Death by Chocolate

by Michelle L. Levigne

  Death by Chocolate

  All's Fae in Love and Chocolate

  Story #4

  By

  Michelle L. Levigne

  Uncial Press Aloha, Oregon

  2011

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-121-9

  ISBN 10: 1-60174-121-9

  Death by Chocolate

  Copyright © 2011 by Michelle L. Levigne

  Cover art and design

  Copyright © 2011 by Victoria Conrad

  All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.

  Published by Uncial Press,

  an imprint of GCT, Inc.

  Visit us at http://www.uncialpress.com

  Some stories don't die--but they might be asleep for a long time.

  Many thanks to my intrepid publisher for picking up these stories again, and for encouraging me to write another misadventure of lovelorn Fae in the Human realms.

  This story might--and might not--be the last Fae adventure. It ties in some characters and locations from the Neighborlee, Ohio books, most notably the Divine's Emporium stories.

  Death By Chocolate

  Queen Mellisande IV--the fourth Fae Administrator Queen of that name, and no relation to the previous three--was dead of a surfeit of chocolate.

  Such a thing had never been heard of, or even imagined, in all the Fae realms. It was like one of the gods of Olympus being dead of too much ambrosia and nectar. Or a Fae not getting tipsy after chugging an entire six-pack of diet cherry cola.

  In short: impossible.

  Yet she was dead, with a blissful grin on her face. That was entirely expected, considering the ambrosial, healing qualities of chocolate. However, no one expected to find her bloated to the point of strained seams in her official royal gown. This was her uniform of sorts, worn for official public presentations and functions, and when the Fae Council was in session and all the Fae in the Enclaves as well as the Human realms could tune in through the Ether and watch as their duly elected government handled the careful administration of all things magical.

  It was a pity, too--about the gown, at least. The queen had just been elected and crowned after the impeachment of the previous Administrator King, and the gown was still stiff and shiny, practically fresh from the silkwyrm's lair.

  The usual suspects: the administrators who had been rivals in the election, the upper class Fae who thought they had previous claim on the silk from that particular silkwyrm, the rabble-rousers who wanted to bring back the hereditary royalty, and everyone who had brought Queen Mellisande chocolate to celebrate her election.

  That was a lot of Fae, because most of the queen's congratulatory gifts were chocolate. As evidenced by the fact that it had taken her nearly three months to eat her way through the inventory of gifts to reach the chocolate that killed her.

  Everyone who had brought the queen chocolate was notified by communication globe not to travel, period, until they were taken off the suspect list, the investigators came to talk with them, or they were given further instructions. Whichever came first.

  "Okay," Epsibellah said, when the communication globe patiently strobed through green to blue to green to yellow and back again, waiting for her response. "But does that mean I stay here?" She gestured around Lori's kitchen.

  Technically, it was Brick's kitchen in his big, two-hundred-year-old ancestral home in Neighborlee, but since Lori and Brick were on their honeymoon, it was now Lori's house and kitchen. Epsi was house-sitting and trying some exposure therapy to get over her agoraphobia directly linked with being in the Human realms. She was an Enclave baby, which meant she was terrified and broke out in purple and yellow spots when she was exposed for too long to alien environments.

  She had spent the last three days isolated in Brick and Lori's home, watching DVDs, learning to bake chocolate cake and chocolate chip cookies the Human way, and enjoying herself tremendously. She had run out of chocolate chips and cocoa powder. Because her experiment had gone so well so far, she had psyched herself up to venture out to the grocery store instead of transporting Fae chocolate in to her.

  Now the communication globe floated in the air in front of her, with the warning, and she was frozen again, terrified to move. And wondering if she was smart to just stay in the Human realms for the rest of her life. She had given Mellisande a boatload of chocolate as a congratulation gift. Her election as Administrator Queen had been a triumph for Epsi, by extension, because they had been classmates at Serafina's Fine Arts Academy for Magically Slow Young Ladies of the Slightly Purple Blood. Meaning they were descendants of the last of the royal line of the Fae, and had a hard time getting control of their magic when they were children. Like Human children were a little slow in learning to walk or talk.

  And when Epsi gave a boatload, it was exactly that: a boat the size of Cleopatra's barge, the small one, for private day trips down the Nile when she wanted to get away from Julius and Marc, made of chocolate and filled with chocolate.

  Knowing Mellisande and her tendencies, Epsi was pretty sure that boat wasn't sitting there in the royal gift cupboard-slash-warehouse, waiting to be eaten. With her luck, the queen had floated the boat in that royal Olympic-sized pool of chocolate syrup that Epsi's wretched distant cousin--but not distant enough--Theodosius had given her for her coronation gift. Then she had gone deep sea diving, so to speak, and ate her way down to the life preserver of chocolate-coated marshmallows.

  That was a lot of chocolate to investigate. Epsi could only hope the queen had eaten all of that first, and not recently enough for it to be considered the murder weapon.

  Which brought up a point that hadn't been explained to her yet: How could chocolate kill someone? Especially a Fae?

  "Or do I have to come home?" she asked the communication globe.

  "Processing," it responded, the magico-mechanical voice somewhat static-filled, owing to the multiple dimensions it had to reach through between the Human realms and the Bureaucracy Enclave where it originated.

