Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,67

best poisons to use on someone in this world, because it's not only inhaled, it acts slowly and subtly. It won't wear off for years. Decades if it's a strong dose, and this was! If I hadn't been distracted I might have noticed something, but - "

"But we were arguing." Kelsa pushed guilt aside. "What's the cure, and how do I get it to you? Bake you a cake with the antidote in it? I'm pretty sure they'll analyze anything I bring you, and they might have a rule against prisoners getting food from the outside."

For the first time, Kelsa saw genuine fear in Raven's eyes.

"Don't tell me there is no antidote," she said sharply.

"No, it exists. An inhalant, like Fenesic. But it's in the sap of a tree that grows only in the Southern Hemisphere, so you couldn't possibly get it and get back here before I was transferred to some larger facility. And Fenesic ... it doesn't wear off. They could leave me here to die!"

He sounded panicked. Kelsa couldn't blame him.

"I'll get you the antidote," she promised rashly. "Even if it takes years." Assuming the tree plague didn't kill the trees he needed before she could reach them. And after years of plague, even if she saved Raven, it might be too late for her planet. Kelsa had no more desire to die than he did, and even less to see her world die with her.

But she was getting ahead of herself, letting his terror infect her.

"Tell me about this tree," she said. "My father was a botanist who specialized in forests. Maybe there's a sample of Fenes-whatever in some arboretum, and since I've got his com pod I might be able to fake my way in."

Raven's face brightened slightly. "It's found in Australia. It grows very tall, very rapidly, and has long dark green leaves and..."

A few sentences later Kelsa was sure. She began to laugh.

***

Deese Lake was too small to have a megastore; it barely had a grocery store. But like many small-town stores, it stocked a wide variety of goods. It had a very decent selection of herbal and natural medicines, including a big squeeze bottle of eucalyptus chest rub.

Raven had been startled when Kelsa told him that his exotic foreign tree was common in California and other places as well. It probably hadn't been imported when he was learning words like Jehoshaphat, so the enemies who'd poisoned him wouldn't have known about it either.

It shocked Kelsa to realize that they were willing to destroy one of their own. Stripping Raven of his powers and landing him in a human prison - and without any way to prove an identity, even in Canada, that's where he would have ended up - seemed almost as horrific as being kidnapped by a biker gang.

After Kelsa had told him that the scent of eucalyptus wouldn't be any farther away than the nearest pharmacy, they'd worked out the rest of the plan. The window wells above the cells were barred and screened with wire, but the windows themselves opened four inches to allow the prisoners fresh air. Raven's had been open when Kelsa arrived.

Having purchased the chest rub and removed the seal, Kelsa opened the fly on her bike pants and zipped the bottle inside. Bike wear was loose enough that it wasn't too uncomfortable. It was also loose enough to conceal the shape of her body.

This time she parked the bike behind the police station - from the back it could have been a store or a real estate office, almost anything.

She left her helmet on, trying to walk with a manly swagger as she entered the shadowy alley beside the jail. Only one of the barred window wells glowed with light, but Kelsa knew Raven was in the cell closest to the back of the building, anyway.

She turned toward the wall, opening her fly and hunching her shoulders in the characteristic posture - a posture that helped conceal what she was holding from the cameras on the building's eaves. She flipped up the bottle's cap with one flick of her thumb and sent fragrant liquid splattering into the window well. Even if someone happened to be watching the security monitors, they would have no way of knowing what that liquid really was, although they might be a bit startled by the capacity of her bladder.

When the bottle was empty, Kelsa zipped it into her pants and strolled back to her bike.

She rode straight out of town,