Page 12 of Shroom for Improvement

“Yes.”

“Eggs royale?!”

“Yeah, anything.”

“Oh my gods. Bluefin tuna? Wagyu beef? Elvish doughnuts?”

“Anything.”

“Whale steak? Panda burger? Golden retriever nuggets?”

“I mean,” Oggy began. “Yes, if that’s what you want, but we wouldn’t like you anymore. As a person. Just to be clear, we’d kinda hate you. Who would do that?”

“Yeah, that’s some Mrs Z level fuckery, right there,” Willow said.

“But how is it possible?”

“We’re sentry fae.” Willow turned to Oggy, shrugged their shoulders and made a face that read:haven’t we told him this already?

“We stand guard over the place to which we’ve been assigned, and we care for its occupants. And if that means you want someone’s beloved pet gutted and exsanguinated and cut up into bite-sized chunks and coated in eggs and breadcrumbs and deep fried until crisp—”

“Yeah, no, I don’t. I was just—you can stop that, now.”

It didn’t matter, anyway. I wasn’t planning on staying for breakfast. Though I’d admit the prospect of starting tomorrow with a tummy full of eggs royale and posh chai tea was tempting. Super tempting.

Eggs royale really was a superior breakfast option.

“Anyway, there’s much more to see,” Oggy said, adopting her earlier, more pleasant tone again. “We should show you where you’ll be staying.”

“Ooh, yes, that’s an excellent point,” Willow said. “It could take us all evening to find your room.”

I offered a helpful, “Huh?”

“Depends what kind of mood it’s in,” Oggy said.

“It?”

“The house, silly.”

“Right, of course,” I said.

“Before we go through...” Willow grabbed my sleeve as though to stop me from moving forward into the house without them. “We ought to warn you.”

“Warn me?”

“The house, it...” They blew out a breath.

“It’s not the easiest to get along with,” Oggy said, and I knew she was putting the “polite” spin on what she’d really wanted to say. I turned to Willow, because if I’d learned anything from my ten minutes with the sentry fae, it was that Willow preferred to take a more direct approach.

They shrugged to Oggy before saying, “The house is a right pain in the ass. It’s argumentative, emotionally unstable, and a compulsive liar. Do not believe a thing it tells you. It’s manipulative, and frankly, it’s a bit of a pervert.”

That was a lot of information to process, and dammit, the sentry fae couldn’t lie.

“The house talks to you?” I asked.

“Well, no,” replied Oggy. “But we’re not the Lord of Mushrooms. Though I don’t think it likes us very much. It tends to make things difficult for us.”

I removed my hat, scrubbed a hand through my hair, and decided not to invite them to elaborate on what“difficult for us”meant. “I will bear that in mind, thank you.”

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