Death by Chocolate (2 page)

"You're the last one to be suspected of poisoning 'Sande," he added, when Epsi and Phill
both gave him questioning looks. "Now your freakazoid slimedog cousin, Theodosius, he'd be
first on my list."

Epsi filled her mouth with chocolate chip brownies and chocolate ice cream covered in
hot fudge sauce, rather than speak the loathed name. Theodosius had been Administrator King of
the Fae for several years, and had another ten years on his term when allegations of voter fraud
arose. It was simpler, bureaucracy-wise, to have him step down and conduct another vote, rather
than create the time travel spell to send the Ministry of Elections--which meant fifteen officials,
with ten secretaries each--back to the time of the elections that first put Theodosius into
office.

He had been just as foul-mouthed and disgruntled as anyone would have expected.
However, he had abided by the court order not to go anywhere near the Administration Enclave,
and none of his friends had gone within fifty miles of Mellisande or her chocolate.

That didn't mean that sympathizers hadn't struck Mellisande in retaliation for replacing
Theodosius, even though she and her supporters had nothing whatsoever to do with the original
allegations of voter fraud. After all, the troublemakers who wanted to bring back hereditary
royalty could have struck, taking drastic actions to prove how much trouble it was, with loads of
paperwork and bureaucracy, to change the leader of the Fae every twenty or thirty years. Or,
Theodosius could have had a contingency plan in place from the day he took office, especially if
he had committed fraud and rigged the election that put him there in the first place. He was that
kind of a personality who would feel justified in punishing anyone who brought him to
justice.

The problem was that Epsi was a relative of his, which immediately put her under
suspicion, even though she was ten steps removed from Theodosius and hadn't talked to him
since their Great-Aunt Meliflua's wedding festivities, just around the time of the Spanish Civil
War.

"The thing is, I gave Mellisande chocolate, gobs of it, and she died of eating chocolate."
Epsi shuddered and reached for the Reddi-Whip to squirt it directly into her mouth, filling it with
the light, creamy taste of heaven. "I would never have believed it, until I nearly killed myself
with that poison Lori had hidden downstairs."

"That?" Will laughed, earning glares from Epsi and Phill. "Honey, that's chocolate just
like Theo is a guy you want to bring home to meet your under-age sisters."

"Explain," Phill said, and loaded her oversized wooden spoon with brownie and syrup,
holding it up in a threatening position, ready to catapult right at Will.

"The dreaded five-letter C word." He nodded, his expression turning grave when Phill
gasped.

"Look, I don't have the mental bond you two have had for the last hundred years. What
are you saying?" Epsi said, trying not to snarl or wail or burst into tears. Could she blame the
traumatic shock she had when chocolate tried to kill her? Or maybe it was the underlying
jealousy that had nibbled at her ever since she figured out that Will and Phill were meant to be
together, each other's completion and better half.

"Carob." Phill shuddered, and her throat convulsed like she would be sick in another
moment.

"Huh?"

"Oh, you're so lucky to be so sheltered. Or maybe not so lucky, if you walked into it
blind like that." She reached out and caught hold of Epsi's hands, as if she was bracing her for
bad news. "It's a nasty trick of the Human realms--it grows here, and Humans decided it was
healthier than real chocolate."

"Yeah, shows what they know. What does... Do you mean...?" She couldn't complete the
horrifying, nauseating thought.

Phill nodded and said the dreaded words for her. "Fake chocolate."

"Blasphemy!"

"Yeah, I know." Will shook his head and slouched in his seat. "The thing is, Humans are
always worried about their weight, so some genius decided carob, which is actually natural--just
shows you what mutant plants show up when you've poisoned your world enough--tasted like
chocolate. You wouldn't believe the advertising campaigns that go on, trying to brainwash
Humans into thinking that just because it's lower in calories and fat, that carob is just as good as
chocolate and more healthy."

"And it's poison to Fae." Epsi tipped up her bowl to drink the melted ice cream and
congealed, cooled hot fudge, to brace herself. "I can't imagine anyone deliberately eating that
stuff, to die from it, but that would be a good explanation for what happened to Mellisande,
wouldn't it?"

