The Opal Deception

  In the corner, a girl sat hunched on folding chair. She cradled her head in both hands, her shoulders hitching gently with sobs.

  Artemis cleared his throat. “Why are you crying, girl?”

  The girl jerked upright, and it became immediately obvious that this was no normal girl. In fact, she appeared to belong to a totally different species.

  “Pointed ears,” noted Artemis, with surprising composure. “Prosthetic or real?”

  Holly almost smiled through her tears. “Typical Artemis Fowl. Always looking for options. My ears are very real, as you well know . . . knew.”

  Artemis was silent for several moments, processing the wealth of information in those few sentences.

  “Real pointed ears? Then you are of another species, not human. Possibly a fairy?”

  Holly nodded. “I am a fairy. Actually, an elf. I’m what you would call a leprechaun too, but that’s just a job.”

  “And fairies speak English, do they?”

  “We speak all languages. The gift of tongues, it is part of our magic.”

  Artemis knew that these revelations should send his world spinning on its axis, but he found himself accepting every word. It was as though he had always suspected the existence of fairies, and this was simply confirmation. Although, strangely, he could not remember ever having even thought about fairies before this day.

  “And you claim to know me? Personally or from some kind of surveillance? You certainly seem to have the technology.”

  “We’ve known you for a few years now, Artemis. You made first contact, and we’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since.”

  Artemis was slightly startled. “I made first contact?”

  “Yes. December, two years ago. You kidnapped me.”

  “Is this your revenge? That explosive device? My ribs?” A horrible thought struck the Irish boy. “And what about Butler? Is he dead?”

  Holly did her best to answer all of these questions. “It is revenge, but not mine. And Butler is alive. I just had to get you out of there before another attempt was made on your life.”

  “So we’re friends now?”

  Holly shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  All of this was slightly confusing. Even for a genius.

  Artemis crossed his legs in the lotus position and rested his temples against pointed fingers.

  “You had better tell me everything,” he said, closing his eyes. “From the beginning. And leave nothing out.”

  So Holly did. She told Artemis how he had kidnapped her, then released her at the last moment. She told him how they had journeyed to the Arctic to rescue his father, and how they had foiled a goblin rebellion bankrolled by Opal Koboi. She recounted in great detail their mission to Chicago to steal back the C Cube, a super computer constructed by Artemis from pirated fairy technology. Finally, in a small quiet voice, she told of Commander Root’s death and of Opal Koboi’s sinister plot to bring the fairy and human worlds together.

  Artemis sat perfectly still, absorbing hundreds of incredible facts. His brow was slightly creased as if the information were difficult to digest. Finally, when his brain had organized the data, he opened his eyes.

  “Very well,” he said. “I don’t remember any of this, but I believe you. I accept that we humans have fairy neighbors below the planet’s surface.”

  “Just like that?”

  Artemis’s lip curled. “Hardly. I have taken your story and cross-referenced it with the facts as I know them. The only other scenario that could explain everything that has happened, up to and including your own bizarre appearance, is a convoluted conspiracy theory involving the Russian Mafiya and a crack team of plastic surgeons. Hardly likely. But your fairy story fits, right down to something that you could not know about, Captain Short.”

  “Which is?”

  “After my alleged mind wipe, I discovered mirrored contact lenses in my own eyes and Butler’s. Investigation revealed that I myself had ordered the lenses, though I had no memory of the fact. I suspect that I ordered them to cheat your mesmer.”

  Holly nodded. It made sense. Fairies had the power to mesmerize humans, but eye contact was part of the trick, coupled with a mesmeric voice. Mirrored contact lenses would leave the subject completely in control, while pretending to be under the mesmer.

  “The only reason for this would be if I had planted a trigger somewhere. Something that would cause my fairy memories to come rushing back. But what?”

  “I have no idea,” said Holly. “I was hoping that just seeing me would trigger recall.”

