Poison and Prejudice

by Field, Chelsea

  Poison and Prejudice

  Chelsea Field

  POISON AND PREJUDICE is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, poisons, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Chelsea Field

  All rights reserved.

  Published by JFP Trust

  2017 First Digital Edition

  ISBN: 978 0 9945756 7 8

  www.chelseafieldauthor.com

  For my little sister on her wedding day.

  Even if she did take fiendish delight in forcing me to be one of her bridesmaids.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  From the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from DUTY AND THE BEAST

  1

  The mob of hot bodies and cold camera lenses surged toward me. A storm of blinding flashes. Microphones threatening to smack me in the nose. And a clamor of voices that made it difficult to hear my thundering heart.

  Nope, it wasn’t one of those “Crap, I’m naked” dreams. I was currently acting as an undercover poison taster for the darling of the entire Western world: Zachariah Hill. Of course, since I was undercover, the people behind the cameras and microphones didn’t know my true purpose. If any of them bothered to ask, they’d be told I was Zachariah’s spiritual food guru. One he’d hired to help him get through his tragic breakup with the other darling of the entire Western world: Alyssa Hill.

  While the adoring masses held warm, fuzzy, sympathetic feelings toward Zac, I felt none of that. The bastard had insisted I walk with him on the red carpet, and I wasn’t going to forgive him for it just because he had good intentions.

  He’d been sure I was playing coy when I told him I didn’t want to go anywhere near his fancy crimson doormat. He was wrong. My wish list held items like earn enough money to fly home to Australia, and keep the cockroaches out of my cookie container. Cameras and carpets weren’t a priority for me.

  Why was the silly thing red anyway? If the tradition dated back far enough, it probably had to do with stepping on the blood of your defeated enemies or something.

  Trying not to scowl in case any of those cameras accidentally included me in their pictures, I trailed along half a step behind Zachariah—the benevolent jerk—letting him take the brunt of the attention.

  We weren’t at the Oscars or anywhere like that. It was just a film premiere, which didn’t constitute a rare event in Los Angeles. But so soon after the news of their breakup, Zachariah and Alyssa were even more popular with the press than usual.

  “No date tonight?” asked a particularly pushy reporter.

  Good to know even dressed to the nines I wasn’t about to fool anyone into thinking I was A-list date material. My 5’5” frame was slim but not toned, my hair reddish brown and generally uncooperative, and my blue eyes ordinary. In my twenty-nine years, I’d found people tended to call me cute rather than beautiful. A creepy guy in a supermarket once called me wholesome while he tried to corner me in the canned-goods aisle. I’d shoved a pack of wholesome granola bars at him and hotfooted it out of there.

  “Not for a long while I think,” Zac answered, managing to sound both mournful and humorously self-deprecating at the same time.

  “Do you still love her?”

  I saw Zac smile in my peripheral vision.

  “A part of me will always love her.”

  If it were possible, the cameras flashed brighter, and I could imagine fans swooning on their couches at home. So romantic. Personally, I thought it was sad. Sad if it was true and yet his love wasn’t enough, or sad if it was the fictitious party line they’d agreed on before announcing their separation to the world.

  The woman herself stepped onto the impractical outdoor carpeting. With long, ash-blond hair, power brows, and a silver plunge dress showing off her perfect skin (a lot of perfect skin), Alyssa Hill was the kind of person you couldn’t help but stare at. Her presence conjured up feelings of fear and longing in both men and women alike.

  She sashayed over to Zac, forcing me to jump out of the way to prevent one of her spiked heels from skewering my toe, and kissed him on the cheek amid a frenzy of lights. The seasoned actress posed there for long moments, allowing the press to get their fill, then turned to them with a dazzling smile. I took the opportunity to position myself farther away where I’d be hidden from the lenses.

  After the strobe lights finally died down, Alyssa Hill whispered something in her former lover’s ear and sauntered to her waiting limo. Judging by the stiffening of her former lover’s posture, he didn’t appreciate what she’d had to say. When Zac failed to move after a further thirty seconds, I stepped up beside him and surreptitiously dragged him toward our own car.

  At last we made it to the end of the stupid red carpet, and a valet handed Zachariah his keys. I clambered inside the refuge without pausing for the valet to open my door and waited impatiently for Zac to drive away.

  He was moving with exaggerated caution. Or perhaps it just seemed that way due to my own haste. I stopped my fingers tapping on the armrest and reminded myself that this was a good gig. Zac was a nice guy and an undemanding client. The only downside was his fame, but I guess it would be unkind of me to hold that against him.

  Still, it was easier to be kind when you hadn’t tottered down a red carpet, narrowly missed losing your toe to his ex, and weren’t running late for the thing you’d been hanging out for all week. And maybe my perception of the whole ordeal was colored by knowing the dirty secret behind the glamor. That at the bottom of the ladder to fame and fortune were a pile of bodies.

