Chocolate Truffles and Trouble

by Samantha Silver

  I got all my molds ready—I had to make fifty bars for the place—and carefully placed the pretzels on the bottom of each one before tempering my milk chocolate, getting it to the right temperature to ensure the crystallization process resulted in a smooth chocolate that would have a satisfying snap when it finally cooled.

  When the chocolate was just right, I poured it carefully into each mold, filling them all halfway, and tempered the white chocolate while I let the milk chocolate cool. When the milk chocolate had hardened, I repeated the process with the white chocolate, then carefully topped each bar with a sprinkle of raisins. I used a toothpick to press them into the chocolate slightly so that when I wrapped the bars the raisins wouldn’t protrude from the foil.

  Then I moved the bars into the fridge to allow them to harden further while I worked on the third set of chocolates.

  These were a relatively new addition to my repertoire, something that Grace had shown me how to make only a few days earlier: mendiants. They were a type of French chocolate, and quickly becoming my favorite snack. The concept was simple: small rounds of chocolate, about two inches in diameter, topped with various nuts, dried fruits, and other toppings. The combinations that Grace had taught me, and that I had come up with by myself, were so heavenly the description didn’t do them justice.

  I tempered some milk chocolate, some dark chocolate, and some white chocolate—the order was for assorted boxes—and made about a hundred rounds of chocolate in total. Then I added little bits of goodness to each mendiant. For nuts, I added pecans on some, cashews on others, macadamias, almonds, and pistachios. Then I moved on to the fruits. Dried orange peels, dried cranberries, raisins, and small chunks of dried apricots and mangoes all mixed beautifully with the nuts. My personal favorites were the white chocolate rounds with pistachios and dried goji berries. The green, red, and white mix reminded me of Christmas in the best possible way.

  I topped off a few of them with desiccated coconut and admired my handiwork. There were too many rounds to fit them into the fridge, especially with everything else that was already in there, so I slid them to the end of the counter and began packaging the chocolates I had already made, which were nice and cool by now.

  By the time noon rolled around, I had everything all set and ready to go. The bars for the three customers were all in separate bags, and with Andrea coming with me, I would have absolutely no problem taking them all to Spellford before we went back to Olivia’s house to see what we could find out about her murder.

  Chapter 9

  Once we dropped off the orders to the three customers, I sent Kelly a text asking if she was around. I got a reply a minute later.

  I’m in class, but I’ll be finished in about ninety minutes. Meet then?

  “So what do we do until then?” Andrea asked when I relayed the information to her.

  “I kind of wanted to go back to the hospital and have a look at the report on the autopsy,” I said. “If there is something there that could help us figure out who killed her, I want to know.”

  “Sounds good,” Andrea said. “But that said, I don’t think they’re exactly going to let us walk into the hospital and just look at whatever files we want.”

  “No, definitely not. We’re going to have to do this the sneaky way.”

  “I love sneaky,” Andrea said with a grin.

  The two of us made our way over to the hospital, but instead of going in, we hid behind a hedge and discussed our game plan.

  “All of the morgue files are in the basement, in the actual morgue,” I explained to Andrea. “When you go in, there is a large cabinet on the right that has all of the files. They will be sorted alphabetically, so Olivia Stone will be in the third drawer down.”

  “What kind of wards are there to stop us from going in?” Andrea asked, and I smiled.

  “They’re actually quite sophisticated, but we don’t need to worry about them at all. After all, I’m still registered as a student until the end of the semester, which means I’m able to pass through without triggering anything. So long as you’re touching me when I go through, you’ll be considered one of my guests as far as the wards are concerned.”

  “Well, that’s a lot easier than I was expecting,” Andrea said with a grin.

  “It’s definitely not as bad as it could be,” I agreed. “However, it’s not going to be a piece of cake. Almost everybody who works in this hospital knows who I am, and they all know that I’m not supposed to be here anymore. We’re going to have to go in invisible.”

  “I figured,” Andrea nodded. “Do you want me to cast the spell, or can you do it?”

  “I got it,” I said, pulling out my wand. “Ready?”

  My sister nodded once more, and I cast the spell that immediately turned her invisible. Then I repeated the same chant, this time pointing the wand at myself. A split second later, I looked down at my feet, but they weren’t there anymore. In fact, there was nothing there at all.

  “Ready to go?” Andrea asked, and I nodded instinctively before realizing that obviously Andrea wouldn’t be able to see.

  “Yeah, I am,” I said. “Let’s do this. Do you know the way to the morgue?”

  “I assume it’s in the basement, but apart from that, I have no idea,” Andrea replied.

  “Alright, well, in that case, take my hand and don’t touch anybody.”

  “I know how to avoid people when I’m invisible,” Andrea muttered. “I’m not ten years old anymore.”

  I reached over awkwardly and eventually found Andrea’s hand, and I guided her toward the entrance to the hospital.

  The doors opened automatically whenever somebody approached, but that was a problem: the sensors were magical, so they would be able to detect our presence despite us not being visible. When the doors opened with nobody nearby, the nurse at the reception counter would probably have her suspicions raised.

