Page 29 of Shroom for Improvement

He turned and started walking towards a very huge and very illegally parked black four-wheel drive. Actually, probably a monster truck, going by the size of the wheels. It took up not one, but threeSTAFF ONLYparking bays, and even had red and orange vinyl flames shooting up from the wheel arches.

“I, uh... didn’t know how long I’d be here, so I just brought, like... three pairs of jeans and every T-shirt I own. Plus my laptop. And that’s about it, really.” I had to jog to keep up with him. “Why did you think I’d be a woman? Didn’t Claude explain who I am?”

Jasper opened the passenger door, seized my belt loops at the back of my jeans, and tossed me inside his truck. All six-seven of me shrank into the middle of the huge leather seat. I pulled the belt across my lap, feeling like a child riding shotgun for the first time.

He slammed the door shut, then jumped into the driver’s seat. I tried my absolute darndest not to stare at his flexing quads. Holy crap, those things could suffocate a person. They were probably registered as lethal weapons somewhere.

“So,” he said, sliding shades onto his enormous smoking face and revving the engine so hard it made everyone within a fifty metre radius shit their pants. One guy even fell over. “You’re the mushroom expert?”

“Yes, I guess so.” His earlier words churned over in my head and I realised he never answered my questions. “What am I here for?” If Claude hadn’t known he was emailing me, who did he think he was corresponding with? And why? Why had I been dragged into it?

I’d assumed he was hauling my ass to his so I could apologise face to face for stealing the cufflinks. Though, come to think of it, I’d never mentioned the cufflinks, and I hadn’t used my first name either. I had signed each email off with S, not Sonny.

Shit, maybe he really didn’t know it was me.

“Mushroom magic, no?” Jasper said.

“Mushroom magic,” I repeated back to him.

Unless Claude knew about my research? Had he somehow found out and decided to help me? But that wouldn’t explain his predicament. The one he mentioned in his emails.

“I am in dire need of your assistance.”

“Rather convenient, don’t you think?” Jasper said, pulling out of the lot onto the main stretch of road in Agaricus town centre. A small, and in every way, stereotypical fae town. A few jumbled shops scattered the high street, plus inns, places of worship, and what I believed to be a school. And then countryside that stretched outward for miles and miles and disappeared into the horizon.

“Huh?” I was so confused. Everything was so confusing. Did Claude know I was coming? Me, Sonny? Or was he expecting some mysterious feminine Professor Daye? “How long is the drive to Stinkhorn Manor?”

“’Bout twenty mins. But I gotta make a quick detour, if that’s okay?”

Like I was brave enough to say no to this demigod of hellfire.

“Bought something off eFae. The bees didn’t work.”

“Bees?”

“Oh, Helena’s gonna get such a treat today.”

Bees, eFae, Helena? I decided it was better to keep my mouth shut.

“What’s your name?” Jasper asked me.

“It’s Sonny.”

“So, like, do you and His Lordship know each other, or what?”

“His Lordship?”

“Stinkhorn.”

“Sort of,” I said. “He, uh. I... I ride his... uh, train. I don’t really know him.”

“You ride his train?” Jasper said, taking his eyes off the road to lift a suggestive brow at me. “Oh, you mean literally? ’Cos the guy’s into trains?”

“He’s a U-Rail conductor. Did you not know that?” I asked. Jasper shrugged, turned his attention back to the road. “How do you know Claude?”

Jasper laughed, loud and deep, vibrating the entire monster truck and making the rumbling of the wheels on the asphalt seem like the distant buzzing of a fly. “I don’t, really. I only met the guy a few days ago. He seems alright, though. A little too much like his father, but I can hardly judge a man for that. Have you ever metmyfather?” He laughed again—so loud. I realised this was what brown note probably sounded like. Was I about to shit myself in a fire daemon’s monster truck?

He didn’t know Claude, not well anyway. Claude wasn’t expecting me to turn up at Stinkhorn Manor, he was expecting a woman. I was in a laughably sized vehicle with an entirely unhinged surtr, somewhere in the middle of the Kingdom of the Fae. I didn’t know where, or where we were heading. I had no address, except Stinkhorn Manor and The Night Cap, Night Cap Drive. Nobody from home knew where I was going. I hadn’t bothered to tell anyone.

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