Page 40 of Shroom for Improvement

Shame. The lump was shame. I was an awful person. Entering into a verbal contract, knowing I’d only partially keep up my end of the bargain, and Sonny wouldn’t be able to pass on his knowledge to anyone.

He gave me a bright, glorious smile. My insides wobbled. I didn’t like the guy, but that didn’t stop me from noticing how magnificent he looked when he was excited. Cheeks flushed, hair shining like spilled oil, those full lips curled over brilliant white teeth. His chest rose and fell in a way that seemed much too quick for two blokes sitting around on a couch.

“Shall we start now?” he asked.

“Uh,” I replied, my brain sluggish. “Sure.” I shook my head a little. “Why don’t you tell me everything you know about shroom magic? Maybe you already have the answer. Maybe it’s a case of developing my techniques.”

Sonny scratched the back of his neck. “Sure. I mean, you could read my papers? Have you got an eSlate? Or a laptop?”

An Abundance of Sprouts

Claude

It turned out Sonny had written a great deal on mushrooms, and their various properties and benefits.

A. Great. Deal.

Like, he knew way more than me, an actual shroom fae.Waaaaaaaaaymore. The margin of our knowledge was so vast it was frankly embarrassing.

Dozens of academic papers, hundreds of magazine articles and blog posts, and books—like proper hardbound books with photos of him on the cover and photos of him in the pages. And for some reason, even though the man was right next to me, every time I stumbled on a picture of him my insides did a weird upside-down, inside-out movement.

Worse still were the pictures of his muddy hands—sowing seeds, or planting, or just handling soil. I didn’t realise I had a dirty-fingers kink, but I often found myself needing toreadjust my posture, or hold the tablet differently to hide certain involuntary bodily reactions I had to said hands.

While I read, Sonny paced. And he looked out of the windows, which were, of course, at exactly the correct height for him. And he attempted to complete the puzzle on my coffee table. And he visited my bathroom, running back into the lounge area with barely enough time for a decent hand wash to tell me how “my shower also drains into a butt in the walled garden,” and how he “can’t wait to use water flavoured with my filth on the tomatoes.”

After his outburst, he went quiet, said he was going to explore the house for a bit on his own, and asked if I wanted anything brought up from the kitchens.

I told him if Willow and Oggy were downstairs, I’d love a chai latte and a sandwich—any kind of sandwich, I wasn’t fussy.

With Sonny gone, I could focus on the text. And okay, be alone with the photos of his hands. Not that I was planning on doing anything with the photos, besides taking a few extra seconds to soak them in. Store them for later. Bank them up.

When Sonny returned approximately five hours later, the sky beyond the dick-turret windows was painted with stripes of pink and orange. I felt as though I’d learned so much, and yet nothing at all.

I tried to pluck a single new fact from my mind and failed, but I could hardly be blamed. He’d left me alone with pornography.

Sonny sat next to me again and an unfamiliar scent of lavender and lemongrass hit my nostrils. His hands were empty—no chai latte or sandwich. My stomach rumbled.

“Did you get lost?” I asked.

Sonny laughed. “Yes. Several times! I found a spa. A spa, Claude, with a steam room and a jet pool and a log cabin with a little crackling fire and a fucking tropical-rainforest room. Ifound a library too, but I couldn’t open the door. This place is incredible. There’s an aquarium. Seahorses big as chimps. Made eye contact with one. Pretty sure it was trying to communicate with me, or steal all my thoughts. Gave me the ick, so I left.”

I opened my mouth to say something about the spa or the creepy seahorses, but another thought popped into my head. “You found the library?”

Ever since Oggy and Willow had mentioned it a few days ago, I had been looking for that library, but to no avail. Figured it would be a great place to start my research on this house and its odd magic. Maybe it would even tell me what the ritual involved, though I wasn’t hopeful given the shroom laws. But I’d also hazard a guess none of those books contained distracting, risqué photos of Sonny’s filthy fingers.

“How do you know it was the library if you couldn’t open the door?” I asked.

“There was a blinking neon sign that readLIBRARYand an arrow.”

I laughed, figured he was joking, until I remembered he was fae, like me, and therefore wasn’t able to lie. “And the door wouldn’t open?”

“Nope. Locked. But there was no keyhole. It’s probably a magic thing. Maybe it will open for you?”

“Do you remember where it was? Could you take me? Like, now?”

He scratched at the back of his head again. Wrinkled up his face. “Maybe? It was right next to the room with the model trains.”

“What?” I was on my feet and already marching towards the door, the tablet abandoned on the couch. Did I have time for my shoes? No, no time. Slippers it was.

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