Butler patted his young charge on the shoulder. 'It's normal to be distracted by girls. Natural. If you hadn't been so busy saving the world these past few years, it would have happened sooner.'

'Nevertheless, I have to control it, Butler. I have things to do.'

'Control puberty?' snorted the bodyguard. 'If you manage that, you'll be the first.'

'I generally am,' said Artemis.

And it was true. No other teenager had kidnapped a fairy, rescued their father from the Russian Mafiya and helped put down a goblin revolution by the tender age of fourteen.

A horn honked twice. From across the intersection, a young lady gestured through an open limousine window.

'It's Maria,' said Artemis, then caught himself. 'I mean, let us go. Maybe we'll have better luck at the next site.'

Butler took the lead, stopping the traffic with a wave of One massive palm. 'Maybe we should take Maria with us.

A full-time driver would make my job a lot easier.'

It took Artemis a moment to realize that he was being ribbed. 'Very funny, Butler. You were joking, weren't you?'

'Yes, I was.'

'I thought so, but I don't have a lot of experience with humour. Apart from Mulch Diggums.'

Mulch was a kleptomaniac dwarf who had stolen from, and for, Artemis on previous occasions. Diggums liked to think of himself as a funny fairy, and his main sources of humour were his own bodily functions.

'If you can call that humour,' said Butler smiling, in spite of himself, at his own memories of the pungent dwarf.