Page 32 of Shroom for Improvement

“Nobody knows. That’s why you’re here, no? I reckon it’s a sex thing.” Jasper twisted the truck left onto a long, winding gravel drive. “Here now.”

I lifted my head as the property came into view, silhouetted against the morning sun, and I think it was at that moment I gave up. My nightmare shifted into one of those dreams where everything was so fucking weird even in my sleep I knew I was dreaming.

I was back on the train, tucked up in my narrow little sleeper cabin with my soft cotton duvet, complimentary CrossRealm slippers, and pillow mint. I’ll sleep in too late, miss the stop, ride it to the end of the Kingdom of the Fae, get straight back on it, and return to Remy. Fuck this whole Claude thing in the bin.

Maybe that was all part of the dream, too. Maybe I was still on the roof with Goldie, and this was some kind of extremely vivid high. Maybe I was still at Mash’s, passed out on his balcony with cute-but-meh Josh. Maybe I drank from the yellow plastic keg after all.

But at the same time, I knew I was in the right place. That this was Stinkhorn Manor. Because the building that rose from the ground in front of me resembled a flush of approximately thirty stinkhorn mushrooms, each one between forty to one hundred feet tall. It was surprisingly beautiful. And okay, yes,it looked like a bunch of enormous cocks, but wow, what a fascinating place.

Had it been built? Designed to resemble fungi? Or was it organic? Did it sprout from the earth? From mother nature?

I wanted—no, needed—to study this place.

At a soul-deep level.

Jasper cut the engine of his truck and leaned right over me. His wing brushed against my chin and I accidentally sucked in a lungful of smoke—acrid and slightly sulfuric. He opened my door.

“You getting out my truck, kid, or you gonna help me rig this piano up outside Helena’s room?”

“Yeah... Um.” Without another word, I hopped the five or six feet to the ground, grabbing my holdall from the footwell. Jasper sped off farther down the drive, the passenger door swinging wildly.

The next time I looked up towards the property, two childlike blonde fae stood in the entranceway.

“Hi, you must be Professor Daye,” one of them said, racing up to me, arm outstretched. “My name is Oggy. I use she, her pronouns. This is my companion, Willow. They use they and them.”

“Wow, you’re sentry fae!” I said, shaking Oggy’s hand, my earlier encounter with the surtr seemingly a distant memory. Sentry fae. I couldn’t believe it.

“Yes, we are,” said Willow. “We’re the custodians of Stinkhorn Manor.”

“Of course, yes,” I said, taking Willow’s hand now and pumping it. “This would explain why Claude said the breakfast here is phenomenal.”

“You hear that, Ogs? Claude reckons your breakfast is phenomenal.”

Oggy’s cheeks pinkened, and she scuffed the side of her shoe against the stone.

“So, Claude’s here? Like, he’s really here?” I sounded desperate, and yeah, I was. I just needed to know it was actually him who’d summoned me and not another weird acid-trip hallucination or bad-cheese dream.

“Sure, he’s right—”

“You’re Professor Daye?!” came Claude’s unmistakable, and remarkably on-brand, pissed-off voice as the man himself appeared in the doorway.

My heart flip-flopped in my chest, and a swooping, impending-doom feeling churned my stomach. He hadn’t been expecting me. He’d obviously assumed I’d be someone else. A woman, perhaps. That might explain Jasper’s disappointment on my arrival. I felt like I was balancing on the edge of screaming and lashing out or turning in the opposite direction and heading back to the station.

All those emails he sent. He thought he was talking to someone different this entire time.

“I am highly anticipating your arrival.”

Not my arrival, though. Someone else’s. Someone wholly not me.

Claude continued to drive in the knife. “How has this happened? I’d never have agreed to this had I known you were Professor Daye. This can’t be—”

I held up a flattened palm to stop him in his tracks, puffed out a breath, scrubbed a hand down my face. “Yep, you know what? I don’t need this.” I slung my holdall over my shoulder, turned on my heels, and made my way back down the drive.

I managed five steps before something stopped me. Not my conscience or my duty or anything else intrinsic, but physically. I physically could not move my feet forward. It was like they’d been glued to the gravel.

“Don’t go. Please don’t go,” one of the sentry fae called out, chasing after me. It was Oggy. “Please.”

“I know Claude is a little cranky,” said Willow. “But he’s all we have, and without him... and you... we’re fucked.”

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