'Maybe,' replied Butler. 'Though not for us. I think somebody else knows about the new materialization figures, and I think they're planning to do more than just observe.'

Artemis tapped his chin with two fingers, thinking fast. 'Where?'

'Tier two. Beside the stage. I see one possible weapon trained on the stage. Not a standard gun. Maybe a modified dart rifle.'

Artemis leaned forward, gripping the brass rail. 'They plan to take the demon alive, if one turns up. In that case, they will need a distraction.'

Holly was on her feet. 'What can we do?'

'It's too late to stop them,' said Artemis, a frown slashing his brow. 'If we interfere, we may upset the distraction, in which case the demon will be exposed. If these people are clever enough to be here, you may be sure their plan is a good one.'

Holly claimed her helmet, slotting it over her ears. Air pads automatically inflated to cradle her head. 'I can't just let them kidnap a fairy.'

'You have no choice,' snapped Artemis, risking the audience's displeasure. 'Best and most likely case scenario, nothing happens. No materialization.'

Holly scowled. 'You know as well as I do that fortune never sends the best-case scenario our way. You have too much bad karma.'

Artemis had to chuckle. 'You're right, of course. Worst-case scenario, a demon appears, they anchor it with the dart rifle, we interfere and in the confusion the demon is swept up by the local polizia and we all end up in custody.'

'Not good. So we just sit back and watch.'

'Butler and I sit back and watch. You get over there and record as much data as possible. And when these people go, you go after them.'

Holly activated her wings. They slid from her backpack, crackling blue as the flight computer sent a charge through them.

'How much time do I have?' asked Holly, as she faded from sight.

Artemis checked the stopwatch on his watch.

'If you hurry,' he said, 'none.'

Holly launched herself out over the audience, controlling her trajectory using the joystick built into the thumb of her glove. She soared above the gathered humans, invisible.

With the aid of her helmet's filters, she could clearly see the occupants of the stage-side box.

Artemis was wrong. There was time to stop this. All she had to do was throw the shooter's aim off a little. The demon would never get anchored, and Section 8 could track these Mud Men at their leisure. It was simply a matter of touching the marksman's elbow with her buzz baton to make him lose control of all his motor functions for a few seconds. Plenty of time for a demon to appear, then disappear.

Then Holly smelled burning ozone and felt heat on her arm. Artemis was not wrong. There was no time. Someone was coming.

No.1 appeared on the stage, more or less intact. The trip had cost him the last knuckle on his right index finger, and about two gigabytes worth of memories. But they were mostly bad memories and he had never been very good with his hands.

Dematerialization isn't a particularly painful process, but materialization happens to be a thoroughly enjoyable one. The brain is so happy to register all the body's essential bits and bobs coming together again that it releases a surge of happy endorphins.

No.1 looked at the nub where his previously whole index finger used to be.

'Look,' he said, tittering. 'No finger.'

Then he noticed the humans. Scores of them, arranged in rings, rising up to the heavens. No.1 knew instantly what this must be.

'A theatre. I'm in a theatre. With only seven and a half fingers. I have only seven and a half fingers, not the theatre.' This observation brought on another fit of giggles, and that would have been about it for No.1. He would have been whisked off to the next stop on his interdimensional jaunt, had not a human near the stage aimed a tube at him.

'Tube,' said No.1, proud of his human vocabulary, pointing with the finger that wasn't altogether there.

After that, things happened very quickly. A flurry of events blurred like mixed stripes of vivid paint. The tube flashed, something exploded over his head. A bee stung No.1 on the leg, a female screamed piercingly. A herd of animals, elephants perhaps, passed directly below him.Then most disconcertingly, the ground disappeared from beneath his feet and everything went black. The blackness was rough against his fingers and face.

The last thing No.1 heard before his own personal blackness claimed him, was a voice. It was not a demon's voice — the tones were lighter.

Halfway between bird and boar.

'Welcome, demon,' said the voice, then sniggered.

They know, thought No.1, and he would have panicked, had the chloral hydrate seeping into his system through a leg wound allowed such exertions. They know all about us.

Then the knockout serum caressed his brain, tipping him off a cliff into a deep dark hole.

Artemis watched events unfold from his box. A smile of admiration twitched at the corners of his mouth as the plan unrolled smoothly like the most expensive Tunisian carpet. Whoever was behind this was good.

