily armed, Holly puts a hand up to keep the sun out of her eyes as they emerge onto the streets of Amsterdam.

'Frond!' Holly's jaw drops as they walk. 'There are so many bicycles!'

Artemis smiles, 'Mmm.'

'But – where are the cars?' she frowns at the congested roads. 'For goodness' sake, the bicycles are having traffic jams!'

'Mmm.'

Something about Artemis' tone makes Holly tear her eyes away from the swarming mass of brightly coloured metal and plastic. She eyes him for a moment before realisation dawns. Stopping in her tracks, Holly crosses her arms as she turns to him. 'There's no secret meeting with Dutch drug importers, is there?' It's a statement, not a question. 'No crazy international heist going down or... or anything. We're here for the bicycles.' Her voice is incredulous.

'Mmm.'

'You brought me to Amsterdam to see bicycles,' Holly repeats.

'Mmm,' Artemis feigns interest in something far in the distance.

She looks up at him. All she can see of his face is the underside of his jaw and the shadow below his cheekbone. The summer sun is only just clearing the tops of the buildings and its light sweeps along the pavement.

'This is an apology, isn't it?' she says at last.

Still looking away from her, Artemis purses his lips. 'Mmm,' he replies after a moment.

Holly laughs, 'You know, Artemis,' she loops an arm through one of his, 'I think you look your best in the mornings.'

'Oh?' He does look down at her then, thrown by her sudden change of topic.

'Yes, the sunlight makes you look nearly human.'

Artemis huffs and tries to break away. She tightens her hold on his arm. 'Apology accepted,' she says.

He lets her keep her arm where it is.

When Myles first gave her the vial, eyes wide with adrenaline and guilt, she had bitten her lip to keep from pointing out that a vial isn't a bottle. Butler had said bottle.

However, she supposes Artemis must have divided up his supply because the contents of the vial, she discovers while flipping through the results of her tests, match Butler's admittedly vague description of the serum. For heaven's sake, it even contains magic. Something her computers had no idea what to do with.

Minerva reaches for her teacup and smiles like the Cheshire Cat.

'Well, well, well, look who's back in town.' Mulch's leer greets Holly from her dining table as she returns to the flat two days later.

'Juliet told you, didn't she?' Holly lets her bag fall with a thump as she crosses her arms.

'I did promise to keep him in the know,' Juliet speaks from the stove where she is sautéing various mosses and larvae for the dwarf. 'Speaking of which, you owe me big time, Diggums. Gossip and sautéed bugs? You had better cough up something spectacular.'

Mulch looks unconcerned. 'I'll dig you up a pretty stone, how's about that?'

'It'd better be the world's prettiest bloody stone.'

The dwarf grins. 'Don't tempt me. I'm sure I could get my hands on some exquisite stones.'

'She doesn't want stolen ones, Mulch. And you've gone straight, remember?'

Mulch sighs dramatically, before turning the hairy finger of blame on Holly. 'You're trying to distract me. I came up here for a reason - I want to know all about your weekend. Come on, you can tell old Uncle Mulch.'

Holly rolls her eyes. 'It was hardly a weekend; we left on a Sunday night and came back on a Tuesday night. Last I checked, weekends start on Friday, not Sunday, nights.'

Mulch dismisses this information with a wave of his hand. 'Stop splitting hairs, Holly.'

Hauling her bag to her room, Holly speaks over her shoulder. 'We went, we stayed in a fancy hotel, we ate expensive food, we looked at bicycles, and then we came home.'

Juliet and Mulch frown at each other over the bowl of bugs Juliet has just placed on the table.

'You went all the way to Amsterdam just to look at bikes?'Juliet asks incredulously.

'And what's so interesting about bikes that it took two days to look at?' Mulch, familiar with the human invention form his numerous aboveground sojourns, has never seen the appeal. What a long way to fall. And, let's face it, eventually everyone falls.

Holly reappears in the main room, smiling Artemis' vampire smile. 'Wouldn't you like to know?'