  All those stories of celebrities doing something stupid under the influence or having their light snuffed out forever by a fatal overdose? Yeah, about a third of those were cleverly disguised poisonings designed to sabotage careers or take them out of the running permanently. Hence the need for undercover poison tasters like me.

  We made it a block before Zac stopped the BMW 3 Series sedan beside the curb.

  “Would you mind driving? I have a migraine coming on.”

  Abruptly I felt ashamed at my selfishness. Here I was wrapped up in my own little world when my poor client was being attacked by a migraine. An excruciating one if the strain on his face was anything to go by.

  “Of course. Can I do something to make you more comfortable first?”

  “No. Thanks. Just get me home.”

  The last time I’d driven a celebrity’s car, the celebrity had been pointing a gun at my stomach, warning me a bullet through the gut was one of the most painful ways to die. Oh, and telling me his clever plan to shoot me at the end of our journey and make it look like a random accident.

  This drive was much more relaxing. Except for the niggling worry that this sudden onset of a migraine after a pleasant evening was unusual. His main trigger was stress, which didn’t make sense when he’d been his calm and charismat
ic self all day. Unless Alyssa had said something atrocious to him before?

  I did a quick mental inventory of my vitals the way we’d been taught to check for any early warning signs of poison. Everything felt normal except for a slightly elevated heart rate and accelerated breathing, which was no doubt due to my concern for Zac. But the results didn’t put my mind at ease. Poisoners could use drugs tailored to their intended victim that might not affect another person, and my gene mutation meant I was less susceptible to harmful substances. That was how I’d landed this job in the first place.

  I pulled into Zac’s garage at Cheviot Hills, the place he’d moved to after separating from Alyssa, and helped him up the stairs. There was yet another gift basket by the door. Ever since the breakup, he’d been receiving dozens of them. They all had words like “deepest sympathies” and “so sorry to hear” somewhere on the card, but most were thinly disguised variations of “by the way, now that you’re single, we should hook up.” This one was different. There was no card, rendering it anonymous, and nestled among the chrome-colored shredded paper was a two-hundred-dollar bottle of Silver Oak Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

  Who left a two-hundred-dollar bottle of wine on someone’s doorstep?

  I glanced up at Zac, thinking to ask whom it might be from, but my words died on my lips when I saw how ghastly he looked. I unlocked the door for him and picked up the basket. “Go to bed,” I whispered, aware that every sound I made was like a dentist drill to the skull. “I’ll get you some water and your prescription meds.” I had to taste both before he could consume them anyway. A potential murderer could tamper with someone’s tablets as readily as their food.

  Keeping noise to a minimum, I retrieved his meds from the bathroom cabinet and began the taste-testing routine. Blergh. Tasting medication was a lot less pleasant than tasting the average meal. I washed it down with water, testing that too.

  As I went through the motions, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I might have missed something in the numerous appetizers we’d eaten tonight. The meds I tasted now, however, were clean, and I hadn’t missed a poison since I began working as a Shade. There was no reason to think I would’ve slipped up. Unless the poison was new or extremely rare. I shook the thought away.

  Poor Zac was already in bed with the light off. “Does this migraine feel normal?” I whispered as I handed him the tablet and water. “Anything unusual about it?”

  “It’s textbook.” The words came out with a sort of tortured patience.

  The textbook answer was reassuring, but my niggly feeling didn’t take the hint and vanish. That left me with a dilemma. I didn’t feel right about leaving him alone, but I had a special reason to leave tonight. One I was loath to give up. “You told me stress was your trigger, but I didn’t think you were stressed.” I tried again.

  “Alyssa,” he rasped, then sighed and closed his eyes. “I’ll be fine. Go and have fun.” He knew I had plans tonight.

  Shoving off my trepidation and guilt—unwarranted trepidation and guilt, I told myself—I compromised by resolving to check on him later and followed his advice.

  2

  In contrast with my unwanted encounter with the red carpet, I’d been hanging out for this date ever since it had been set.

  Connor and I had been in a romantic relationship for six weeks, but urgent cases, conflicting schedules, out-of-hours work, and a murder investigation had conspired to keep us apart for a lot of that time. When he’d had to fly interstate for business recently—a trip he wasn’t allowed to disclose anything about despite his new agreement to be more forthcoming—he had said he would make it up to me. And he’d chosen to do that by arranging a special date.

  I was content with how we’d been spending the time we managed to snatch together between commitments. We usually shared a meal, complemented by an increasing level of conversation since Connor had pledged for my sake that he’d try to talk more, followed by mind-blowing sex.