  Artemis smiled in a very annoying way. As one would at a small child who had just suggested that the moon was made of cheese.

  “No, Captain. I would guess that your Mister Foaly’s mind-wiping technology is an advanced version of the memory-suppressant drugs being experimented with by various governments. The brain, you see, is a complex instrument; if it can be convinced that something did not happen, it will invent all kinds of scenarios to maintain that illusion. Nothing can change its mind, so to speak. Even if the conscious accepts something, the mind wipe will have convinced the subconscious otherwise. So, no matter how convincing you are, you cannot convert my altered subconscious. My subconscious probably believes that you are a hallucination or a miniature spy. No, the only way that my memories could be returned to me would be if my subconscious could not present a reasonable argument; say, if the one person that I trust completely presented me with irrefutable evidence.”

  Holly felt herself growing annoyed. Artemis could get under her skin like nobody else. A child who treated everyone like children.

  “And who is this one person that you trust?”

  Artemis smiled genuinely for the first time since Munich. “Why, myself, of course.”

  Munich

  Butler woke to find blood dripping from the tip of his nose. It was dripping onto the white hat of the hotel chef. The chef stood with a group of hotel kitchen staff in the middle of a destroyed storage shed. The man gripped a cleaver in his hairy fist, just in case this giant on the tattered mattress wedged into the rafters was a madman.

  “Excuse me,” said the chef politely, which is unusual for a chef, “are you alive?”

  Butler considered the question. Apparently, unlikely as it seemed, he was alive. The mattress had saved him from the strange missile. Artemis had survived, too. He remembered feeling his charge’s heartbeat just before he passed out. It wasn’t there now.

  “I am alive,” he grunted, a paste of tile dust and blood spilling from his lips. “Where is the boy who was with me?”

  The crowd assembled in the ruined shed looked at one another.

  “There was no boy,” said the chef finally. “You fell through the roof all on your own.”

  Doubtless, this group would like an explanation or they would inform the police.

  “Of course there was no boy. Forgive me; the mind tends to wander after a three-story fall.”

  The group nodded as one. Who could blame the giant for being a touch rattled?

  “I was leaning against the railing, sunning myself, when the railing gave way. Lucky for me, I managed to grab the mattress on the way down.”

  This explanation was met with the mass skepticism it thoroughly deserved. The chef voiced the group’s doubts.

  “You managed to grab a mattress?”

  Butler had to think quickly, which is not easy when all the blood in your body is concentrated in your forehead.

  “Yes. It was on the balcony. I had been resting in the sun.”

  This entire sun business was extremely unlikely. Especially considering that it was the middle of winter. Butler realized that there was only one way to dispel the crowd. It was drastic, but it should work.

  He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small spiral pad.

  “Of course, I intend to sue the hotel for damages. Trauma alone should be worth a few million euros. Not to mention injuries. I presume I can count on you good people as witnesses.” br />
  The chef paled, as did the others. Giving evidence against one’s employers was the first step to unemployment.

  “I . . . I don’t know, sir,” he stammered. “I didn’t actually see anything.” He paused to sniff the air. “I think I smell my Pavlova burning. Dessert will be ruined.”

  The chef hopped over the chunks of shattered tile, disappearing back into the hotel. The remaining staff followed his lead, and within seconds, Butler was on his own again. He smiled, though the action sent a flare of pain down his neck. The threat of a lawsuit generally scattered witnesses as effectively as any gunfire.

  The giant Eurasian disentangled himself from the remains of the rafters. He really had been amazingly lucky not to be impaled on the beams. The mattress had absorbed most of the impact, and the timbers were rotten and had splintered harmlessly.

  Butler dropped to the floor, brushing dust from his suit. His priority now was to find Artemis. It seemed likely that whoever had made the attempt on his life had taken the boy. Although, why would someone try to kill him and then take him prisoner? Unless their unknown enemy had taken advantage of the situation and decided to seek a ransom.

