Artemis clicked the case’s latch to appease the number gods-twenty times, four fives-and felt his heart slow down.

I will break my habits tomorrow, when this job is done.

He loitered at the maître d’s podium until Adamsson and his snow tractor had disappeared over a curved ridge of snow that could have been a whale’s spine, then waited a further minute until the vehicle’s rumbling had faded to an old smoker’s cough.

Very well. Time to do some business.

Artemis descended the five wooden steps to the main restaurant floor (excellent, good omen), threading a series of columns hung with replicas of the Stóra-Borg mask until he arrived at the head of the laid table. The seats were angled to face him, and a slight shimmer, like a heat haze, flickered over the tabletop.

“Good morning, friends,” said Artemis in Gnommish, forcing himself to pronounce the fairy words in confident, almost jovial, tones. “Today’s the day we save the world.”

The heat haze seemed more electrical now with crackles of neon-white interference running through it, and faces swimming in its depths like ghosts from a dream. The faces solidified and grew torsos and limbs. Small figures, like children, appeared. Like children, but not the same. These were representatives of the Fairy People, and among them perhaps the only friends Artemis had.

“Save the world?” said Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon. “Same old Artemis Fowl, and I say that sarcastically, as saving the world is not like you at all.”

Artemis knew he should smile, but he could not, so instead he found fault, something that would not seem out of character.

“You need a new shield amplifier, Foaly,” he said to a centaur who was balanced awkwardly on a chair designed for humans. “I could see the shimmer from the front porch. Call yourself a technical expert? How old is the one you’re using?”