“Holly!” he said, hugging her tightly. “You made it back. I knew you would.”
Holly hugged the centaur back. “And I knew you’d be here waiting.”
Foaly reached an arm around Artemis’s shoulders. “Well, when Artemis Fowl says he’ll be back, you know it’s going to take a lot more than space and time to stop him.” Foaly shook hands with No1 and Qwan. “I see you brought quite a few guests.”
Holly smiled, her teeth white against a face of streaked ash. “Hundreds.”
“Anyone we need to worry about?”
“No. A few have been mesmerized, but a couple of sessions in therapy should straighten that.”
“Okay, I’ll pass it on,” said the centaur. “Now, we have to cut the reunion short and board immediately. We have thirty minutes to sink this island and pack up the entire facility.”
Facility? thought Artemis. They’ve had time to set up a facility. Just how long have we been away?
They climbed the ramp and strapped into gel-padded bucket seats in the sparsely furnished rear. There were no comforts here, just seats and gun racks. A medic fairy scanned them all in turn, then shot a cocktail of inoculations and germ killers into their arms, just in case Hybras had brewed up any mutant diseases over the past ten thousand years. A true professional, the medic did not bat an eye examining Qwan and No1, even though he’d never met their like before.
Foaly sat beside Holly.
“I can’t tell you how good it feels to see you, Holly. I requested this assignment. I’m on leave from Section Eight. This entire facility is my design. Biggest single project I ever worked on, designed for a thirty minute walkaway. I knew you’d make it back.”
Holly thought about that statement for a moment. She was an assignment?
The shuttle reeled in the grippers and peeled away from the crater wall. In seconds they breached the mouth like a bullet from a gun. The vibration was enough to rattle teeth for the first few seconds, then the stabilization fins snicked out the side and calmed the ride down.
“I am glad to see the end of that volcano,” said No1, trying to appear casual, even though he was flying around in a metal teardrop. After all, this was not his first flight.
Foaly laid the heel of his hand on the porthole rim, peering downward.
“You really are seeing the last of it, as soon as we have everybody off the island. Those demolition rigs are going to turn the laser cutters on it. We’re going to slice it up and then remote-deflate the buoys underneath. Let ’er down slow. That way, no tidal waves. The water displacement alone was enough to send a few big rollers in toward Dublin, but we boiled ’em up from space. Once the island is down, we can pack up the shield and go home.”
“Oh,” said No1, who hadn’t understood much of what had been said.
Artemis looked out the porthole at his elbow. Below on the island, demons were being guided into shuttles by rescue teams. Once the crafts took off, they switched on their shields and shimmered from view.
“You gave us quite a scare, Holly.” The officer laughed. “Coming back twenty miles off target like that. We had to light a fire under our pilots to get over here and get the projection up. Luckily it’s early in the morning, and the tide is low. We’ve got about half an hour before the first fishing boats get out here.”
“I see,” said Holly slowly. “Big-budget stuff. Sool must have been spitting fire.”
Foaly snorted. “Sool? He can spit what he wants out of whatever end he wants. He got drummed out of the force a couple of years ago. Do you realize that traitor wanted to let the entire Eighth Family die off? The moron actually said as much in a memo.”
Holly gripped the arms of her seat. “A couple of years ago? How long have we been gone?”
Foaly snapped his fingers. “Oh, uh, yeah. I wasn’t supposed to just blurt it out. Sorry. I mean, it’s not serious, like a thousand years or anything.”
“How long, Foaly?” demanded Holly.
The centaur thought about it for a moment. “Okay. You’ve been gone for nearly three years.”
Qwan reached over and slapped Artemis’s shoulder. “Three years! Nice going, Mud Boy. You must have one hell of a brain to get us that close. I wasn’t expecting to see this side of the century.”
Artemis was stunned. Three years! His parents hadn’t seen him for three years. What torture had he put them through? How could he ever make up for it?
Foaly was trying to fill the shocked silence with information. “Mulch has kept the PI firm going. Well, more than that, actually, it’s thriving. He signed up a new partner. You’ll never guess who. Doodah Day. Another criminal turned do-gooder. Wait till he hears you’re back. He’s calls me every day. I have a pain in my tail trying to explain quantum physics to that dwarf.”
Holly reached across and took Artemis’s hand.
“There’s only one way to look at this, Artemis. Think of all the lives you’ve saved. That’s worth a few years, surely.”
Artemis could only stare straight ahead. Dying in the transfer would have been a grade-one disaster, this was surely a grade-two. What could he say? How could he explain himself?
“I need to get home,” he said, sounding for once like an actual fourteen-year-old. “Foaly, would you tell the pilot where I live?”
