Finally, the penny drops, thought Holly. Now go and search the chateau like a good girl Now go and search the chateau like a good girl.

Minerva obligingly stalked out of the room, yelling for her father. Next door, Papa Paradizo, hearing his daughter's screams, closed his phone and began to turn...

Foaly activated the helmet laser and shot him in the chest. He tumbled to the floor and lay in a heap, his chest heaving with the slow breaths of the unconscious.

'Sweet,' crowed the centaur. 'Did you see that? Not so much as a smudge on the gla.s.s.'

'He was heading for the door!' objected Holly, dropping the cam foil.

'He was coming to the gla.s.s. I had to stun him.'

'We will talk about this later, Foaly. I do not like your new gung-ho att.i.tude.'

'Caballine likes me to be masterful. She calls me her stallion.'

'Who? Listen, just stop talking!' hissed Holly, melting No1's bonds with two sharp laser bursts.

'Free!' exclaimed the imp, jumping to his feet. 'Liberated. Unbound. Without restrictions.'

Holly shut off her shield, revealing herself to No1.

'I hope that's a helmet,' said No1.

Holly touched a b.u.t.ton and her visor slid up. 'Yes. I am a fairy just like you. Just a different family.'

'An elf!' exclaimed No1 delightedly. 'An actual elf. I hear you cook your food and like music. Is that true?'

'Occasionally, when we're not trying to escape from murderous humans.'

'Oh, they're not murderous, pugnacious, homicidal, or even bellicose.'

'Maybe not the one you met. But there's a guy with funny hair in the bas.e.m.e.nt. And believe me, when he wakes up he's going to be murderous and all those other things you mentioned.'

No1 remembered Billy Kong; he had no desire to meet him again.

'Very well, elf. What next?'

'Call me Holly.'

'I am Number One. So what next, Holly?'

'Next, we escape. There are friends waiting for us... eh... Number One.'

'Friends?' said No1. He knew the word, of course, but never imagined it could apply to him. It was a warming notion, even in these dire straits.

'What do I do?'

Holly wrapped the cam foil round him like a shawl.

'Keep this on. It will cover most of you.'

'Amazing,' said No1. 'A cloak of invisibility.'

Foaly moaned in Holly's ear. 'A cloak of invisibility? That is a highly sensitive piece of field equipment. What does he think? Some warlock pulled it out of his armpit?'

Holly ignored the centaur, something that was becoming a habit.

'Hold the foil close with one hand. Hang on to my belt with the other. We need to get out of here quickly. I only have enough magic left for a few minutes' shielding. Ready?'

No1's anxious features peeped out from a shawl of invisibility.

'Hold the foil. Hang on to the belt. Got it.'

'Good. Foaly, watch our backs. Let's move out.'

Holly shielded, then hurried out of the open door, pulling No1 behind her. The corridor was lined with tall potted plants and lush oils, including a Matisse. Holly could hear the humans shouting in adjacent rooms. There was activity all around them, and it could only be seconds before some Mud Men spilled into this corridor.

No1 struggled to keep up, his little legs stumbling along behind the super-fit elfin captain. It seemed impossible that they could escape. All around was the clatter of approaching footsteps. No1, slightly distracted, snagged a toe on the cam foil and trampled it underfoot. The foil's electronics crackled and died. The demon was as visible as a blood stain on a patch of snow.

'We lost the foil,' said Foaly.

Holly clenched her fingers. She missed her handgun.

'OK. Nothing to do but make a run for it. Foaly, you have free rein, if you'll pardon the horse a.n.a.logy.'

'Finally,' whinnied the centaur. 'I added a game-pod joystick to my controls. A bit unorthodox, but very accurate. We've got hostiles converging from all sides. My advice is to take the direct route. Go to the end of the corridor and follow our friend Doodah's path out of the window. Butler will cover you once you're in the open.'

'OK. Hold on, Number One; whatever happens, don't let go.'

The first threat came from ahead. Two security guards rounded the corner, guns extended.

Ex-police, Holly guessed. Covering the diagonals Covering the diagonals.

The men were shocked to see No1. Obviously, they were not in the need-to-know loop.

'What the h.e.l.l?' said one.

The other kept his nerve. 'Hold it right there.'

Foaly hit them both in the chest with fat laser bursts. The energy sank through their clothes and they slid down the wall.

'Unconscious,' panted No1. 'Comatose, cataleptic, out for the count.' He realized that this vocabulary-spouting was a good way to deal with stress.

'Stress. Pressure, strain and anxiety.'

Holly dragged No1 onwards, towards the still open window. More guards came from the side corridors, and Foaly dispatched them efficiently.

'I should get bonus points for this,' he said. 'Or at the very least a free life.'

There were two more guards in the sitting room, sneaking an espresso. Foaly dropped them where they stood. And then flashed out a fan laser burst to evaporate the coffee before it hit the rug.

'It's Tunisian,' he explained. 'Very difficult to get coffee out. Now they can just suck up the grains.'

Holly stepped down into the room.

'Sometimes I think you don't quite get the gravity of field missions,' she said, skirting a ma.s.sive velvet sofa.

No1 stumbled down the human-sized steps after his rescuer. In spite of all his new vocabulary, the imp was not quite sure how he was feeling.

Scared, of course. Big Mud Men with fire weapons and all that. Excited too. Being rescued by some kind of elf superhero, who was invisible too. Pain in the leg, don't forget that. The angry human had shot him in the leg, with a silver bullet, no doubt. But No1 realized that one feeling was missing from the melting pot. One that had been strong within him for as long as he could remember. Uncertainty. In spite of the frantic antics unfolding all around, he felt more at home on this planet than he ever had on Hybras.

