Juliet glanced guiltily at the monitor. Just a quick peek, what harm could it do? She whipped up the frames, sending her eyeballs spinning around the room.

In that instant a figure materialized before her. Just stepped out of the air. It was Holly. She was smiling.

'Oh, it's you. How did you — '

The fairy interrupted with a wave of her hand.

'Why don't you take off those glasses, Juliet? They really don't suit you.'

She's right, thought Juliet. And what a lovely voice. Like a choir all on its own. How could you argue with a voice like that?

'Sure. Caveman glasses off. Cool voice, by the way. Doh ray me and all that.'

Holly decided not to try deciphering Juliet's comments. It was hard enough when the girl was in full control of her brain.

'Now. A simple question.'

'No problem.' What a great idea.

'How many people in the house?'

Juliet thought. One and one and one.

And another one? No, Mrs Fowl wasn't there.

'Three,' she said finally. 'Me and Butler and, of course, Artemis. Mrs Fowl was here, but she went bye-bye, then she went bye-bye.'

Juliet giggled. She'd made a joke. A good one too.

Holly drew a breath to ask for clarification, then thought better of it. A mistake as it turned out.

'Has anyone else been here. Anyone like me?'

Juliet chewed her lip. 'There was one little man. In a uniform like yours. Not cute though. Not one bit. Just shouted and smoked a smelly cigar. Terrible complexion. Red as a tomato.'

Holly almost smiled. Root had come himself. No doubt the negotiations had been disastrous.

'No one else?'

'Not that I know of. If you see that man again, tell him to lay off the red meat. He's just a coronary waiting to happen.'

Holly swallowed a grin. Juliet was the only human she knew who was probably more lucid under the mesmer.

'OK. I'll tell him. Now, Juliet, I want you to stay in my room, and no matter what you hear, don't come out.'

Juliet frowned.

'This room? It's so boring. No TV or anything. Can't I go up to the lounge?'

'No. You have to stay here. Anyway, they've just installed a wall television. Cinema size. Wrestling, twenty-four hours a day.'

Juliet almost fainted with pleasure. She ran into the cell, gasping as her imagination supplied the pictures.

Holly shook her head. Well, she thought, at least one of us is happy.

Mulch gave his rear end a shake to dislodge any clumps of earth.

If only his mother could see him now, spraying mud on the Mud People. That was irony, or something like it. Mulch had never been big on grammar in school. That or poetry. He'd never seen the point.

Down the mines, there were only two phrases of any importance: 'Look, gold!' and 'Cave in, everybody out!' No hidden meanings there, or rhymes.

The dwarf buttoned his bum-flap, which had been blasted open by the gale emanating from his nether regions. Time to make a run for it. Whatever hope he'd had of escaping undiscovered had been blown. Literally.

Mulch retrieved his earpiece, screwing it firmly into his ear. Well, you never knew, even the LEP might prove useful.

'… And when I get my hands on you, convict, you'll wish you stayed down those mines…'

Mulch sighed. Ah well. Nothing new there then.

Clasping the safe's treasure tightly in his fist, the dwarf turned to retrace his steps. To his utter amazement there was a human entangled in the banisters. Mulch was not one bit surprised that his recyclings had managed to hurl the elephantine Mud Man several 186metres through the air. Dwarf gas had been known to cause avalanches in the Alps. What did surprise him was the fact that the man had managed to get so close to him in the first place.

'You're good,' said Mulch, wagging a finger at the unconscious bodyguard. 'But nobody takes a body blow from Mulch Diggums and stays on their feet.'

The Mud Man stirred, the whites of his eyes showing beneath fluttering lids.

Root's voice crackled in the dwarf's ears.

'Get a move on, Mulch Diggums, before that Mud Man gets up and rearranges your innards. He took out an entire Retrieval team, you know.'

Mulch swallowed, his bravado suddenly deserting him.

'An entire Retrieval team? Maybe I should get back underground…for the good of the mission.'

Skipping hurriedly around the groaning bodyguard, Mulch took the steps two at a time. No point in worrying about creaking stairs when you've just sent the intestinal equivalent of Hurricane Hal scurrying around the corridors.

He'd almost reached the cellar door when a figure shimmered into focus before him. Mulch recognized it as his arresting officer from the Renaissance Masters smuggling case.

'Captain Short.'

'Mulch. I wasn't expecting to see you.'

The dwarf shrugged. 'Julius had a dirty job. Someone had to do it.'

'I get it,' said Holly, nodding. 'You've already lost your magic. Smart. What did you find out?'

Mulch showed Holly his find.

'This was in his safe.'

'A copy of the Book!' gasped Holly. 'No wonder we're in this fix. We were playing into his hands all along.'

Mulch opened the cellar door.

'Shall we?'

'I can't. I'm under eyeball orders not to leave the house.'

'You magical types and your rituals. You have no idea how liberating it is to be rid of all that mumbo-jumbo.'

A series of sharp noises drifted down from the upper landing. It sounded like a troll thrashing around in a crystal emporium.

'We can debate ethics at a later date. Right now I suggest we make ourselves scarce.'

Mulch nodded.

'Agreed. This guy took out an entire Retrieval squad apparently.'

Holly paused, half shielded.

'An entire squad? Hmm. Fully equipped. I wonder…"

She continued her fade-out, and the last thing to go was her widening grin.

Mulch was tempted to hang around. There weren't many things more fun to watch than a heavily armed Recon officer going to town on a bunch of unsuspecting humans. By the time Captain Short got through with this Fowl character, he'd be begging her to get out of his manor.

The Fowl character in question was watching it all from the surveillance room. There was no denying it. Things were not good. Not good at all. But certainly not irredeemable. There was still hope.

Artemis catalogued the events of the last few minutes. The manor's security had been compromised. The safe room was in a shambles, blown apart by some sort of fairy flatulence. Butler lay unconscious, possibly paralysed by the same gaseous anomaly. His hostage was loose in the house, her fairy powers restored to her. There was an unsightly creature in leather chaps burrowing holes beneath the foundations, with no apparent regard for the fairy commandments. And the People had retrieved a copy of the Book, one of several copies as it happened, including one on disk in a Swiss vault.

Artemis's finger combed an errant strand of dark hair. He would have to dig very deep to uncover the good in this particular scenario.

He took several deep breaths, finding his chi as Butler had taught him. After several moments' contemplation, he realized that these factors meant little to the overall strategies of both sides. Captain Short was still trapped in the manor. And the time-stoppage period was running out. Soon the LEP would have no option but to launch their bio-bomb, and that was when Artemis Fowl would unveil his coup de grace. Of course, the whole thing depended on Commander Root. If Root was as intellectually challenged as he looked, it was quite possible the entire scheme would collapse around his ears. Artemis hoped fervently that someone on the fairy team had the wit to spot the 'blunder' he'd made during the negotiation session.

Mulch unbuttoned his bum-flap. Time to suck some dirt, as they said down the mines. The trouble with dwarf tunnels was that they were self-sealing, so that if you had to go back the way you came, there was a whole new burrow to be excavated. Some dwarfs retraced their steps exactly, chewing through the less compact and pre-digested dirt.