Holly knew Mulch well. This chitchat was simply for distraction while he took a peek around.
“And now to business,” said the dwarf finally, discarding the dead beard hair he had used to pick the lock. “I seem to have a human and an elf trapped in a car. So I ask myself, should I let ’em out?”
“And what do you answer yourself?” asked Artemis with barely contained impatience.
Mulch’s black pebble eyes danced in the moonlight. “So, the Mud Boy understands Gnommish. Interesting. Well, understand this, human. I let you out as soon as I get my money.”
Ah, thought Holly. There is money involved. Somehow these two have set up a deal.
Holly had endured her prison for long enough. Mulch is not yet my friend, she thought. So there’s no need to be polite.
She drew a knee to her chin, tugging on it with both hands for an extra pound of elastic force.
Mulch realized what she was about to do. “Hey, elf. No—”
Which was as far as he got before his face was batted with the trunk door. The dwarf tumbled backward into the hole he had climbed out of, sending up an oof of wind and dirt.
Holly clambered over Artemis to the fresh air. She gulped down great gasps, chest out, face to the sky.
“Sorry,” she said between breaths. “That space is tiny. I don’t like tiny.”
“Claustrophobic?” asked Artemis, rolling from the trunk.
Holly nodded. “I used to be. I thought I had overcome it. Lately, though . . .”
There was a commotion in the dwarf hole. A blue riot of swearing, and a scuffling in the earth.
Holly quickly recovered herself and leaped into the pit, tackling Mulch before he could unhinge his jaw and disappear.
“He could be useful,” she grunted, bundling the protesting dwarf up the incline. “And he has already seen us, so the damage has been done.”
“That’s a pincer hold,” exclaimed Mulch. “You’re LEP.”
He twisted around, snagging Holly’s wig with his beard hair. “I know you. Holly Short. Captain Holly Short. One of Julius Root’s pet rottweilers.” Suddenly the dwarf’s already creased brow wrinkled further in confusion. “But this is impossible.”
Before Artemis could instruct Holly not to ask, she went ahead and did it.
“Why is it impossible, Mulch?”
Mulch did not reply, but his eyes betrayed him, glancing guiltily over his shoulder at a scuffed Tekfab backpack. Holly deftly spun the dwarf around and opened the bag’s main compartment.
“Quite a treasure trove we have here,” she said, rummaging in the backpack. “Medi-kit, rations, adhesive com-pads. And look, an old omnitool.” Then she recognized the inscription laser etched into the base. “It’s my old omnitool.”
In spite of their years of friendship, Holly turned the full force of her anger on Mulch.
“Where did you get this?” she shouted. “How did you get it?”
“A present,” offered Mulch lamely. “From my . . . eh . . .” He squinted to read the writing on the base. “From my mother. She always called me Holly because of my, erm, prickly personality.”
Holly was angrier than Artemis had ever seen her. “Tell me, Diggums. The truth!”
Mulch thought about fighting. It was in the curve of his fingers and the baring of his teeth, but the moment passed quickly, and the dwarf’s natural passive nature surfaced.
“I stole all this stuff from Tara,” he admitted.“I’m a thief, aren’t I? But in my defense, I had a difficult childhood, which led to low self-esteem, which I projected onto others and punished them by stealing their possessions. So in a very real way, I am the victim here. And I forgive me.”
Mulch’s trademark waffle reminded Holly of the friend he would become, and her anger evaporated as quickly as it had appeared. She traced the laser inscription with a fingertip.
“My mother gave me this,” she said quietly. “Most reliable omnitool I ever had. Then, one night in Hamburg, my fugitive locked himself in a car. So I reached for my omnitool and it was gone. The target was apprehended by humans; I lost my first fugitive; and Commander Root had to send in an entire team of techies to clean up. It was a disaster. And all this time it was you.”