"The thing is, not all Fae have the same reaction to it that you did. Some of us just get
hives. Do you have any idea what it's like to have hives in your throat and stomach? Hives that
don't show up until ten hours later, so you have no idea what you did to bring it on?"

"Oh, Will, that's horrid!" Epsi reached across the table to rest her hand on his in
sympathy.

"Don't feel too much sympathy for the big idiot," Phill said, wrinkling up her nose at her
husband. "It took four bouts with the intestinal hives before he made the connection. I thought
the stuff smelled atrocious and wouldn't eat it, and he wouldn't believe me when I insisted it gave
him bad breath." She sank back in her chair and sighed. "We had to learn the hard way. It never
occurred to us that Lori would actually keep the stuff around."

"The question is if offering carob as a possible murder weapon and avenue of
investigation would put you in good with the Ministry of Explanations and Investigations, or just
put you on the short list of suspects," Will said.

* * * *

Before it left Epsi, the communication globe spat out a tracking band that attached itself
to her wrist. It would report her if she tried to leave the boundaries of Neighborlee, either by
Human means or by slipping through the dimensions. As if that weren't enough, she had to report
every other day to Angela, the proprietress of Divine's Emporium, who had been drafted to act as
her monitor. Epsi almost laughed when she heard that part of the conditions of her interim
freedom, because Divine's had been the only place she had visited since coming to the little
town. Chatting with Angela, who was human, but with enough magic wrapped around her to
grant her status and respect among the Fae authorities, would be no problem for Epsi.

As an added bonus, she enjoyed the idea of seeing Maurice on a regular basis. He was
from one of the upper echelon families among the Fae, so they had run into each other often
growing up. Being shrunk down to five inches tall, with shrunken magic and burdened with
glittery, fluttery, rainbow-psychedelic wings had made him a much more thoughtful, sensitive
person. He had always been a champion for the underdog--at least, when he wasn't playing tricks
on someone. His changed circumstances had just brought out the knight errant qualities in
him.

Epsi found it rather amusing, in a bittersweet way, that she could have fallen for
Maurice as he was now, in his second year of exile and punishment. However, he was
unavailable and totally out of her reach, even if she had gone into Need. Maurice had fallen in
love with a young woman who had her own kind of magic; the variety generated by the mind and
the imagination. And the fact that she had been living in Neighborlee all her life made Holly the
librarian a little higher on the magical endowment scale than ordinary mortals. Epsi didn't know
what Holly and Maurice would do if they couldn't finagle things to let the two of them be
together forever, once his punishment ended.

She wished them well. When she finally did go home to the Enclaves, maybe she should
just dedicate some of her time and energy and connections to doing some research of her own, to
help them. After all, she reasoned, this whole mess over the death of Administrator Queen
Mellisande had reminded her of her own purple-tinged blood. And that reminded her of just how
much influence and "pull" she had, just because of who her ancestors had been. Maybe it was
time Epsi used her genetics on someone else's behalf.

"That would be very kind of you," Angela murmured, when Epsi shared her idea the
next morning.

The two of them sat in the garden behind Divine's Emporium, perched on the slope
above the Metroparks. The big old Victorian house-turned-shop sat at the top of the hill that
formed the western edge of town, looking down into the river valley and quarries that had been
turned into parkland some time in the last century. Angela's garden was a haven in all weather,
but Epsi found it especially glorious now, in the spring.

"Don't tell Maurice, though. Since I'm under suspicion, my having royal blood, no
matter how diluted, might work against both of us. I wouldn't want to raise his hopes and then
disappoint him," Epsi said, thinking too late to look around to make sure Maurice hadn't flown
outside to join them.

"My lips are sealed." Angela tipped her head to one side and that soft, wry smile lit her
face. "He's grown up quite a bit since he landed here, and I'm beginning to think he's having a
wonderful, maturing influence on every Fae he's encountered so far."

"Is that your way of saying I'm a selfish twit?" She laughed, even as she felt her ear tips
warm up. Any moment now, they would shoot off sparks, signaling her churning feelings and
deepening her embarrassment.