Mulch shudders. 'I hate it when she impersonates Mud Boy. It's like all of his guile just got the ability to break your nose, on top of everything else.'

Opening the fridge, Holly laughs. 'Well then, Uncle mine, unless you want all of Artemis' guile to actually break your nose, may I suggest that you drop it?'

'Let's put it this way,' Juliet wipes her hands on a tea towel, 'they've been on their own for two days and she's come home in a good mood. So, either Dom's gonna call any second now to tell me that Artemis is dead in a ditch, or the boy actually managed to do something nice for once. Though what bikes have to do with it, I don't get.'

'You call threats of actual bodily harm a good mood?' Mulch asks around a mouthful of moss.

Juliet shrugs. 'If she were angry they wouldn't just be threats.'

'True.'

Holly, perched on the kitchen counter, eats fruit and yoghurt out of a glass and laughs.

'My money's on him dead in a ditch,' Mulch mutters.

Juliet shakes her head, 'Two pretty stones says he was nice.'

'You're on.'

Artemis returns from Amsterdam to find a long-awaited letter sitting on his desk.

'Did you have a good time?' Butler asks innocently, as he brings the boy a cup of tea.

'Mm hmm,' Artemis replies, pretending to concentrate on his letter.

'That fantastic, huh?' Butler rolls his eyes. 'What does the university have to say?'

'That I've been accepted as a lecturer.'

'What a surprise,' Butler deadpans.

'Not really,' Artemis misses the sarcasm, 'but they want me to teach a first year course; Butler, that's teenagers.'

'You can hardly expect preference over senior lecturers, Artemis,' Butler points out.

'I am more intelligent than all of their tenured professors put together. I'm not doing this because I intend to pursue a career in Academia. I'm doing this because I thought it would be an amusing pastime. First year courses are not only dull with regard to their content but are attended almost entirely by obnoxious, hormone-driven morons.'

'That sounds terrible,' Butler fights down a smile.

Artemis opens his mouth to agree when he catches sight of Butler's face. 'You're mocking me,' he accuses.

'Only a little, Artemis.'

The boy sighs. 'I suppose I can always resign if it's too tedious.'

'That's the spirit. Stiff upper lip.'

Artemis shoots the enormous man a withering glare as he puts the letter away in his desk. Butler just chuckles.

Opening an inner drawer, Artemis pauses, looking at an empty space that should be full. Interesting, he thinks. Now who do we know that, out of everything to steal in this room, would take a vial of apparently useless gunk?

Unbidden, one name comes unbidden into his mind and he smiles nastily. Let the games begin, Minerva.

In the aftermath of Amsterdam, Holly finds herself waking up in the mornings and wondering why she has so much space all to herself. Juliet's prattle, which once made her smile, now fails to capture her attention. The flat seems small and cramped yet, at the same time, vast and empty. When Holly walks, she drags her fingers along the walls beside her.

'You could always go visit, you know,' Juliet tells her one day.

'Pardon?' Holly blinks.

Juliet rolls her eyes. 'The Manor. You could always go visit the Manor.'

'What makes you think I want to do that?'

Juliet looks at Holly. Her face has "do I look like an idiot to you?" written all over it.

'I think I'll just go for a walk,' Holly collects her jacket.

'Take your bicycle, that way if you change your mind, you can bike over there.'

'Goodbye, Juliet.'

'I'm just being practical,' the blonde calls as Holly shuts the door.

'Hello? Artemis?'

'Who else would be answering this phone?' comes the sarcastic reply.

Holly smiles to herself, slipping one hand into her jeans' pocket. 'Are you doing anything right now?'

'No... why?'

'You want to come for a walk?'

'Now?'

'No, I was thinking next Tuesday.' The sarcasm is thick enough to drown in.

A sigh. 'Where are you?'

'Ha'penny Bridge, I'm tourist-watching.'

Another sighs, 'This will involve me coming into town, won't it?'

