Howdy, y'all! It's the start of another story, and I hope you like it. For anyone who's read 'The Luck of the Irish' I am NOT, repeat, am NOT giving up on it. I can handle multiple stories at once.
...Right?

Disclaimer: The brilliant Artemis Fowl books, with which I amobsessed (but in a good way), belong to Eoin Colfer. All else is mine. MINE! Also, not reviewing is like stealing from the author (me). Don't make me come over there. Here's the chapter.

Trouble Kelp half-walked, half- carried Holly Short to her door. When she had started getting dizzy, the only doctor in Police Plaza had been Jerval Argon, who although he was just a psychologist, had been able to diagnose fairy influenza. Ark Sool had then come by and started getting on Trouble and Foaly’s case for allowing a civilian in the Ops booth. (Holly had come by to see if Foaly could help her out with a tough case.) She had wound up getting dizzy and staggering into Sool. After trying as hard as he could to prove that she was intoxicated and failing, Sool had ordered Trouble to take Holly home. Trouble curbed his urge to hit Sool and did as he was told- after all, Holly was his friend, and she wasn’t doing too well. Still, when Ark Sool looked at Holly and curled his lip like that, Trouble felt both his own lip and his fists curling-

“Holly, you OK?”

“Shmrpt,” was the muffled reply.

“What’s that? Holly, I’m not leaving until you answer me.” Holly looked up, exasperated and exhausted.

“I’m not dying, Trouble-” A phone rang somewhere in the recesses of her tunnel home. Holly let out a groan.

“I have to get that, and then I think I’m gonna throw up.”

“Who is it?”

“Mulch. You know, for the PI case work. I asked him to check for leads in the criminal underworld. My head‘s spinning-” Holly slumped to the floor. Trouble dropped to his knees next to her.

“HOLLY!”

“I’m fine,” she said in a weak voice. “My legs just gave out. Can you help me to my room? And call Mulch and tell him I can’t work tonight? And then please call my mom? I need some soup.” Trouble dispatched Holly in her room, returned Mulch’s message , and upon calling her mother, left a message on Vivian Short’s answering machine.
(“Hi, this is Viv. I’m either not here right now or else I’m avoiding you. Sing your song at the beep. beep”)
Holly was chatty and reassuring enough, but Trouble was still kind of worried. It wasn’t like Holly to voluntarily decide to take a day off. When she’d had fairy influenza a decade ago, she hadn’t gone home until she accidentally threw up in Julius Root’s cigar case and he had yelled his head off, then ordered her to take some leave. She had been so sure she was going to get fired for that one, seeing as it was right after the Hamburg incident. Thinking about his old commander, Trouble sighed. Julius Root’s loss had been barely a couple months ago, and it still stung. He really had been a father to them all. It had to be twice as hard for Holly, though- she didn’t have a father anyway, and then she hadn’t been allowed to attend Root’s funeral. As much of a funeral as you could have without a body, anyways. It had been completely incinerated. So much for flameproof suits. Major Kelp shook his head and locked the door behind him.

Holly tossed and turned, fully dressed, on her sheets. In her dream she was sitting in a tree, under the sun. Now she was at Fowl Manor as the full moon hung in the air. Now she was in the tunnel where Julius died. Gazing around her, she choked back a sob. The wound was still so fresh-

“You miss him, don’t you?” She turned around. The source of the high, fluting voice was a-something- sitting on a rock. It was about two feet tall, but didn’t look completely like a child. It had weak-looking limbs like a pixie’s and a face like a fairy child’s-except for the eyes. These were crafty, clever eyes that when she woke up, she would realize reminded her of Opal Koboi‘s but with none of the self-absorbed madness. This specimen had pale skin. Paler even than Artemis Fowl’s, and he actually glowed in certain lights. It’s hair was white as snow, but still only a few shades lighter than it’s complexion. Those eyes, however, were first purple, now blue, now steel gray. She couldn’t quite decide which it was. The hair curled down past its shoulders, and that plus the delicacy of its features made it impossible to tell its sex. It didn’t look like any fairy race that Holly knew of, and was wearing clothing made of a delicate silver cloth she‘d never before seen in her life. It was the same shade as a Tunnel Blue spider. She wondered idly, dreamily, if this thing was some type of human.