"Hardly. But I do believe that seeing Maurice in his...predicament...has given others
pause for thought. They re-examine their own lives and don't need the harsh lessons he had to
learn. Would you have considered helping a mixed marriage smooth out their path, before you
met Maurice and Holly? Before you saw how happy Lori and Brick are together?"

"Ummm, no. Honestly, I never even considered the thought. I mean, we're definitely
taught that mixed marriages can be good, fresh blood, bringing in Human magic and all that, but
I've never met anyone who considered it, until now. Suddenly there's an epidemic of it." Epsi
sighed. "If I could find a great guy like Brick, I'd certainly go for it."

"Some people mature faster than others."

"What's that supposed to mean? You mean, like emotionally or something else?"

"That, and other considerations. If you could find your true love, your soul mate, before
Need throws you into panic mode, would you?"

"Heck, yeah! I mean, I've seen Need-bonded couples, and they're always happy, so
one-mind, sometimes it's scary. But I'm jealous, too, even when I get the oogies over the idea of
somebody being inside my head all the time, without conscious effort." Epsi shivered for
emphasis. "But then I see people who bonded without Need, like Will and Phill, and Lori and
Brick, and I think, maybe it's worth more because they have to fight for it. And I think
sometimes, if it was just handed to me, 'the one' picked out for me by powers beyond my
control... Maybe sometimes, at the back of my mind, way down deep where I'm not even
conscious of it, maybe I'd feel trapped? And then I'd worry if the guy felt trapped, even if he was
blissfully happy with me. And I think... I want a guy to choose me because he
wants me
,
and not because some insane spell created by the far-distant ancestors, to ensure effective
breeding and total partnership, chose us for each other. Does that made sense?" she ended on a
sigh.

"Perfect sense." Angela chuckled and gracefully rose from the swing where she and Epsi
had been sitting and drinking iced mochas. "I think you might enjoy talking with Lanie. She's the
commodore of our resident
Star Trek
club."

"Huh?" She followed Angela into the house. "What does
Star Trek
have to do
with Need?"

"
Pon Farr
. And other alien lifemate-choosing conventions in science fiction.
Lanie's brother did a paper on it for his psychology class in college, and she helped him do a
large amount of the research, so she knows a great deal herself."

"Talk with a Human about Need?"

"I assure you, Lanie is not your ordinary Human."

"Got that right!" a cheerful voice responded, as the two of them approached the front
room where the counter and cash register for the shop were situated. A young woman seated in a
sleek, electric blue wheelchair, turned from the counter to face them. She wore cut-offs and a
dark purple Klingon Battle Academy T-shirt, "Did I hear somebody taking my name in
vain?"

"Epsi, this is Lanie Zephyr." Angela gestured between the two of them as she stepped
behind the counter.

"Everything all set?" Maurice fluttered down from his usual perch on the shelf behind
the counter, and came to rest on Angela's shoulder. "Lanie was just getting my help plotting evil
tricks to pull on her shipmates at the spring rites."

"Spring rites?" Epsi decided if Lanie could see Maurice and talk to him, and Angela
recommended the two of them talk about a touchy subject like Need, then she definitely wasn't
an ordinary Human. Even without the natural four-wheel drive of her wheelchair.

"My
Star Trek
club's annual spring picnic. We go out to the quarries and have a
treasure hunt and war games among the pits and streams. Maurice suggested a tug-of-war battle
with the rope stretching across the river, which is such brilliance, I'm surprised nobody every
thought of it before." Lanie tipped her head to one side and narrowed her eyes. "Okay, I know
nobody would have a
Trek
convention in the area without contacting my ship, so you
must be another visiting Fae."

"How could you tell?" Epsi glanced at Maurice and Angela for clues.

"The ears give you away big-time." Lanie grinned and raked her long-fingered hands
through her tangled mane of dark hair. "What brings you to town?"

"Epsi is house-sitting for Lori and Brick during their honeymoon," Angela said. "I
thought the two of you might hit it off."

"Might be fun. I could get the lowdown on Maurice, at the very least. All the deep, dark,
dirty secrets he hasn't spilled yet." She stuck her tongue out at Maurice, who responded by
shooting a streamer of green sparks that turned her hair and skin green for a few seconds.