Page 133 of Shroom for Improvement

I couldn’t even call Sonny. There was no way to bring him back to help. I would have to figure this one out on my own.

All by myself.

I had—I glanced at the wall clock—nineteen hours and fifteen minutes.

“Oggy?” I said once the sentry fae had returned. “What does ‘into the ether’ mean?”

She swallowed, wiped her palms on her apron. “It’s . . . it’s . . .”

And then she passed out.

Not a Moral Kidnapping

Sonny

Ten minutes of the license-plate game—which we had to abandon due to the lack of other vehicles on the road—fifteen minutes of eye spy and three hours of twenty questions, and I was about ready to give up on life.

“Are you an aquatic animal?” I said, while subtly peering down at my phone screen, desperately searching for any signal.

Apparently, nowhere in the Kingdom of the Fae had any service. My battery was on eighteen percent, too, and every time I clicked the button on the side, it seemed to deplete by another one percent. I had already wasted about three of them by texting Mash, though I had no idea when the message would be delivered.

Me:

If for some reason I’m not there to meet with Dr S, I need you to go to the meeting for me. I don’t care what they publish, but please protest the nuclear bees with everything you have.

“No,” said Jasper, giggling and catching my eye in the rear-view mirror. He watched me often. I think simply to make sure I wasn’t about to throw myself out of the moving vehicle to get away from him.

“Are you a person?”

“Nope.”

We had been on the road for nearly four hours, and the majority of it had been farmlands and winding country lanes that were far, far too small for a monster truck. But Jasper never slowed his hair-raising pace. He never moved to let a car pass, and he never swerved. Let’s face it, who in their right mind would argue with a monster truck? That wasn’t a fight anything smaller than an artic was going to win.

I tried to watch the roadside for signage, place names, landmarks, shops even, or any other type of indicators to tell me where we were, but we moved so quickly everything other than the distant forests was a blur.

“Are you a vague concept or social construct?”

“Not exactly vague,” he said.

“Are you an emotion?”

“Nah.”

And every time I pulled the compass out, the panel would say:Mend a broken heart. Mend a broken heart.No matter how many times I clicked that stupid dial. Technically, I was being kidnapped by a nine-foot fire daemon. Maybe at some point it might like to direct me towards, I don’t know, escaping!

“Are you used to describe something?”

“Yes,” he said, after some pondering.

“Do you describe something tangible or intangible?”

“That’s not a yes or no question.”

Fuck my life. “Are you onomatopoeia?”

Jasper swerved the truck. “What the... ?! Yes, how the fuck did you know that?”

I pulled my phone out. Still no signal. Seventeen percent battery. “Can we not play games anymore, please? I’m not sure how much more I can take. I’m honestly considering letting you duct tape my mouth closed so I don’t have to ask these questions.”

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