“No, not a human,” said the creature in a high, again almost giggly, tone. “Do I look like a human to you?“ Holly shook her head, not realizing she hadn’t actually spoken out loud. The action flicked a teardrop off her cheek and onto the hard, scorched rock. The creature giggled. “It’s true. You miss Julius. Did you carry out his last order? We know he gave you one. What was it? You can tell me.”

“Keep Artemis safe. Yes, I did.” The creature tittered again.

“Who’s Artemis?” It asked playfully. Holly smiled at the memory of her friend. She would have wondered about how this strange creature knew all this, but it was just a dream. A fever dream. It’s not like it was real, and it certainly wasn’t as if she was thinking the way she normally did-she was dreaming, after all. She could answer safely.

“He’s my friend. My consultant. He helps me. He kidnapped me once, but he’s going straight now. Kind of, anyways.” Holly got a momentary snap of clarity-Why is it asking this? Why am I telling it? Is this a normal dream? I shouldn’t be taking about Artemis like this to people we don’t know-

“But who is he, really?” The figure pressed. “Tell me more.”

In her apartment, Holly Short tosses and turns, turns and tosses as she dreams. Sheets are soaked with sweat, then kicked off the futon altogether, as her body temperature rises. Suddenly, though there is no visible injury, blue sparks of her magic erupt and play along her slim frame. A high chuckling fills the air, then grows louder and louder, reaching near maniacal intensity, then stops. A chanting fills the air as her figure blurs.

“So that’s who Artemis is. He sounds very interesting. But lets talk about other things.” The little whatever-it-was hopped onto a different rock. Holly started to get anxious without knowing why. She couldn’t concentrate. The creature spoke again, in the same playful tones, but this time Holly caught a sense of urgency behind them.

“You’d do anything to get Julius back, wouldn’t you?” A little more insistently. “Wouldn’t you?” Holly nodded feverishly.

“Would you? Would you really? Anything to get Julius back?” The voice was not just emanating from the creature in front of her anymore. It was all around her, in the air, echoing from the tunnel walls, more than one voice.

Now she saw shadows of herself and Julius in this very tunnel, the bomb strapped to his chest. She saw it explode again, hazily, as tears blurred her eyes. They ran down her cheeks. Of course she’d like him back, she thought as she shook her head angrily to clear her vision. He was like her father to her. To all of them. She’d been trying to keep her spirits up, but-

“Yes,” she spoke to a tunnel that was suddenly quiet as the grave. “Yes. I would do anything. We all would.”

“We?” The creature was gone, but she heard it’s voice clearly in her head. Holly was getting angry that her emotions were being played with this way by someone who had no right to probe her. Her tears were rapidly evaporating.

“Yes. We. Me, Artemis, Trouble, Foaly, even Mulch Diggums has more or less said he misses the old commander. We. There’s others, of course, including everybody in the LEP with the possible exception of that rat Sool, but right now, I’d like a little information about who you are. What gives you the right to interrogate me like this?” She looked around for the creature. But the tunnel was quiet, and this time, it seemed, the being was truly gone.

Thirteen thousand miles away, the Mud Boy know to the People as ‘ # $ $’, ‘ that Mud Boy’, and, more usually, ‘Artemis Fowl’ fell over in a dead faint. Within a few minutes, however, he was awake and had successfully diagnosed himself with heatstroke. The school nurse accepted this, finding it easier-much easier- to agree with Artemis than to argue with him. (Many teachers, alas, had yet to pick up on this.) His parents were notified, but all in all, the Irish boy seemed quite fine after that. It was probably just the hot noonday sun. Artemis was cautioned to be a little more careful when it came to staying hydrated, and the records note that were to be no further relapses that term.