  “We need to wait till somebody comes through these doors and go through with them,” I whispered to Andrea.

  “Let’s hope somebody gets sick soon, then,” Andrea muttered. Luckily for us, we didn’t need to wait more than about three minutes before a tall elf strode out the door with confidence; the employee badge on his chest told me he had to be one of the administrators.

  As soon as he got two steps from the entrance, I pulled Andrea with me and the two of us made our way through the front door, getting away from the sensors as fast as possible so that the door closed when the elf got a few steps away.

  The waiting room was busier than I had expected for early afternoon on a Tuesday. Paranormals of all types sat in chairs waiting to be seen by their respective Healers. There was a witch whose hair had been turned into snakes, although whether she had been cursed by somebody or had simply messed up a spell on her own I wasn’t sure. Any time somebody came near her, the snakes hissed angrily in their direction, and so she sat in a corner, the three chairs on either side of her completely empty.

  There was also fairy who had an obviously injured wing; it was bent backward awkwardly and she looked like she was in a lot of pain. I imagined it wasn’t going to take too long before a fairy Healer was available to help.

  On the other side of the room was a young wizard who had obviously messed up a potion: his hands had grown to about five times the size of normal hands and were now a deep purple color. His parents were on either side of him, obviously in a state of complete panic, but the young wizard seemed completely oblivious to the emergency. He simply kept pretending to punch his father in the stomach before cheering for himself and announcing how strong he was now that he had giant hands. I couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm.

  A lion shifter in the middle of the room had obviously gotten stuck mid-shift. He had the face of a human surrounded by the mane of a lion, and while his body was mostly human, one of his hands was in the shape of a paw, and a tail stuck out the back of his pants. That was definitely unfortunate, but nothing a shifter Healer wouldn’t be able to fix quickly. I had never
realized until I began studying to be a Healer just how often shifters got stuck trying to transform.

  I eased Andrea carefully through the room, making especially sure to avoid the witch with the hair snakes; I wasn’t sure if the snakes would be able to detect our presence, and I didn’t want to raise the alarm by having them hiss at us. We made our way past everybody without incident and began walking down the hallway toward the stairwell. Luckily, the hallway was deserted, so we quickly passed through the door and made our way down to the basement.

  “Did you see those hair snakes?” Andrea whispered to me.

  “They were kind of hard to miss,” I replied.

  “I bet they were a curse. Ashley tried cursing me with hair snakes just after you left for Spellford. I didn’t deserve it.”

  “Yeah, I bet you didn’t,” I said with a snort. “What did you do?”

  “I just let her know that the boyfriend she was seeing at the time was a giant sleazeball.”

  “And how exactly did you let her know that?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  “I might’ve gotten one of my friends to go out with him and then taken Ashley to the same spot where they were.”

  “Yeah, you deserved the hair snakes.”

  “What? I was doing her a favor.”

  “A favor would have been taking her aside and gently telling her that her boyfriend was seeing other witches.”

  “Oh please. Ashley never would have believed that. She was in love with the guy.”

  I shook my head even though I knew Andrea couldn’t see it. “Let me just say I think you’re lucky that you got away with just hair snakes. Did you have to go to the hospital as well?”

  “Not only that, but it turned out that none of the Healers in Pacific Cove were able to reverse the spell, so I ended up having to go all the way to Spokurse, where they had specialists who made my hair normal again. I didn’t speak to Ashley for about two months after that.”

  I dared to let out a small cackle as we reached the door to the basement. “Okay, looks like the hallway’s clear,” I said, looking through the small rectangular window in the door. “There isn’t usually anybody in the morgue unless a body’s been brought in recently, so we should be good to sneak in there. But I’m going to cast a spell just to be sure before we go in.”

  “Right,” Andrea said, immediately going businesslike. After all, neither one of us wanted to get caught sneaking around the hospital going through patients’ records. Even if that patient was dead, it was still considered a severe breach of privacy.

  We passed through the door and into the basement hallway. The morgue was basically the only thing down here, and the door was about twenty feet down the hall to the left. As soon as we reached it, I stood in front of it and pulled out my wand.

  “Mars, god of war, if there is no one behind this door, make it red.”

  I pointed the wand at the door, and a moment later, it went from being a simple beige to a fire truck red. The room was empty.

  “Perfect,” I muttered. “Come on.”

  I grabbed Andrea by the hand and pulled her through the door, closing it firmly behind us. We were in.

  Chapter 10

  “Is that the file cabinet you meant?” Andrea said, and a smile crept to my lips.

  “You do realize I’ve no idea where you’re pointing, right?”

  “Oh shoot,” Andrea said with an embarrassed laugh. “The one in the corner over there.”

  “That’s the one,” I said. “Why don’t you go looking for the file, and I might look through Olivia’s personal effects that were brought here with her.”

  “Sure,” Andrea said, and a moment later the drawer on the other side of the room opened by itself and the files in it were rifled through.