The centaur chuckled. “Like every law enforcement agent under the world doesn’t know where Artemis Fowl lives. Anyway, no need to go that far. Someone is waiting for you at the shoreline. They’ve been there for quite a while.”
Artemis placed his forehead against the porthole. He felt so tired suddenly, as though he had actually been awake for three years. How could he even begin to explain events to his parents? He knew how they must be feeling—exactly how he had felt when his father had gone missing. Perhaps he had already been declared dead, as his father had been. And even though his return would bring happiness, that pain would always be there under the surface.
Foaly was talking to the demons. “Who’s this little guy?” he asked, tickling No1 under the chin.
“That little guy is No1,” said Qwan. “He’s the most powerful warlock on the planet. He could fry your brain by accident, say, if you were tickling him under the chin and he got irritated.”
The centaur withdrew his finger sharpish. “I see. I like him. We’re going to get along just fine. Why are you called No1? Is that a nickname?”
No1 felt the magic inside him, comfortable, like heated veins. “It was my imp name. But now I think I’ll keep it.”
Qwan was surprised. “What? You don’t want a QW name? That’s traditional. We haven’t had a Qwandri in a while. What about Qwerty?”
No1 shook his head.“I am No1. The name used to mark me out as different, now it makes me unique. I have no idea where we are, or where we’re going, but I already feel more at home than I ever have.”
Foaly rolled his eyes. “Excuse me while I get a tissue. Honestly, I thought you demons were warlike and stoic. This little guy sounds like one of those cheap romance novels.”
“The little guy who could fry your brain,” Qwan reminded him.
“One of those cheap romance novels that I happen to adore,” said Foaly, backing away slowly.
No1 smiled contentedly. He was alive, and he had helped to save the island. Finally he knew his place in the universe. Now that Abbot was taken care of, he could live his life the way he wanted to. And the first thing he would do, when things had settled down, would be to track down the demoness with the red markings very much like his own, and see if maybe she would share a meal with him. A cooked meal. It could be that they had a lot to talk about.
The shuttle slipped through the shield into the morning sky. The jagged rocks of the Irish coast jutted out from the waves, sun-speckled by the early light. It was going to be a fine day. There were trace clouds to the north, but nothing that could keep people inside for long.
There was a group of houses clustered around an inlet, and in the horseshoe harbor, fishermen were already on the san
d, setting their nets.
“This is your stop, Artemis,”said Foaly.“We’ll drop you behind the quay wall. I’ll give you a call in a few days, for debriefing.” The centaur reached out a hand and laid it on Artemis’s shoulder. “The People thank you for your efforts, but you know that everything you have learned is confidential. Not even your parents, Artemis. You’ll have to think of something besides the truth to tell them.”
“Of course,” said Artemis.
“Good. I didn’t have to say it, I know. Anyway, the man you want is in the little cottage with the window boxes. Say hello from me.”
Artemis nodded numbly. “I will.”
The pilot swung in low, tucking the shuttle out of sight behind a deserted, ramshackle, stone building. When he was certain that there was nobody in the sight lines, the pilot hit a green light over the rear door.
Holly helped Artemis out of his chair. “We never get to hang out,” she said.
Artemis half chuckled.“I know. There’s always a crisis.”
“If it’s not goblin gangs, it’s time-traveling demons.” Then Holly kissed him on the cheek. “That was probably dangerous. You being a pubescent volcano.”
“I’ve got it under control, just about.”
Holly pointed to her new blue eye. “We’ll always be a part of each other now.”
Artemis tapped the cheek below his fairy-brown eye. “I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
“Was that a joke? My goodness, you are changing.”
Artemis was a little dazed. “Well, apparently I’m almost eighteen.”
“God help us all. Artemis Fowl, eligible to vote.”
Artemis chuckled. “I’ve been voting for years.” He tapped his ring-phone. “Call you later.”
“I have a feeling we’ll have a lot to talk about.”
They hugged briefly, but tightly, then Artemis walked down the ramp. He took three steps and looked back, but there was nothing but sea and sky.
Artemis Fowl made for strange early morning viewing in the village of Duncade: a lone teenager in a tattered suit, leaving a trail of ash behind him as he climbed through a stone stile and half stumbled along the quay front.
There was a small group ahead of him, leaning on a concrete bollard. One shaggily bearded fisherman was telling a wild story about a twenty-foot wave he had seen during the night, which had simply evaporated before it reached the shore. He told the story well, complete with big arm gestures and whooshing noises. The other men nodded to his face, while behind his back winked and made drinky-drinky motions with their hands.