She shrugs, though he can't see it. 'The Manor grounds are large enough.'

'No, on second thoughts, I will come down. Father's going to dinner at The Tea Rooms with some fellow investors; I'll drive in with him. His dinner's in half an hour.'

'Brilliant. I'll meet you in the hotel lobby?'

'Mm. Have you eaten?'

'No, I was thinking about just going and-'

'Stop, please, you don't need to tell me. It will only make me nauseous. I'll make a reservation at Eden for later tonight.'

Biting her lip, she pulls her hand out of her pocket and runs a fingernail along a crack in the railing. 'Okay,' she smiles.

'I'll see you then,' he says.

'Yes,' she licks her lips.

A middle aged woman from Bar Harbor, Maine, stops her husband for a moment and asks for the camera. Holding the little box in front of her, she frames the shot. Her husband watches over her shoulder; she's still getting used to all this newfangled digital technology. In the tiny screen he sees a slender girl, her forearms pressing into the railing as she leans too far out over the water. Her red hair is lit by the sinking sun and her teeth are bright as she grins up at the hazy summer sky.

'Photographing the natives, Penny?' he chuckles. 'This is hardly Papua New Guinea.'

She swats at him good-naturedly. 'She just looks so happy, don't you think?'

Holly feels decidedly underdressed to be lounging around in the lobby of the Clarence Hotel. But, just when she's sure the desk clerk is going to have her thrown out, a group of nine or ten men in beautifully cut linen enter the hotel; amongst them, Holly spots Artemis Senior and Junior. The fact that she's waiting for one of these impeccably dressed people does nothing to make her feel more at ease. Though, to be fair, Artemis has made an effort to dress casually for her sake. Not only has he foregone a suit jacket and tie, but -

Frond, are his sleeves rolled up? Holly raises an impressed eyebrow, fighting to keep from laughing. Then another thought strikes her. Oh d'Arvit, I hope his dad doesn't make a big deal out of this...

'Holly!' the man in question spots her right away, coming over to take her hands in his. 'What a lovely surprise. Are you coming to dinner with us?'

'Err, no.' Holly tries to subtly withdraw her hands but can't quite manage it. 'I'm just grabbing Artemis.'

'Oh? I didn't realise.' Artemis Senior grins at his son. 'So this iswhy you suddenly needed a ride into town, Artemis? Well, don't let us old folks get in your way. Have a nice night, now!'

'Thanks,' Holly smiles stiffly.

Artemis looks at the ceiling.

'Old folks, my foot,' Holly mutters to him as, elbowing each other and winking, the others leave them. 'I'm twice his age!'

He chuckles softly. 'Shall we?'

'Please. The desk clerk has been shooting me dirty looks for the past fifteen minutes. Somehow I don't think he feels my jeans add to the décor.'

'I wonder why.'

Holly rolls her eyes. 'Next time I go out for a walk, I'll make sure to wear one of my Deborah Veales.'

'Which is why-'Artemis turns to his companion only to find she's disappeared. 'Holly? Where - oh for heaven's sake.'

A few feet behind him, Holly has her nose pressed to a shop window. 'I want one,' is all she says when Artemis joins her.

'They pollute, you know,' he replies.

'Yes, but I could get a solar battery from Foaly. And you could show me how to wire it all together.'

'I don't do motor mechanics,' comes the disdainful reply.

Holly turns big, shining eyes on him.

'Stop that, it's beneath you.'

'But they're so beautiful. Well, for a human construction at least.'

'How generous of you.'

'I'm thinking about that red one at the back.'

'It does look as though it could go rather fast.'

'Well, that is the point.'

'Just as long as you never expect me to go near it once I've drawn you a diagram of how to attach a solar battery.'

'Not even once? Come on, it'd be good for you.'

'Out of the question.'

'Coward.'

'I prefer "sane".' He puts a hand under her elbow, 'Our reservation is for fifteen minutes from now.'