  I made my way to the other side of the room, where a large cabinet stored all of the items that had come with the bodies. This cabinet was never locked; nothing in here was ever locked. Almost every single death in Spellford was from natural causes or accidents of some kind. The families almost always came within a week to pick up the personal items and clothing that their loved ones had died with, and since the door to the morgue was already warded, there was no reason to lock what else was inside it.

  I pulled out the plastic tub labeled “Stone, Olivia” and placed it on one of the metal examination tables. Opening up the lid, I looked down sadly at the last items Olivia had had on her when she died. I pulled out the dress she was wearing; it was magical, and a deep blue color. Wherever the light hit it, small stars appeared, giving the dress a kind of moving galaxy look.

  There was nothing on the dress that gave anything away, so I moved on to everything else. There was a test tube; she must have still been holding it when she had collapsed. I looked at it carefully. There was still a drop or two of blue fluid at the bottom.

  I had to wonder if they had even tested this potion for poison. After all, with Olivia’s death labeled an accident, I wondered if the Healers who worked down here were pressured into confirming that determination.

  I was going to find out exactly what potion killed Olivia.

  One of the most basic things we had to learn when starting Healer studies was the spell to identify poisonous potions. After all, when somebody comes into the hospital poisoned, the first step is to discover what they were poisoned with. You can’t come up with the counter-spell or potion until you know that.

  I pointed my wand at the test tube and spoke. “Mars, god of the fight, tell me with what poison this tube is infected.”

  Straightaway, a goblin made of smoke rose up from the potion. It was small, maybe four inches tall, and when it spoke, its voice was high-pitched and reedy.

  “This potion is free from poison,” the goblin said, and a second later, the smoke dissipated.

  “What on earth was that?” Andrea’s voice asked from the other side of the room. I frowned.

  “It’s a goblin that tells you what kind of poison has been used,” I replied. “It’s how we detect poisons in people when they show up at the hospital so we know how to treat them. But there has to be something wrong. The goblin said there was no poison at all in the potion Olivia drank.”

  I had to admit, I was stumped. Were we wrong? Had Olivia’s death been an accident after all? No, there was no way. After all, everybody at that party had said she had just drunk two potions from her test tubes. That wasn’t nearly enough to kill somebody, not without a lethal dose of something else inside, and if there had been a lethal dose of anything, the goblin would have mentioned that.

  “Anything in the file?” I asked Andrea.

  “It says here they tested the potion for poison, same as you, and came up with nothing. That’s why they labeled the death as an accident. It wasn’t to save the school’s reputation after all.”

  “It can’t have been an accident, though,” I replied with a frown. “That just means the test tube that was poisoned had to be the first one that she drank, not the second one.”

  “So?” Andrea asked.

  “So, our list of suspects goes down considerably. For one thing, Jasmine didn’t go near Olivia until she was drinking the second test tube. In fact, the only person who was with Olivia after she unsealed her first test tube was Kelly.”

  This was definitely not the direction I had expected this investigation to go.

  Before I had a chance to think things through and figure out what was going on, though, I paused. There were voices. That meant someone was in the hallway.

  “Shoot. Put everything away!” I hissed at Andrea. “People!”

  I grabbed the box and shoved the test tube and the dress back in, but I didn’t have enough time to put it back in the cupboard before the handle on the door began to rattle. Panicking, I simply placed the box on the floor and hoped against all hope that whoever was coming in wasn’t going to come this far into the room. Using my foot, I carefully slid the box underneath the metal table to further obstruct it from view, and when I looked up to see who
had come in, I gasped slightly.

  It was Alexandre Desroches, the oh-so-sexy Enforcer from the International Paranormal Investigations Unit, or IPIU. He was basically a magical super-spy, with the looks to match. He had dark hair and deep-set brown eyes, and he was alone. What on earth was he here for?

  I could practically feel Andrea raising her eyebrows at me. I stepped away from the box and made my way toward the far wall, where I felt Alex would be the least likely to go. After all, Andrea and I couldn’t get out of here; we had no way to leave without arousing suspicion by opening the door. We had to just avoid him while he was in here and hope against all hope that he was just here for a quick visit and wouldn’t notice the box that was out of place.

  My heart pounded in my chest and it had nothing to do with the attraction I felt toward Alex that I tried to tamp down. I didn’t have time to idly gaze at him right now; I had to make sure his ridiculously gorgeous face didn’t figure out that mine was in the same room.

  I looked around aimlessly, desperately trying to find a way out of here without Alex noticing. Why did the morgue have to be in the basement, where there were no open windows or anything that could result in a safe escape route?

  He looked around the room, then immediately made his way over to the cabinet where Andrea had been looking at the files. To my immense relief, Andrea had had just enough time to slip the file back where she had taken it before Alexandre came into the room. He opened the file and frowned as he read through it, while I focused on not breathing, on not moving, on doing my best not to exist at all.

  After a couple of minutes, my worst nightmare was realized. Alex made his way toward the cabinet at the back, and when he opened it, he spent a minute looking at all of the tubs, then frowned. Great. Obviously, he had to be looking for the one box that I had moved and that was no longer in the right place.