Page 23 of Shroom for Improvement

“I am.”

She paused, before saying, “And do they still make the best eggs royale for breakfast?”

“I had three portions this morning. Half a dozen eggs! And practically half a salmon. That hollandaise sauce is unbelievable,” I said.

“That’s my boy.”

After Mum and I hung up the phone, I pulled my feet onto the couch and let my head fall to the armrest. The clock bonged again, giving me another mini cardiac arrest.

“Okay, what are my options here?” I said aloud to myself because I was alone, and if I didn’t get these thoughts out of my brain, there would be too many in the station and they’d end up derailing each other. I ticked them off on my fingers. “Trial and error. Try a bunch of random stuff and hope I stumble on the right thing.”

But the problem with that was how would I know if I had the right thing? Would there be any indication? And if there wasn’t, and I ended up missing the summer-solstice ritual, well, it’d all be too late.

I ticked off another finger. “Find someone else who was present at the ritual.” Another of my father’s mistresses? “Or find another shroom fae in the same predicament as me.”

But even if it were possible to locate any of the other women my father had shown the ritual to, they’d likely be able to say just about as much as Mum. Mum was fae too, she couldn’t lie. And the same went for other shroom fae with magical properties who had routine rituals to perform.

I raised another finger. “Do what Mum said and go back to Remy. Maybe I help find a new place for Oggy and Willow and the other occupants to stay—live in. The house will die, but it’s only a ho—”

The sofa rose into the air, upended itself, and dumped me onto the coffee table, scattering jigsaw-puzzle pieces over the rug.

Oh man, it took me so long last night to finish all those edge pieces.

I got to my feet and brushed down my shirt and trousers, looking around, but I was alone. The house did this. The houseturfed me off the couch because I suggested I’d let it die. I remembered Willow and Oggy talking about it as though it were a person.

It’s manipulative.

A compulsive liar.

Argumentative.

Emotionally unstable.

A bit of a pervert.

I drummed my fingers against my thighs and blew out a breath.

“Can you... If you can hear and understand me... uh, give me a sign,” I said to the house. To the bloody house! I must have been losing my mind.

The jigsaw-puzzle pieces zoomed themselves from the floor and from the upside-down lid of the puzzle box and slotted themselves all neatly into place, making a complete scenic picture of a steam train tracking over a stone viaduct.

I lifted my gaze from the puzzle and stared at nothing for a full two minutes—could have been ten—before I spoke. “Thank you,” I said. Whispered, really, because I was talking to a fucking house. I’d gone bonkers, and I was talking to a house. “But I was kind of looking forward to completing that one myself.”

With that, the pieces shot to the floor, as though someone scooped them off the table.

“Okay,” I said, my voice quivering. I held up a fourth finger. “My final option. I do what the scary blue-flame lady suggested and find a mushroom-magic expert?”

I waited for the house to... do anything. It didn’t. I took this to mean this was the only reasonable option. “So a mushroom-magic expert? I... Where do I even start to search for one?”

The internet was probably the best place for that, but before I had even put my hand in my pocket to retrieve myphone, I was hit in the forehead. Hard. By something thrown from a distance. Something solid and smooth and about the size of—

“My wallet?! You threw my own wallet into my face?” I bent down, picked up the brown leather envelope, and put it back in my pocket—

It hit me on the nose this time.

“What the hell?”

I held it out in a flattened palm and it flipped itself open, displaying my credit cards, my library card, my U-Rail ID pass, and business cards I’d accumulated over the past century or so but hadn’t bothered to look at since.

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