Angeline lay flat on the bed, steaming with rage. Literally steaming. Her eyeballs rolled in their sockets, and tendons stood out like steel cables on her arms and neck. All the time she ranted.
“When I have the lemur I will crush you all. The LEP, Foaly, Julius Root, all of you. I will send laser dogs down every tunnel in the earth’s crust until I flush out that odious dwarf. And as for that female captain, I will brainwash her and make her my slave.” She cast a hateful look at Artemis. “Fitting revenge, don’t you agree, my son.” The last two words dripped from her lips like poison from a viper’s fangs.
Artemis held Jayjay close; he could feel the small creature shivering against his chest. Or perhaps the shivering was his own.
“Opal,” he said. “You followed us home.”
“Finally!” shouted Artemis’s mother, in Opal’s voice. “The great boy genius sees the truth.” Angeline’s limbs stiffened, and she levitated from the bed, surrounded by a roiling mist of steam. Her pale blue eyes cut through the fog, spearing Artemis with their mad glare.
“Did you think you could win? Did you believe that the battle was won? How charmingly deluded. You do not even possess magic. I, on the other hand, have more magic than any other fairy since the demon warlocks. And once I have the lemur, I will be immortal.”
Artemis rolled his eyes. “Don’t forget invincible.”
“I haaate you!” squealed Opal/Angeline. “When I have the lemur, I will ... I will ...”
“Kill me in some horrible fashion,” suggested Artemis.
“Precisely. Thank you.”
Angeline’s body pivoted stiffly until she hovered upright, her halo of charged hair brushing the ceiling.
“Now,” she said, pointing a skeletal finger at the cowering Jayjay, “give me that creature.”
Artemis wrapped the lemur in his jacket. “Come and get him,” he said.
In the study, Holly was running through Artemis’s theory.
“That’s it?” said No1 when Holly had finished explaining. “You’re not forgetting some crucial detail? Like the part that makes sense?”
“The whole thing is ridiculous.” interjected Foaly from the monitors. “Come on, fairies. We’ve done our part. Time to head belowground.”
“Soon,” said Holly. “Let’s just give Artemis five minutes to check it out. All we need to do is be alert.”
Foaly’s sigh crackled through the speakers. “Well, at least let me raise the shuttle. The troops are holding at Tara, waiting for a callback.”
Holly thought about this. “That’s good. You do that. Whatever happens, we need to be ready to move out. And when you’re finished, do a sweep of the estate, see where that nurse is.”
Foaly’s focus shifted left, while he put a call in to Tara.
Holly pointed at No1. “You just have a little of that signature magic dancing on your fingertips in case we need it. I won’t feel completely safe until Angeline is well, and we’re drinking sim-coffee in a Haven bar.”
No1 raised his hands, and soon they were enveloped in ripples of red power. “No problem, Holly. I’m ready for anything.”
It was a statement that was missing an almost.
In the same split second, the monitors blacked out and the door burst open with a force that actually drove the doorknob into the wall. Butler’s huge frame filled the gap.
Holly’s smile slipped when she noticed the pistol in the bodyguard’s fist and the mirrored sunglasses covering his eyes.
He’s armed and doesn’t want to be mesmerized.
Holly was quick, but Butler was quicker, and he had the element of surprise; after all, he was supposed to be on his way to China. Holly went for her gun, but Butler was there before her, ripping the Neutrino from her hip.
We have other tricks, thought Holly. We have magic. No1 will knock your socks off.
Butler dragged something into the room on a trolley. A steel barrel with runes etched on the metal.
What’s this? What’s he doing?
No1 managed to get off a single bolt; indoor lightning that scorched Butler’s shirt, knocking him back a pace. But even as he stumbled backward, the bodyguard swung the trolley past him, slingshotting it into the room. A thick slime slopped from its open mouth, splashing on No1’s legs. The barrel trundled forward, knocking Holly and No1 aside like skittles.
No1 stared at his fingers as the magic on each tip winked out like candles in a breeze.
“I don’t feel so great,” he groaned, then keeled over, eyes flickering, lips muttering ancient spells that did not one iota of good.
What is in that barrel? wondered Holly, releasing her suit’s wings from their sheath. Butler grabbed Holly’s ankle as she ascended, flipping her ignominiously into the barrel. She felt the thick gunk close over her like a wet fist, blocking her nose and filling her throat.
The smell was repulsive.