  Butler returned to the hotel room, where everything was as they had left it. There was absolutely no sign that anything had exploded in here. The only unusual things revealed by Butler’s investigations were small clusters of dead insects and spiders. Curious. It was as though the blue flash of light only affected living things, leaving buildings unaffected.

  A blue rinse, said his subconscious, but his conscious self took no notice.

  Butler quickly packed Artemis’s box of tricks, and of course his own. The weapons and surveillance equipment would be held in a safe-deposit box at the airport. He left the Kronski Hotel without checking out. An early checkout would arouse suspicion, and with any luck, this entire matter could be resolved before the students on the school trip returned home.

  The bodyguard collected the Hummer in the hotel car park and set off for the airport. If Artemis had been kidnapped, then the kidnappers would contact Fowl Manor with their ransom demand. If Artemis had simply removed himself from danger, he had always been told to head for home. Either way, the trail led to Fowl Manor, so that was where Butler intended to go.

  Temple Bar, Dublin, Ireland

  Artemis had recovered sufficiently for his natural curiosity to surface. He walked around the cramped room, touching the spongy surface of the walls.

  “What is this place? Some form of surveillance hide?”

  “Exactly,” said Holly. “I was on stakeout here a few months ago. A group of rogue dwarfs were meeting their jewelry fences here. From the outside, this is just another patch of sky on top of a building. It’s a cham pod.”

  “Cam, camouflage?”

  “No, cham, chameleon. This suit is cam, camouflage.”

  “You do know, I suppose, that chameleons don’t actually change color to suit their surroundings. They change according to mood and temperature.”

  Holly looked out over Temple Bar. Below them thousands of tourists, musicians, and residents were winding their way through the small artisans’ streets.

  “You’d have to tell Foaly about that. He names all this stuff.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Artemis. “Foaly. He is a centaur, is he not?”

  “That’s right.” Holly turned to face Artemis. “You’re taking this very calmly. Most humans completely freak out when they find out about us. Some go into shock.”

  Artemis smiled. “I am not most humans.”

  Holly turned back to the view. She was not going to argue with that statement.

  “So tell me, Captain Short. If all I am to the Fairy People is a threat, why did you heal me?”

  Holly rested her forehead against the cham pod’s translucent face.

  “It’s our nature,” she replied. “And of course, I need you to help me to find Opal Koboi. We’ve done it before, we can do it again.”

  Artemis stood beside her at the window. “So, first you mind-wipe me, and now you need me?”

  “Yes, Artemis. Gloat all you like. The mighty LEP need your help.”

  “Of course, there is the matter of my fee,” said Artemis, buttoning his jacket across the bloodstain on his shirt.

  Holly rounded on him. “Your fee? Are you serious? After all the Fairy People have done for you? Can’t you just do something good for once in your life?”

  “Obviously you elves are an emotional race. Humans are slightly more business-minded. Here are the facts: you are a fugitive from justice, on the run from a murdering pixie genius. You have no funds and few resources. I am the only one who can help you track down this Opal Koboi. I think that’s worth a few bars of anybody’s gold.”

  Holly glowered at him. “Like you said, Mud Boy. I don’t have any resources.”

  Artemis spread his hands magnanimously. “I’m prepared to accept your word. If you can guarantee me one metric ton of gold from your hostage fund, I will devise a plan to defeat this Opal Koboi.”

  Holly was in a hole and she knew it. There was no doubt that Artemis could give her the edge over Opal, but it galled her to pay someone who used to be a friend. “And what if Koboi defeats us?”

  “If Koboi defeats and presumably murders us both, then you can consider the debt null and void.”

  “Great,” growled Holly. “It would almost be worth it.”

  She left the window and began raiding the pod’s medical chest. “You know something, Artemis. You’re exactly how you were when we first met: a greedy Mud Boy who doesn’t care about anyone beside himself. Is that really how you want to be for the rest of your life?”

