Death by Chocolate Read Free

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