More than good. Perhaps they were related.

'Keep your camera pointed at the stage,' Artemis said to Butler. 'Holly will get the box.'

Butler was squirming to cover Holly's back, but his place was at Artemis's side. And after all, Captain Short could look after herself. He made sure his watch crystal was trained on the stage. Artemis would never let him forget it if he missed even a nanosecond of the action.

On stage, the opera was almost over. Norma was leading Pollione to the pyre, where they were both to be burned. All eyes were upon her.

Except those involved in a drama of the fairy kind.

The music was lush and layered, providing an unwitting soundtrack to the real-life drama unfolding in the theatre.

It began with an electric crackle downstage, stage right. Barely noticeable, unless you were expecting it. And even I, if some patrons did notice the glow, they were not alarmed. It could easily be a reflected blotch of light, or one of the special effects these modern theatre directors were so fond of.

So, thought Artemis, feeling the excitement buzz in his fingertips.

Something is coming. Another game begins.

The 'something' began to materialize inside the crackling blue envelope.

It took on a vague, humanoid shape. Smaller than the last one, but definitely a demon, and definitely not a reflected blotch of light.

Initially the shape was insubstantial, wraithlike, but after a second it became less transparent and more of this world.

Now, thought Artemis. Anchor it, and tranquilize it too.

A slender silver tube poked from the shadows on the opposite side of the theatre. There was a small pop, and a dart sped from the tube's mouth. Artemis did not need to follow the dart's path. He knew that it was headed straight into the creature's leg. The leg would be best. A good target, but unlikely to be fatal. A silver tip with some kind of knockout cocktail.

The creature was trying to communicate now and making wild gestures.

Artemis heard a few gasps from the audience as patrons noticed the shape inside the light.

Very well. You have anchored it. Now you need a distraction. Something flashy and loud, but not particularly dangerous. If somebody gets hurt, there will be an investigation.

Artemis switched his gaze to the demon. Solid now in the shadows.

Around him the opera steamrolled towards Act Four's crescendo. The soprano lamented hysterically and almost every eye in the theatre was riveted on her. Almost every eye. But there are always a few bored audience members at an opera, especially by the time Act Four comes along. Those particular eyes would be wandering around the hall, searching for something, anything, interesting to watch. Those eyes would land on the little demon downstage, stage right, unless they were distracted.

Right on cue, a large stage lamp broke free of its clamp in the rigging and swung on its cable into the back canvas. The impact was both flashy and loud. The bulb exploded, showering the stage and orchestra pit with glass fragments. The bulb's filament glowed with a magnesium glare, temporarily blinding everyone staring at it. Which was almost the entire audience.

Glass rained down on the orchestra, and the musicians panicked, fleeing en masse towards the green room, dragging their instruments behind them. A cacophony of squealing strings and overturned percussion instruments shattered any echoes of Bellini's masterpiece.

Nice, thought Artemis appreciatively. The clamp and the filament were rigged. The stampeding orchestra is a lucky bonus.

Artemis appreciated all of this out of the corner of his eye. His main focus was the diminutive demon, lost in the shadows behind a canvas flat.

Now if it was me, thought the Irish teenager, I would have Butler drop a black sack over that little creature and whisk him out of the stage door into a four-wheel drive. We could be on the ferry to Ravenna before the theatre crew got the bulb changed.

What actually happened was slightly different. A stage trapdoor opened beneath the demon and it disappeared on a hydraulic platform.

Artemis shook his head in admiration. Fabulous. His mysterious adversaries must have hijacked the theatre computer system. And when the demon appeared, they simply sent a command to open the appropriate trapdoor panel. Doubtless there was someone waiting below to transfer the sleeping demon to an idling vehicle outside.

Artemis leaned over the railing, gazing into the audience below. As the house lights were brought up, the theatre patrons rubbed their dazzled eyes and spoke in the sheepish tones that follow shock. There was no talk of demons. No pointing and screaming. He had just witnessed the perfect execution of a perfect plan.

Artemis gazed across to the box on the far side of the stage. The three occupants stood calmly. They were simply leaving. The show was over and it was time to go. Artemis recognized the pretty girl from Barcelona and her two guardians. The thin man seemed to have recovered from his leg injury, as his crutches were now tucked underneath one arm.

