‘How can I be awake, Arty,’ said Angeline, her eyes calm in black circles, ‘when I feel myself dying? How can I be awake when I feel that?’

Artemis’s feigned calm was knocked by this.

‘I-it’s the… fever,’ he stammered. ‘You’re seeing things a little strangely. Everything will be fine soon. I promise.’

Angeline closed her eyes. ‘And my son keeps his promises, I know. Where have you been these past years, Arty? We were so worried. Why are you not seventeen?’

In her delirium, Angeline Fowl saw through a haze of magic to the truth. She realized that he had been missing for three years and had come home the same age as when he went away.

‘I am fourteen, Mother. Almost fifteen now, still a boy for another while. Now close your eyes and when you open them again all will be well.’

‘What have you done to my thoughts, Artemis? Where has your power come from?’

Artemis was sweating now. The heat of the room, the sickly smell, his own anxiety.

She knows. Mother knows. If you heal her, will she remember everything?

It didn’t matter. That could be dealt with in due course. His priority was to mend his parent.

Artemis squeezed the frail hand in his grip, feeling the bones grind against each other. He was about to use magic on his mother for the second time.

Magic did not belong in Artemis’s soul, and gave him lightning-bolt headaches whenever he used it. Though he was human, the fairy rules of magic held a certain sway over him. He was forced to chew motion-sickness tablets before entering a dwelling uninvited, and when the moon was full Artemis could often be found in the library, listening to music at maximum volume to drown out the voices in his head. The great commune of magical creatures. The fairies had powerful race memories and they surfaced like a tidal wave of raw emotion, bringing migraines with them.