  Okay, so no one could be discontent with a bedroom partner as skilled as Connor was. Plus I wasn’t the type of girl who longed for flowery words and grand gestures. My ex-husband had been good at those, but he’d sucked at the being there for when I needed him stuff, and it had reset my priorities in relationships.

  Still, if Connor wanted to take me on a special date, I wasn’t going to complain. And tonight was date night.

  It was ten o’clock, but we’d decided if life wouldn’t cooperate with our plans we’d just have to work around it. Unfortunately, I was running late even according to our stupid o’clock schedule.

  I raced up the two flights of external concrete stairs to my apartment in Palms. Until a month ago, it had been fifty years overdue for a renovation, but that had changed after a Molotov cocktail had burned out the living room. Sadly, most of the renovation costs had come out of my own pocket, which meant the ancient kitchen and ugly linoleum sat side by side with the new carpet and IKEA furniture. Regardless, it was a big improvement, and so far I hadn’t even killed the houseplant.

  My housemate Oliver must have worked an early shift at the pub and was lounging on the muted blue IKEA couch with his feisty feline Meow on his lap. She was a rescue cat, but she no longer looked like she needed rescuing. Her gray coat with its black tiger stripes was glossy and sleek, and she ruled over our little apartment with a gentle but firm paw. Except for the cockroaches. Those she attacked with great relish. Oliver had banned me from buying any cockroach traps because she enjoyed it so much.

  He rose and switched off the new flat-screen television when I entered, depositing Meow on the warm spot he’d left behind.

  Not good.

  Oliver was an easygoing and affable housemate, but he coasted through life on a different wavelength to most, refusing to conform to the constant struggle of the rest of us to better our circumstances. Often it was inspirational, or at the very least, fascinating, but I’d learned it meant he had difficulty grasping the concept of “in a hurry.”

  “How could you?” he asked. Although it was more of an accusation than a question—the way you’d ask a teenager why they’d just crashed your car into your neighbor’s letterbox.

  Seeing as I hadn’t crashed anyone’s car into anyone’s letterbox, I was puzzled. “How could I what?”

  He finished resettling Meow—she was underwhelmed by his efforts but had deigned to lie back down—and crossed his arms. “Don’t play naive with me. I saw you on the entertainment channel on the blooming red carpet!”

  Oh boy. If there was one thing that got the usually easygoing Oliver fired up, it was his lifelong frustration at royalty or celebrity worship. Celebrities in the acting sphere were a particular sore spot, outdone only by the ruling monarch he’d left behind in England.

  He was working himself into a rant. Something I would have found entertaining under other circumstances. But I wasn’t used to being the subject matter, and they tended to be on the long-winded side. I didn’t have time for long-winded.

  Plus he looked genuinely upset.

  His arms slipped apart, and he stepped closer. But cautiously, like I’d betrayed his trust and now he considered me volatile.

  “You’re working for Zachariah freaking Hill? How did that happen? What are you, some star-struck teenager? I thought you didn’t care about that stuff. I thought—”

  “I don’t.” I interrupted, thinking to reassure him. “He just offered me a job, and the money was good.”

  Oliver threw his hands in the air. “That’s what every prostitute ever said! Not that there’s anything wrong with the world’s oldest profession unless it’s against your own morals, mind you. But did you even think to consider me? This is a betrayal. Like sleeping with the enemy. Next you’ll be working for the Queen of England!”

  Oliver had no clue what my real job was because the Taste Society insisted on secrecy, so he was using the far-flung accusation for dramatic emphasis. The truth was poison tasting for the Queen wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility, bu
t it was improbable.

  “I can promise I won’t sleep with her at least.”

  He wasn’t in the mood to appreciate the joke. “You know I won’t share my home with another fame chaser. Having my heart trodden over once for that pursuit was more than enough.” That was why actors and actresses were a particular sore spot. His ex-girlfriend had used him as a convenient piggy bank while she’d auditioned for roles, then left as soon as she’d landed a good one.

  “It’s just a job, Oliver. I’m not going to tread on you. Heart or otherwise.” I rubbed his back soothingly. “Come on, did I look like I was enjoying myself on the stupid carpet?”

  “I don’t know. I was in shock.” His words weren’t exactly consolatory, but there was a lot less fire behind them.

  “If I cook you a roast with gravy and Yorkshire pudding, will you forgive me?” It was his favorite meal and one of the most time-consuming ones, so I didn’t get to make it often.

  He sniffed sulkily. “I’m not so easily bought.”

  “You once agreed to take over a coworker’s eight-hour shift if he consented to serve a customer with a pickle up his nose.”

  Oliver lifted his chin. “Hilarity at another’s expense doesn’t come cheap.” The way he said it made it sound like a noble pursuit. “Make it two roasts and I’ll think about it.”

  “Deal,” I said.