A bullet whistled past his ear.

Then again, maybe Hybras hadn't been so bad.

'Wake up, Foaly!' admonished Holly. 'You're supposed to be watching our backs.'

'Sorry,' said the centaur, swivelling the laser and strobing the doorway. The female guard smiled broadly then collapsed. On the ground she began singing a nursery rhyme about doggies and their bones.

'Bizarre,' said Foaly. 'That guard is singing.'

'Often happens,' grunted Holly, clambering on to the window sill. 'The laser knocks out some functions, but sometimes awakens others.'

Interesting, thought the centaur. A happy gun. Certainly worth investigating A happy gun. Certainly worth investigating.

Holly reached down and grasped No1's wrist, pulling him over the sill. She was dismayed to see that her own arms were not as invisible as she would have hoped. Her magic was wearing thin. Shielding was a real power siphon. She would flicker into visibility soon whether they were safely away or not.

'Nearly there,' she said.

'Just across the wide open green s.p.a.ce, is it?' said No1, displaying a real gift for sarcasm.

'I like him,' said Foaly.

They tumbled out on to the lawn. The alarm was well and truly raised now, and guards poured from the various doors like beads from a ruptured beanbag.

'Go crazy, Foaly,' said Holly. 'And take out their vehicles too.'

'Yes sir, ma'am,' said Foaly and began firing.

Holly ran flat out, pulling the imp behind her. There was no time to consider his physical abilities; either he kept up or he got dragged. The laser pencil on her helmet flashed out burst after burst, swivelling in wide arcs to cover the approaching guards. Holly felt the weapon's heat on the crown of her head and resolved to mention the helmet's supposedly revolutionary cooling system to Foaly if they ever made it out of this.

The centaur was too busy for chat now. All Holly could hear through her headset was grunting and whinnying as Foaly concentrated on his job. He was not concerned about pinpoint accuracy any more; there were too many things to shoot. He sent out scything fans of energy that socked half a dozen guards per burst. The guards would be perfectly fine in half an hour, though some might experience headaches, hair loss, irritability, loss of bowel control and other a.s.sorted side effects for a few days.

Foaly targeted the four-wheel drives next, firing several pulses into each petrol tank. The BMWs exploded in sequence, turning spectacular fiery cartwheels. The force of the blast cupped Holly and No1 like a giant hand, scooting them on their way a little faster. Holly's helmet protected her from the noise, but poor No1's head would ring for quite a while.

Thick black smoke billowed from cracked engines and prowled across the tended garden, more effective than any smoke grenade. Holly and No1 raced just ahead of the smoke line towards the main gates.

'Gates,' Holly panted into her microphone.

'I see them,' said Foaly, melting the wrought-iron barriers right off their hinges. They collapsed to the ground with a big bell bong bong.

A rented MPV skidded to a halt outside the pillars, and the pa.s.senger door slid open.

Artemis was inside, reaching out to No1.

'Come on,' he said urgently. 'Get in.'

'Arrgh!' said No1. 'A human!'

Holly leaped inside the vehicle, dragging No1 with her.

'It's OK,' she said, switching off her shield to conserve the little that was left. 'He's a friend.'

No1 clung to Holly's back, trying not to throw up. He glanced towards the front of the MPV where Butler sat.

'What about him? Please tell me he's a friend too.'

Holly grinned, climbing on to a seat. 'Yes, he's a friend. The very best.'

Butler yanked the gear stick into 'Drive'. 'Buckle up, boys and girls. We're about to be in a car chase.'

The sun was setting as Butler expertly steered the car round the natural chicanes of the Route de Vence. The road was hewn from the mountainside, with stone villas teetering above and the Gorge du Loup yawning below. It took a skilled driver to negotiate the bends at speed, but Butler had once driven an Al Fahd armoured vehicle through a crowded Cairo market, so the Alpine roads were not too much of a challenge for him.

As it turned out, there was no car chase. The Paradizo fleet lay in flaming, mangled, inverted heaps in the chateau driveway. There was not so much as a moped left intact to tail the getaway car.

Butler checked the rear-view mirror constantly, and only allowed himself a satisfied grin when they pa.s.sed through the toll station at Cagnes sur Mer.

'We're clear,' he p.r.o.nounced, accelerating into the motorway's fast lane. 'There's not a vehicle intact on that estate, including little Beau's toy car.'

Artemis smiled, giddy with success. 'Perhaps we should have left them Mister Day's marvellous booster.'

Holly noticed that No1 was happily examining his seat belt.

'Buckle up,' she said, slotting the buckle into its catch.

'Buckle,' said No1. 'Clasp, clip, fastener. Why are you with these humans?'

'They're going to help you,' explained Holly gently.

No1 had a million questions, and knew exactly how to phrase every one of them. But for the moment, words took a back seat to pictures, and No1's square impish jaw dropped further and further as he stared through the tinted gla.s.s, absorbing the wonders of the modern motorway.

Holly took the opportunity to catch up with events.

'Doodah and Mulch got away OK?'

'Yes,' confirmed Artemis. 'Foaly was anxious to have the shuttle returned, as he had taken it without clearance. We shouldn't be more than a few hours behind them. By the time you get to the shuttle port, the shutdown should be lifted. I wouldn't be surprised if you've earned yourself a medal, Holly. Job spectacularly well done.'

'There are still loose ends.'