Page 19 of Shroom for Improvement

Though, when had I ever been optimistic?

I’d had eggs royale for breakfast—and holy hollandaise! They were some grade A eggs royale. I’d had to go back for seconds.

If staying in this awful house, with these unnerving people, and the expectation of this rhizome ritual wasdisconcerting, it was somewhat cushioned by the exceptional morning menu. Really nice chai tea too. Couldn’t fault it.

But they’d promised me as soon as they’d served the other guests and cleared up, the sentry fae would lead me to this sacred spot. That was half an hour ago, and all I had to keep me company was John the memoir writer, a bunch of outdated travel brochures, and this buzzing box.

Yup, it really was none of my business.

John had said a grand total of five words to me before I figured out he was what one would labelan enabler. “Why don’t you open it?”

“I’m not going to open it,” I’d replied. “It’s for Mr Dupont.”

I knew nothing about Mr Dupont, except that when I said his name, John’s eyes went wide and the smile dropped from his face.

John was human. The humanest man I’d ever seen. White skin, bald head, rounded belly, approximately five foot six. He had a big brown moustache and wore cargo shorts, a wingball jersey, and ancient-looking suede sandals with socks. Based on the evidence of my own eyes, I’d estimated his age at about seventy-five. He’d told me he’d been here at The Night Cap for sixteen years, which coincided with what Willow and Oggy said, but he’d also told me he was in his forties when he first came. Something was off here.

But humans could lie. In fact, any non-fae species could. And as a fae, I was also stereotypically useless at knowing when I was being lied to.

When I’d asked John his age, he’d said to stop being such a nosy twit, and then attempted to convince me to open Mr Dupont’s mail again.

It was none of my business, but . . .

Why would a box be humming?

An alarm clock? A bomb? A battery-operated vibrator? If it was the latter, or indeed the second thing on that list, I dare say Mr Dupont wouldn’t be too happy if I opened it.

The box was around fifty centimetres tall, wide, and deep, with ordinary-looking brown wrap and tape, and an inky black stamp on the side which read:Storm in a B Cup Farm. A bra-size reference? I had no idea.

I poked it with the end of my pen, lifting it up by an inch, and dropped it back onto the counter. It wasn’t heavy, but it also wasn’tnotheavy. The humming grew louder.

“What the fuck?” John said, leaving his perch behind the desk, abandoning his notepad and pen. “Pick it up!”

I hesitated, but eventually I placed a hand on either side. It was normal temperature, not hot nor cool, and the vibrations travelled through my palms and up my arms. I tilted it to one side, and the contents... sort of slid around. Hard to tell. I gave it a tiny shake. Something rattled. Sort of. There were definitely loose parts inside the box. The humming grew louder.

I gave it another shake. It grew louder still. What the hell did it contain? I shook it again, hard. This time the noise reached cacophonous levels, and I felt the resonance in my jaw, my spine, and even my toes.

“Ah, superb. It came,” said a deep male voice, hardly more than a growl. The voice’s owner spoke with elegance and expensive education. He took the box out of my hands and cracked the biggest grin, which he pointed directly at me. “The name’s Dupont. Call me Jasper. You must be His Lordship.”

I pushed the hair off my forehead, gulped, and looked up, up, up, until I met the newcomer’s eyes. Mr Dupont—Jasper—stood at, I would guess, a few inches shorter than nine-feet. He had crimson skin, muscles on muscles on muscles, horns that curved backwards from his temples, huge leathery bat-like wings, and grey, dirty-looking smoke tendrils easing outof his joints and nostrils. He was shirtless, and pants-less, and indecently close to being underpants-less, wearing what seemed to be a jock strap fashioned from a pair of jean shorts. He had a faint eggy aroma.

Mr Dupont was a surtr. An enormous, mutinously happy-looking fire daemon. I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away from his thigh muscles. Each one alone seemed bigger than my torso, and I was not a small man.

Next to me, John scooted back over to his chair and poised his pen above his notepad. He scribbled something down and bounced his wide eyes between Mr Dupont and me.

“Okay, ready when you are, Claude,” said Oggy, as she and Willow also walked into the bed and breakfast’s entrance foyer. They both stopped short when they caught sight of the grinning surtr.

“Mr Dupont, what an occasion to happen upon you here,” said Willow, but they looked at Oggy,WTFetched in every line of their features.

“Just came for my box of bees.” Mr Dupont gave the box another sharp shake, and barked out a laugh, which resonated through the floorboards. Or maybe it was the buzzing of the box reaching its crescendo.

“Your bees?” I said.

“Six thousand angry bees!” He rattled it again and pressed his ear against the cardboard. “Ooh, they do seem especially angry, these ones. Good, because the last angry bees I ordered were nothing more than slightly miffed. I want them furious.” He shook it again. “Come on, you little buggers, get more furious.”

“You’ll want them furious, not dead,” Oggy said, placing a hand on Mr Dupont’s naked thigh. It was the highest point she could reach. He stopped shaking the box.

“Why do you need furious bee—” I started to ask. Willow made a neck-sawing gesture, which I caught too late.

---