Chapter 10: Chemist's Daughter

Here is what four hundred people in that ballroom didn't know. I was a compounding pharmacist for six years. Before that I spent my childhood on a stool behind my father's counter, grinding powders and labeling bottles and learning smells. And the smell that filled that room was chlorine-sweet with an almond edge. Aerosolized nightshade compound. The same thing she'd made my son drink. "DON'T RUN!" I screamed. "Nobody run—running makes you breathe deeper!" Some of them listened. Most didn't. "Dante!"...