Mulch was puzzled. “All this time? I stole this from a belt in a locker in Tara an hour ago. I saw you there. What’s going on here . . . ?” Then Mulch blinked and clapped his hairy palms. “Oh, bless my bum-flap. You’re time travelers.”
Holly realized that she had said too much. “That’s ridiculous.”
The dwarf was actually doing a little jig now. “No. No, it all adds up. You’re talking about future events in the past tense. You sent back a note so that I would come and rescue you here and now.” Mulch clapped his hands to his cheeks in mock horror. “What you’re doing is so much more illegal than anything I could ever do. Imagine the reward I would get for turning you over to Julius Root.”
“Sent back a note?” scoffed Holly. “That’s absurd, isn’t it, Artemis?”
“Most certainly,” said Artemis. “But if someone were to send back a note from the future, when and where would they send it to?”
Mulch jerked a thumb toward Holly. “There’s a junction box beside her locker. Looked like it hadn’t been touched for years. I was checking it out because sometimes they have valuable tech in ’em. Not this one, though, just an envelope addressed to me. And inside a note asking me to come to this place and set you free.”
Artemis smiled. Satisfied. “I imagine there was an incentive offered for our rescue?”
Mulch’s beard hair crackled. “A large incentive. No . . . a stupendous incentive.”
“Stupendous, eh? Very well, you shall have it.”
“When?” asked Mulch hungrily.
“Soon. I just need you to do me one more favor.”
“I knew it,” said the dwarf, through grinding teeth. “Never do the job until you see the cash. Why should I trust you?”
Artemis took a step forward, eyes narrow behind a curtain of dark hair. “You don’t need to trust me, Mulch. You need to be afraid of me. I am a Mud Boy from your future, and I could be in your past too, if you choose not to cooperate. I found you once, I could certainly do it again. The next time you break into a car trunk, there could be a gun and a badge waiting for you.”
Mulch felt apprehension tingling in his beard hair, and his beard hair was rarely wrong. As his grandmother used to say: Trust the hair, Mulch. Trust the hair. This human was dangerous, and he had enough trouble in his life already.
“Okay, Mud Boy,” he said grudgingly. “One more favor. And then you’d better have a stupendous amount of gold for me.”
“I will. Fear not, my pungent friend.”
The dwarf was deeply offended. “Don’t call me friend. Just tell me. What. You. Want. Done.”
“Simply follow your nature and dig us a tunnel. I need to steal a lemur.”
Mulch nodded as though lemur-napping was the most natural thing in the world.
“And from whom are we stealing it?”
“From me.”
Mulch frowned, then the penny dropped. “Ah . . . time travel throws up all sorts of twists, doesn’t it?”
Holly slipped the omnitool into her pocket. “Tell me about it,” she said.
CHAPTER 7
TALK TO THE ANIMALS
Rathdown Park, County Wicklow, Ireland
The Fowl Bentley was protected by a fingerprint scanner, and a keypad that required an eight-digit code. The code was changed every month, and so it took Artemis a few seconds to mentally rewind almost eight years and remember the right set of numbers.
He slid across the front seat’s tan leather upholstery and pressed his thumb to a second scanner tucked behind the steering wheel. A spring-loaded compartment slid smoothly from the dash. It was not a large compartment, but big enough to hold a clip of cash, platinum credit cards, and a spare cell phone in its cradle.
“No gun?”said Holly, when Artemis emerged from th
e car, though one of Butler’s guns would be clunky in her fingers.
“No gun,” confirmed Artemis.
“I wouldn’t be able to hit an elephant with one of Butler’s pistols even if I had one.”
“Elephants are not the quarry this evening,” said Artemis, speaking in English now that they were out of the trunk. “Lemurs are. At any rate, as we could hardly shoot at our opponent on this particular adventure, perhaps it’s better that we are unarmed.”
“Not really,” said Holly. “I may not be able to shoot you or the lemur, but I bet that more opponents will turn up. You have a knack for making enemies.”
Artemis shrugged. “Genius inspires resentment. A sad fact of life.”