Holly presses a hand to her heart as he drags her away. 'Don't worry, I'll be back, Paddy's Motorbike Mayhem.'

Artemis rolls his eyes.

'I've been hired as a lecturer in the Physics department at the university,' Artemis tells her over dessert. They are sitting out on the terrace; across Meeting House Square, Casablanca is being projected on the wall of the Gallery of Photography. So far, Holly hasn't seen the appeal of this film. Then again, she hasn't been paying very close attention.

'Oh yes?' she raises an eyebrow. 'Do they know how old you are?'

'They know that I'll soon be twenty,' he shrugs.

'And they still hired you?' She stares over her tea cup.

Artemis smiles, showing his incisors. 'Considering my multiple degrees and the fact that Fowl money stocked a good portion of the Long Room, it wasn't a difficult choice, I believe.'

'Show-off,' she chuckles appreciatively. 'Congratulations, Artemis. What'll you be teaching?'

He wrinkles his nose, 'Special Relativity and Nuclear Physics as part of the Theoretical Physics course: Junior and Senior Freshman years respectively.'

She laughs, 'I guess those're the only kids they have that are younger than you are! And not even then, really.'

'It's going to be dull.'

'Oh, poor baby. I'll see if I can rustle up another apocalypse in time for Christmas, shall I?' Holly winks.

'Your sympathy is deeply touching. However, my point was that I'm going to need a driver. Butler picks up the twins from kindergarten at the same time as I finish, unfortunately.'

Holly puts down her cup. 'Ah,' she says.

'Will you do it?'

She leans back in her chair, her head tilted to one side as she eyes him. Then she laughs. 'Of course I will - unless something comes up for the LEP, obviously. But I'm not bringing you after-school snacks, you'll have to pack your own lunch.'

Artemis laughs. 'I'm sure Pierre does a wonderful after-school snack.'

'Well, I would expect to less from the man who "makes the best lamb outside Greece".'

'Will you never grow to like my father?'

'I'm working on it,' she says. 'But Frond, you're just so demanding, wanting me to like one unlikeable person after another. Your father. Minerva. You,' she grins at him.

'Terribly sorry,' Artemis tries to look contrite, but can't quite manage it.

'Yeah, I've never heard that one before.' Holly laughs. She turns to look out over the square, a puzzled expression on her face.

'Yes?'

A slight laugh, then - 'Artemis, we're eating dinner together. At a posh restaurant in Dublin. We're talking about, well, banalities. I'm over a metre tall. Doesn't this strike you as just the teensiest bit odd?'

He shrugs. 'I find I'm growing accustomed to it very quickly.'

'But it's still a bizarre situation.'

'Alright,' he concedes, 'it is a bit strange.'

'I keep waiting for something cataclysmic to happen... anything... just a bit of normality.'

'Yes, global catastrophe, how commonplace,' comes the dry response.

The corners of her lips twitch. 'I know, I know, it's silly. But then, you and inevitable disaster have always been sort of synonymous in my mind.'

'I'll take that as a compliment.'

She grins at him. 'By the way,' she says, 'happy birthday – for tomorrow. Do you know, you're a very difficult person to shop for? What do you get someone who has everything?'

'Thank you,' Artemis laughs, 'but you really needn't bother. There's nothing I want.'

'Nothing at all?' Holly raises her eyebrows.

Artemis leans back in his chair and smiles with all his teeth. 'Well...' he looks at her across the table, letting the unspoken suggestion hang between them.

Holly sips her tea with forced calm. 'How flattering,' she says at last. 'Maybe for Christmas.'

Artemis sighs, still smiling. 'It was worth a try.'

She laughs. 'Yes, it was. Is anything happening for your birthday, though? Drunken rave on the beach?'

'Just dinner with the family, I believe. Nothing out of the ordinary. You'll be coming, won't you?'

'Well, when you give me such advance notice, how can I not? Of course I'm coming, Arty.' Holly grins at him from over the rim of her teacup.