Free Devil's Food by Kerry Greenwood Page B

she started to cry, which was a good sign, if you call that progress. I sat her down behind the counter and applied a handful of tissues to her eyes, which were running with black tears. She sobbed as though her heart was broken. I really didn’t feel I could leave her, though I was wondering what on earth was happening in the bakery. I could hear Daniel’s soft, honey-sweet voice murmuring and then Kylie started to cry as well. Poor girls! They sounded like children whose dog had just died and whose whole world was crumbling around them. What had brought this on? Teenage emotions were vehement, of course, but not usually so destructive out of a clear sky.
    ‘Blessed be,’ said a voice from the door. My resident sibyl had arrived. ‘Jason told me what happened so I have brought some herbs. We shall make a tisane. Meanwhile, we shall take Gossamer into the bakery and Jason can look after the shop. He is coming up the street with two of the Pandamus banana creams, which ought to be useful. Nothing like the shock of sweetness to break a hysterical thread.’
    ‘I’ll just see how Daniel is getting on,’ I said, and slipped through the bakery door. Kylie was weeping into Daniel’s shoulder. He was clasping her lightly.
    ‘Safe to bring Goss in here?’ I asked quietly. He shrugged, which is hard to do with a weeping maiden in your arms.
    ‘I suppose,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this. What were they arguing about?’
    ‘The respective merits of Seth and Ryan,’ I said.
    ‘And they are?’
    ‘Really, Daniel, haven’t you heard of Seth and Ryan?’ I asked scornfully, and returned in a moment with Goss, who sat in the baker’s other chair and wept and wept. She did not react to Kylie, which was good. The kettle was nearly boiling, and Meroe produced a glass teapot and began measuring herbs into it. As the level of weeping did not diminish, she shook fully a handful into the pot and poured boiling water over it. In the shop I heard Jason draw a long breath of relief. Then he slid inside the bakery, stuck the banana creams in the fridge, and removed himself with alacrity from this scene of woe. I would have been glad to do the same. But it was my shop, my bakery, and they were my girls.
    Meroe asked me what had happened and I reported it as well as I could.
    ‘Odd,’ she remarked. ‘Daniel, what about drugs?’
    ‘I’ve been around the drug scene for a longish while,’ he answered, patting Kylie gently between her shoulderblades. ‘I’ve seen speed-fuelled rages and narcanned kids coming out of a death trance to scream with outrage. I’ve seen the Ice jitters and heard the cocaine raves and the Mogadon mumbles, even met a few bad acid casualties left over from the sixties. But I’ve never seen anything like this,’ he admitted. ‘They went from being angry to being sad, and that doesn’t usually happen with drugs, even when they wear off. And while neither of them is a genius, I know they know about the risks of E and the party drugs. Meroe?’
    ‘I can think of some herbs which might do this,’ she said, her lips pursing in disapproval. ‘Some combinations of herbs. They would have to have been taking them for a while,’ she added. ‘And they are not herbs which I would ordinarily combine.’
    ‘Poison?’ I asked, wondering if this was some strange double suicide over Seth and Ryan.
    ‘Of course,’ said Meroe. ‘All the best poisons are organic. Cyanide. Ricin. From an ordinary garden I could make you a distilled water which would kill a horse.’
    ‘The strongest poison ever known came from Caesar’s laurel crown,’ murmured Daniel, and Meroe nodded at him as might a teacher to an intelligent pupil.
    ‘Precisely. Laurel water could knock out a hundred horses. This is ready. Do you have honey, Corinna? It will taste fairly foul.’
    ‘I have honey,’ I said, producing the jar. ‘And how are you going to get them to drink it?’
    ‘Like this,’ said Meroe. It was very