  Epsi sighed, knowing that "processing" was bureaucrat-ese for "wait until your ear points droop." She looked around the kitchen and wondered if maybe there was some chocolate she hadn't discovered yet.

  Three hours later, she had ransacked the entire kitchen, drank two cups of hot chocolate mix--not bad, but she decided to save the rest of the box for emergency rations, like in case of a siege--and considered breaking into the crate of diet cherry cola that Maurice at Divine's Emporium had given Lori and Brick as a wedding gift. Sighing, she crooked a finger, beckoning, and the communication globe followed her as she went downstairs to the pantry in the cellar.

  The communication globe was still strobing through the holding pattern by the time Epsi hit pay dirt. At least, she hoped so. She found three bags of chocolate candy hidden away in the cellar, wrapped up together in multiple layers of zipper bags, with a sticky note on each one that said emergency stash--use only when invaded by disgusting relatives.

  It took her another ten minutes to get through all the layers. She ripped the first bag of chocolate open. It looked like bridge mix, which was okay, but she preferred not to dilute her chocolate with nuts and raisins and caramels. The delay hadn't brought her to the point of pain, but she was feeling a sense of panic she had never known before, and th
at made her step back and assess herself. There was no reason to dive into the bag headfirst, was there? After all, she had a touch of purple blood, and even though the hereditary royalty no longer existed, she still had some obligation coded into her genetics to act with class. So she paused to inhale the aroma that escaped the bag, like wine connoisseurs would savor the aroma when the bottle was first opened.

  "Aauugghh!" Epsi staggered backwards, blinking furiously, feeling as if she had inhaled liquid fire, with a good dose splashed in her eyes. She staggered backwards, tipping the bag. Half the contents splattered all over the tile floor before she could think clearly enough to protect the rest by clutching it against her chest. Even in pain and panic, it simply was not done to waste chocolate. Despite how diluted her royal blood might be, there were some obligations she lived up to. Respecting chocolate was one of them.

  "Do you require assistance?" the communication globe inquired in that irritatingly calm, cool voice.

  "Absolutely!" Epsi bit her tongue to keep from shrieking that she had purple blood and she deserved better than this. She was the one who had inhaled like a glutton. What was she thinking, unwrapping something that Lori had definitely gone to a lot of trouble to keep sealed up and hidden?

  "Who would you like to call?"

  "Will and Phill," she gasped, feeling a new wave of fire washing over her. And realized she had been frozen in that position with the chocolate only inches from her nose. What had she been doing, protecting chocolate that had tried to blind and suffocate her? She flung the bag away and, with her eyes blinded by tears, staggered backwards, aiming for the stairs.

  What was Lori doing with that stuff in the house? What kind of horrid relatives had she been expecting, fearing, and hoping to kill?

  "Hey, Epsi," Will said, as a wave of warm, flower-and-sea-scented air filled the room, along with a gush of humidity that could only come from a South Seas island.

  "Oh, honey, what happened?" Phill added, and caught hold of Epsi's hands. "You're all swollen up."

  "Poisoned chocolate!" Epsi gestured in the general direction of the bag she had thrown away. She feared that when it hit the floor it had exploded, scattering the pellets like rat poison.

  "Why would Lori-- Forget it." Will took one of her hands from Phill's grip. "Brace yourself. On three."

  Epsi gripped their hands and when they had counted down together to one, there was a flicker in the air signaling dimensional transfer. A second later they were in a room that echoed, and with the sound of running water.

  "Drink this," Will said. He held a container of something fizzing and smelling of powdered charcoal, senna, and other bitter herbs up to Epsi's mouth.

  She obediently drank, and drank, and drank until her stomach threatened to hurt. Will took the glass away and a moment later a door closed.

  "Off with your clothes." Phill got to work unbuttoning Epsi's shirt before she could respond. "Standard decontamination procedure."

  "What was in that?" she said, trying not to whimper.

  "Clean you out from the inside. Detox, and a purgative, just in case you ate something."

  "No, I only inhaled."

  "Hey, Epsi, there's a communication globe out here trying to get in," Will called through the door.

  "Take a message!" she shouted, and finished shucking her clothes with Phill's help. In moments, she stepped into the shower and was surrounded by a whirlpool of herbals, Epsom salts, and warm water, suspended in the air so it bathed her from head to toe and saturated her skin to pull out the impurities. And of course the standard undersea spell was mixed in, to let her breathe water without drowning.

  She could only hope the poisoned chocolates had been bought as a last-gasp measure defense against the Dreadful Greats, the great-aunts, great-uncles, great-grandparents and other not-so-great distant relatives who thought they had a say in how other people who actually had lives lived those lives--who had tried up until the last minute to keep Lori from marrying Brick and staying in the Human world.

  Half an hour later, able to see again, but with her face and hands still slightly swollen from exposure to the suicide bomber chocolate, Epsi settled down in the kitchen with Will and Phill to indulge in a triple-chocolate brownie sundae. They had even brought in cans of chocolate Reddi-Whip, so each of them had their own private supply of chocolate-flavored whipped cream.

  That was the test of real friendship, right there.

  "That's insane," Will said, after Epsi finished explaining the announcement from the communication globe, which had vanished while she was in the shower. The message had been to simply stay where she was, not attempt to go into any alternate dimensions where communication might be difficult, and be prepared to return to the central Enclave at a moment's notice.

  "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."