He scanned the rest of the box. There were two men behind the girl. One, in his fifties—paunchy, expensive tuxedo—was filming the stage with his cell phone camera. This was the first man from Barcelona. The second man was there, too—possibly Chinese, wiry, spiked hair. He had apparently not yet recovered from his leg injury and was adjusting one of his crutches. He flipped it around, removed a rubber grip from the foot, then nestled it against his shoulder like a rifle.
Butler automatically stepped between Artemis and the man’s line of fire. Not that the crutch was aimed at his charge; it was pointed stage right, three feet from the soprano. Just where Artemis was expecting his demon to show up.
“Holly,” he said in a low, calm voice, “I think you should shield.”
Artemis lowered his opera glasses. “Problems?”
“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-case—and most likely— 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. Worstcase 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?” she asked 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 by using the joystick built into the thumb of her glove. Invisible, she soared above the gathered humans. 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 Eight 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.
No1 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.
No1 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. No1 knew instantly what this must be.
“A theater. I’m in a theater. With only seven and a half fingers. I have only seven and a half fingers, not the theater.” This observation brought on another fit of giggles, and that would have been about it for No1. 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 No1, 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 No1 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 No1 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 No1, 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 hol
e.
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.
Onstage, 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 sound track to the real-life drama unfolding in the theater.
It began with an electric crackle downstage right. Barely noticeable, unless you were expecting it. And even 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 theater 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.