Free Death by Chocolate by Michelle L. Levigne Page B

here, that usually-silent voice of
common sense whispered in the back of his mind. You really like her. She's an uber-cool
chick.
    Yeah, but this is the Epsi you haven't talked to in decades, and you only realized
today she was a cool chick. Don't rush into things, another voice whispered back, from
another portion of his mind.
    Guber decided he had too many voices back there. It was time to evict some of them.
But which ones?
    Later!
    "Speaking of too much work, I'm thinking we need to set up a better line of defense for
anybody with more than forty percent purple blood," he said, sitting up again. He tossed his
beaker of diet cherry cola into the air and it winked out before it splattered. "I'm thinking we
shouldn't incinerate that carob-tainted chocolate when we find it."
    "You're not suggesting we store it, are you? It'll end up being more of a problem than
nuclear waste back in the Human dimensions," Kevyn retorted, frowning.
    "Not store it. Use it. Like for self-defense." He grinned, replaying in his mind the
streamers of carob-tainted chocolate he had shot almost directly into the mouths of his attackers.
Eventually, criminals would catch on that there was something wrong with that chocolate, but
until that happened, their automatic reaction would be to eat some of it. Between their varied
allergic reactions and the effects of really strong Benadryl, they wouldn't have a chance.
    * * * *
    When she finally went to bed, Epsi slept for more than a day. She found three messages
from Guber waiting, encased in delayed-message globes hovering over her bed when she woke
up. The first reported on the testing that had begun on the warehouse of chocolate gifts. Epsi felt
something go warm and gooey inside her when he said several times he wished she could be
there to see his gizmo working. She told herself not to dither over whether he wanted her there
because he wanted her to be proud of him, or if he just thought she should be there since she had
been instrumental in the genesis of the gizmo. Trying to decipher how Guber felt and thought
would give her a headache, and she didn't need any more right now, thanks very much.
    So far, over six hundred pounds of carob-tainted chocolate had been detected. A large
percentage of that came from the same cut-rate factory that advertised itself as a gourmet
chocolate supplier. It claimed to ship from Switzerland, Austria and France, but the chocolate
actually originated in a building that straddled the border of Texas and Mexico. The packages
were falsely labeled, not even using FDA double-talk hidden coding for carob.
    Guber gleefully reported to Epsi that the factory had been reported to the FDA and the
truth-in-food-labeling authorities. Everyone who had purchased the gifts from that tainted factory
was clearly innocent.
    The amounts of carob present in any of the chocolate was so minimal that even a highly
allergic Fae would only have hives and shortness of breath. It seemed that even carob was too
expensive for those particular manufacturers to use, so they had adulterated their chocolate even
further with materials that were nowhere near chocolate or carob. In this particular instance, the
presence of carob was a harmless and unavoidable mistake, on the part of the Fae.
    Epsi spared a moment to wonder if that factory would soon go out of business, since no
more Fae would be going there to purchase truckloads of chocolate at a time. Even if that didn't
harm them, the FDA and other Human authorities would soon be breathing down their
necks.
    The second message dealt with her present in particular to Mellisande. The cargo in her
boat was all pure, high quality chocolate. The boat itself, however, was laced with carob. It was
necessary, according to the manufacturers themselves, to introduce it into the chocolate to help
with the structural integrity and weight-bearing members.
    The interesting part of the report was that the queen's friends, secretaries and assistants
had all been