  Artemis’s features remained static, but below the surface his emotions were in turmoil. Of course he was right to ask for a fee. It would be stupid not to. But even asking had made him feel guilty. It was this idiotic newfound conscience. His mother seemed to be able to activate it at will, and this fairy creature could do it too. He would have to keep a tighter check on his emotions.

  Holly finished raiding the cabinet. “Well, Mister Consultant, what’s our first move?”

  Artemis did not hesitate. “There are only two of us, and we are not very tall. We need reinforcements. As we speak, Butler will be making for Fowl Manor. He may be there already.”

  Artemis turned on his cell phone and speed dialed Butler. A recorded message told him that the customer he was trying to reach was not available. He declined the offer to try again, instead dialing Fowl Manor. An answering machine cut in after the third ring. Obviously his parents had already left for the spa in Westmeath.

  “Butler,” said Artemis to the recorder. “You are well, I hope. I myself am fine. Listen very carefully to what I have to tell you, and believe me, every word is true . . .” Artemis proceeded to summarize the day’s events. “We will arrive at the manor shortly. I suggest we stock up on essentials and proceed to a safe house . . .”

  Holly tapped him on the shoulder. “We should get out of here. Koboi is no fool. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had some backup plan in case we survived.”

  Artemis covered the mouthpiece with his palm. “I agree. That is what I would do. This Koboi person is probably on her way right now.”

  As if on cue, one of the pod walls fizzled and dissolved. Opal Koboi stood in the hole, flanked by Merv and Scant Brill. The pixie twins were armed with transparent plastic handguns. Merv’s gun barrel glowed gently in the aftermath of his wall-melting shot.

  “Murderer!” shouted Holly, reaching for her gun. Merv casually put a blast close enough to her head to singe her eyebrows. Holly froze, raising her hands in submission.

  “Opal Koboi, I presume?” said Artemis; although, if Holly had not told him the whole story, he never would have guessed that the female before him was anything but a human child. Her black hair was braided down her back, and she wore a checked pinafore of the type worn by a million schoolgirls around the world. Her ears were, of course, rounded.

  “Arte
mis Fowl, how nice to see you again. I do believe that in different circumstances we could have been allies.”

  “Circumstances change,” said Artemis. “Perhaps we can still be allies.”

  Holly chose to give Artemis the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was acting like a traitor to save their skins. Maybe.

  Opal fluttered her long, curved eyelashes. “Tempting, but no. I feel the world is only large enough for one child genius. And now that I’m pretending to be a child, that genius would be me. Meet Belinda Zito, a girl with big plans.”

  Holly reached a hand toward her weapon, but stopped when Merv leveled his transparent handgun at her.

  “I know you,” she said to the Brill brothers. “The Pixie twins. You were on TV.”

  Scant couldn’t hold back a grin. “Yes, on Canto. It was the season’s highest-rated show. We’re thinking of writing a book, aren’t we, Merv? All about how we . . .”

  “Finish each other’s sentences,” completed Merv, though he knew it would cost him.

  “Shut up, you utter imbecile,” snapped Opal, shooting Merv a poisonous glare. “Keep your weapon up and your mouth closed. This is not about you; it is about me. Remember that and I might not have to liquidize the pair of you.”

  “Yes, of course, Miss Koboi. It’s all about you.”

  Opal almost purred. “That’s right. It’s always about me. I am the only important one here.”

  Artemis casually slipped one hand into his pocket. The one holding the cell phone that was still connected to Fowl Manor.

  “If I may, Miss Koboi. This delusion of self-importance is common among those recently awakened from comas. It is known as the Narcissus Syndrome. I wrote a paper on this precise subject for the Psychologists Yearbook, under the pseudonym Sir E. Brum. You have spent so much time in your own company, so to speak, that everyone else has become unreal. . . .”

  Opal nodded at Merv. “For heaven’s sake, shut him up.”