The girl wore a self-satisfied smile, the kind that usually decorated

Artemis's own face after a successful mission.

It's the girl, Artemis realized with some surprise. She is the brains here.

This girl's smile, a reflection of his own, rankled Artemis. He was not accustomed to being two steps behind. No doubt she believed that victory was hers. She may have won this battle, but the campaign was far from over.

It's time, he thought, that this girl knew she had an opponent.

He brought his hands together in a slow handclap.

'Brava,' he called. 'Brava, ragazza!'

His voice carried easily above the heads of the audience. The girl's smile froze on her lips and her eyes searched for the source of this compliment. In seconds she located the Irish teenager, and their eyes locked.

If Artemis had been expecting the girl to quail and tremble at the sight of him and his bodyguard, then he was disappointed. True, a shadow of surprise flitted across her brow, but then she accepted the applause with a nod and royal wave. The girl said two words before she left. The distance was too great for Artemis actually to hear them, but even if he hadn't long since trained himself to lip-read, it would have been easy to guess what they were.

Artemis Fowl, she said. Nothing more. There was a game beginning here. No doubt about it. How intriguing.

Then a funny thing happened. Artemis's clapping hands were joined by a scattering of others from various spots in the theatre. The applause grew from hesitant beginnings to a crescendo. Soon the patrons were on their feet and the bewildered singers were forced to take several curtain calls.

On his way through the lobby minutes later, Artemis was highly amused to overhear several audience members gushing over the unorthodox direction of the opera's final scene. The exploding lamp, mused one buff", was doubtless a metaphor for Norma's own falling star. But no, argued a second. The lamp was obviously a modernistic interpretation of the burning stake which Norma was about to face. Or perhaps, thought Artemis as he pushed through the crowd to find a light Sicilian mist falling on his forehead, the exploding lamp was simply an exploding lamp.

Chapter 5: Imprisoned

Captain Holly Short of Section 8 followed the abductors to a Land Rover Discovery, and from there to the Ravenna ferry. Their captive had been transferred from a canvas sack into a stout golf bag, which was then topped off with the heads of several clubs. It was a very slick operation. Three adult male humans and one teenage female. Holly was only mildly surprised to see that a young girl was involved. After all, Artemis Fowl was little more than a child and he managed to involve himself in far more complex plots than this.

The Land Rover was returned to a Hertz rental in Italy, and from there the group took a first-class sleeper carriage on an overnight bullet train along the western coast. It made sense to travel by train. There was no need to pass the golf bag through an X-ray machine.

Holly didn't need to worry about X-ray machines, or indeed any form of human security device. Wearing her Section 8 shimmer suit, she was invisible to any kind of ray the border police could throw at her. The only way to find a shielded fairy was to hit one accidentally with a stone, and even then you would probably only get an invisible smack on the ear for your trouble.

Holly slipped into the sleeper carriage and deposited herself on an unused luggage rack over the girl's head. Below her, the three humans propped the golf bag against the table, and stared at it as if… as if there was a demon inside.

Three men and one girl. It would be easy to take them. She could knock them out with her Neutrino, then get Foaly to send in some techs to do mind wipes. Holly was itching to free the poor demon. It would take mere seconds. The only thing stopping her was the voices in her head.

One of those voices belonged to Foaly, the other to Artemis.

'Hold your position, Captain Short,' advised Foaly the centaur. 'We need to see how far this goes.'

Section 8 had become very interested in Holly's mission since the demon abduction. Foaly was keeping a dedicated line to her helmet open.

Holly's helmet was soundproof, yet she was still nervous talking in such close proximity to the targets. The trick in this situation is to train oneself to speak without any of the usual accompanying gestures. This is harder than it sounds.

'That poor demon will be terrified,' said Holly, lying perfectly still. 'I have to get it out of there.'

'No,' said Artemis sharply. 'You have to see the bigger picture, Holly.

We have no idea how big this organization is, or how much they know about the fairy People.'

'Not as much as you. Demons don't carry the fairy Book. They're not much for rules.'

'At least you have something in common,' said Butler.

'I could use the mesmer on them,' Holly offered. The mesmer was one of the tricks in every fairy's magical bag. It was a siren's song that could have any human happily spilling his guts. 'That would make them tell me what they know.'

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