Foaly would need to be as paranoid as he had always been.
And Opal Koboi’s rampant narcissism would need to have run so wild that she would not be able to destroy humanity without her enemies at hand to witness her glory.
Finally Holly could not sit and watch Artemis’s clumsy attempts at aviation any longer.
“Give me the stick,” she said. “Give it full flaps when we hit the ground. They’re going to be on us pretty quickly.”
Artemis relinquished control without objection. This was not the time for macho argument. Holly was undeniably ten times the pilot he would ever be, and also several times more macho than he was. Artemis had once seen Holly get into a fistfight with another elf who said her hair looked pretty, because she thought he was being sarcastic, as she was sporting a fresh crew cut on that particular day.
Holly didn’t go on many dates.
Holly nudged the stick with the heel of her hand, lining up the plane with the manor’s pebble driveway.
“The driveway is too short,” said Artemis.
Holly knelt on the seat for a better view. “Don’t worry. The landing gear will probably totally collapse on impact anyway.”
Artemis’s mouth twisted in what could have been an ironic smile or a grimace of terror.
“Thank goodness for that. I thought we were in real trouble.”
Holly struggled with the stick as though it were resisting arrest. “Trouble? Landing a crippled aircraft is just a normal Tuesday morning for us, Mud Boy.”
Artemis looked at Holly then and felt a tremendous affection for her. He wished that he could loop the past ten seconds and study it at a less stressful time so he could properly appreciate how fierce and beautiful his best friend was. Holly never seemed so vital as when she was balancing on the fine line between life and death. Her eyes shone and her wit was sharp. Whereas others would fall apart or withdraw, Holly attacked the situation with a vigor that made her glow.
She is truly magical, thought Artemis. Perhaps her qualities are more obvious to me now that I have decided to sacrifice myself.
Then he realized something. I cannot reveal my plans to her. If Holly knew, she would try to stop me.
It pained Artemis that his last conversation with Holly would be by necessity peppered with misdirection and lies.
For the greater good.
Artemis Fowl, the human who had once lied as a matter of course, was surprised to find that in this instance, lying for the greater good did not make him feel any better about it.
“Here we go,” shouted Holly over the howl caused by the wind shear. “Shankle your bootbraces.”
Artemis tightened his seat belt. “Bootbraces shankled,” he called.
And not a millisecond too soon. The ground seemed to rush up to meet them, filling their view, blocking out the sky. Then, with a tremendous clatter, they were down, being showered by blurred stones. Long-stemmed flowers fell in funereal bouquets across the windshield, and the propeller buckled with an earsplitting shriek. Artemis felt his seat belt bite into both shoulders, arresting his leftward lean, which was just as well, because his head would have naturally come to rest exactly where a prop blade had thunked through the seat rest.
The small craft lost its wings sliding down the avenue, then flipped onto its roof, coming to a shuddering halt at the front steps.
“That could have been a lot worse,” said Holly, smacking her seat-belt buckle.
Indeed, thought Artemis, watching blood on the tip of his nose seem to drip upward.
Suddenly something that looked like a giant, angry peach slid down what was left of the windshield, buckling the anti-shatter glass and coming to a wobbly stop on the bottom step.
Mulch made it, thought Artemis. Good.
Mulch literally crawled up the manor steps, desperate for food to replace his jettisoned fat. “Can you believe that supermodels do that every month?” he moaned.
Artemis beeped the door and the dwarf disappeared inside, clattering down the main hallway toward the kitchen.
It was left to Artemis and Holly to lug Butler the length of the steps, which in the bodyguard’s limp, unconscious state was about as easy as lugging a sack of anvils.
They had made it to the third step when an uncommonly bold robin redbreast fluttered down and landed on Butler’s face, hooking its tiny claws over the bridge of the bodyguard’s nose. This in itself would have been surprising enough, but the note clamped in the bird’s beak made the little creature altogether more sinister.
Artemis dropped Butler’s arm. “That was quick,” he said. “Opal’s ego doesn’t waste any time.”
Holly tugged the tiny scroll free. “You were expecting this?”
“Yes. Don’t even bother reading it, Holly. Opal’s words are not worth the paper they are written on, and I can tell that’s inexpensive paper.”