Free Devil's Food by Kerry Greenwood Page A

as ID.’
    ‘No driver’s licence,’ I explained.
    ‘Oh. I was wondering if he was intending to flee the country,’ said Daniel.
    ‘Possibly, though I don’t know how much money he’s got left. Where’s the address?’
    ‘Braybrook.’
    ‘Where’s Braybrook?’
    ‘Ah, my inner-city darling,’ said Daniel indulgently. ‘Like a cockney, born within earshot of Bow Bells. The world ends at Docklands. West, to be sure, west away towards Ballarat. But not that far. Want to come and check it out?’
    ‘Will it be disgusting?’ I asked.
    ‘Probably.’
    ‘Then I ought to come,’ I said.
    ‘A Protestant conscience,’ teased Daniel. ‘I’ll come back at three and get Timbo to pick us up in the car. The inhabitants ought to be getting up about then.’
    Suddenly raised female voices impressed themselves on my ears. I knew them. Both of my shop assistants making enough row for a secondary school maths class or a zoo at feeding time.
    ‘Seth!’ said Kylie. ‘It has to be Seth, you blind?’
    ‘Seth’s a nerd, just like Taz, and you didn’t even make it with Taz,’ sneered Goss. ‘It’s got to be Ryan. Ryan rules.’
    ‘Ryan likes them messed up, you skanky ho,’ screamed Kylie. ‘So maybe he is the one after all! Not like my Seth!’
    ‘ Your Seth?’
    ‘Ladies,’ I said meaningfully. They paid no attention to me. Kylie was wearing pink overalls, Gossamer blue, but there the resemblance to good little children ended. They were red faced and shrieking like fishwives. Jason had retreated to a corner of the shop, cut off from escape to the street or the bakery by either a furious girl or the end wall. I raised an eyebrow at him.
    ‘Dunno,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They were talking about this TV show and then they just went postal.’
    ‘Daniel?’ I asked for a diagnosis from the most streetwise amongst us. ‘Drugs?’
    ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘They remind me of maenads, but I suppose they haven’t been drinking. And neither of them even takes E, or so they have assured me.’
    ‘Seth!’ shrieked Kylie and swung a clawed hand at her friend. I knew that those talons could open tins and felt that I must intervene. WorkCover would sniff if I asked them to pay for fingernail wounds amongst the shop staff and my premiums were high enough as it was.
    ‘You take Kylie into the bakery,’ I said to Daniel. ‘I’ll keep Goss here. Jason, nick down to Cafe Delicious and ask Del for two of his banana creams, will you? If we can’t get a rise out of them with a banana cream, then we might have to call that Crisis Assessment Team who said my father wasn’t insane. Then tell Meroe I need her at once. Run!’
    Jason, freed, ran for his life. I saw him vanish out the door and into a street which so far did not contain a lot of curious customers. I put both arms around Goss and dragged her out of range of Kylie’s claws. Daniel lifted Kylie off her feet and carried her, still screaming, into the bakery. I held Goss as tightly as I would a child who’d just had a bad dream and said, ‘Calm, Gossamer, calm. Take a nice deep breath now. It’s all right.’
    She was shaking as though she was very cold and straining against my arms. But baking makes a baker as strong as a wrestler when it comes to underweight teenage girls. I sighted a magazine open on the counter and two names caught my eye. Goss was trying to breathe deeply but was gasping. Her hair was wet with sweat. I leaned her against the counter and read about two actors in a show called The OC , which I had never seen. Adam and Ben were their real names. But they played characters called Seth and Ryan. Both good-looking boys, if you like them quiet and brooding. Which, of course, I did. But Kylie and Goss had got into this state over an article in Girlfriend ? I had seen them disagree before but never like this.
    I could feel Gossamer’s heart pounding like a drum and see the pulse in her throat. But at least she had stopped screaming. Now