Page 37 of Shroom for Improvement

“We’ll be in the guest house when you boys get hungry,” said Oggy. Or was it Willow? They were both sporting blonderinglets with no facial hair this morning. Difficult enough to tell them apart even when they didn’t match.

Sonny and I watched them toddle off down the stairs.

We both said nothing for a good few seconds. Sonny stared at his feet. I stared at Sonny.

“That’s my room there,” he said after the silence had become nearly tangible. He motioned his head to the door behind him. The door that was not there this morning. “Listen, I only stole from you because I wanted to talk with you and I never got the ch—”

I cut him off. “Is that the only thing you’ve stolen from me?”

His face dropped in an instant, lips pinched between his teeth.

“I hate that I was right about you all along,” I said—almost whispered.

Magpie fae will always be magpie fae.

Sonny sighed.

“What else have you taken from me?” I asked.

He sighed again. “Can we talk about this in your room? I have a lot to say and I’d rather sit.”

My eyes travelled over the entirety of him, from the tips of his still-pink ears to his hands rooted in his pockets. By the way he dug around in them, you’d think he was trying to reach his knees.

“I’ll return everything I’ve taken from you, I promise. It’s in my bag, in my bedroo—lab, whatever.”

I said nothing.

“I never meant to steal those things from you,” he said, finally meeting my gaze. “It’s just... with you...” Sonny shook his head a little. “This magpie-ness is part of me. Like a part that I can’t separate or extract, it’s just there. A part of who I am. My past and my present and my future, and as much as I don’t wantto steal from people—especially you—it’s going to happen. It’s part of my DNA.”

Something about his words, and the way he delivered them rang through my chest.

Part of who I am.

Part of my DNA.

Especially you.

Was I not in this exact predicament with the house because of who I was? Because of my DNA? I stood aside. A silent invitation into my room.

Sonny gave a tentative smile and slid through the doorway. His mossy incense scent brushed my nose, temporarily overriding the sensible part of my brain and flooding me with the sudden urge to seize him by the shoulders, slam him into the door frame, and bury my nose into the crook of his neck.

Luckily, when I came to my senses, he was already seated on my leather sofa. I sat on the other end, as far away from him as I could possibly be, but even then my right knee brushed his left. Was it because of Sonny’s ridiculously long limbs, or was my couch... somehow... smaller than it was an hour ago?

“It’s railway station, by the way,” I said.

“Huh?”

“In your email, you said, ‘I’m at the train station.’ You meant railway station.” I knew I was being pedantic, but it irked me when people got that wrong.

Sonny sucked in a breath and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Railway station, right.” He licked his lips and there was a strange tugging sensation in my chest. Like someone had tied a string around my stomach and was trying to pull it through my sternum. “I have so much to say, and I’ve been waiting a very long time to say it.”

I glanced at the grandfather clock, but never bothered to notice which directions the hands were pointing. “Go ahead.”

“Okay. I’m going to tell you everything. Start right at the beginning. And you’re going to think that I’m some kind of... stalker. But please, I need to tell this to you. I’ve been trying to talk to you for years. Then you can kick me out, okay? Because... Urgh! Fuck, I’m sorry.”

I nodded and for some bananas reason, my heartbeat rose by a few notches.

“I work at Remy University. I’m a research fellow and a lecturer. My area of expertise is mycology and fae glamour.”

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