Page 7 of Shroom for Improvement

Yet what did I have to lose? I guessed nothing. I’d inherited a house—which I planned on selling, anyway—and the sooner I got the deeds, or probate, or whatever it was I needed, the sooner I could sell up and move on. Use the cash to pay off the mortgage on my basement flat in Remy. Purchase a bigger telly. Maybe go to the fancy tea shop just off Bordalis Road and buy me some of that elite chai blend I’d been dreaming about since the store opened two decades ago.

“Okay, I’ll visit Stinkhorn Manor and meet with your colleague. But I will only be taking one week’s worth of supplies. I do not plan to stay any longer.”

“Great,” said Elektra. Her wide smile stretched over her tusks. “I’ll call the Bordalis office now.” She stood again. “There is just one more thing you should be aware of, Mr Stinkhorn.”

“What’s that?” I asked, smothering the urge to roll my eyes.

Elektra made a circular motion with her hand, inviting me to flip the piece of paper over.

I did. At the bottom, in the same floppy-pasta scrawl as the previous side, it said—

“The house is magic?!” I hadn’t meant to read that aloud.

“Your thumb is covering the rest,” Elektra said, and for the first time since arriving, she seemed somehow much smaller.

I moved my thumb. This time, I didn’t stop my eye roll. “Oh, for goodness sake!”

The house is magic, and it’s a pain in the ass.

Daye, S., Cassidy, M., et al.

Sonny

I pressed the button on the remote controller and flicked the projector onto my last slide. In enormous, neon-pink animated letters—because why the fuck not?—it spelled out:

HAPPY SPRING FEST FOLKS

“I just wanted to say to everyone, thank you for a super-fun semester. Next term we’ll start looking into your research proposals. Yay.” I gave the room at large a thumbs up. “But it’s fair to say you guys have earned the next two weeks’ break.”

A few whoops reverberated around the university auditorium.

“If anyone is interested, or bored, during the holidays, I’ve got a couple of workshops planned at the rooftop community allotments in Waterside. One on no-dig gardening,and another on the soil food web. There are flyers at the front with dates and times.

“And that just leaves me to say two final things. One, don’t go to any parties at Professor Cassidy’s house, and two, if you happen to find yourself at Cassidy’s place, don’t take any man-made party drugs. Seriously, kids, if you’ve gotta do drugs, always opt for the ones mother nature has gifted us.”

Titters filled the air, plus a couple of too-close-to-the-bone groans. Including one from the professor himself. My research fellow and... would I call him my best friend? Hmm... jury was out on that, but he was the closest thing I had.

Doctor Mash Cassidy. Werewolf. One half of the Cassidy-Daye research team, environmental super-warrior, and all-round wild party animal. I fired a finger gun at him, and he flipped me off.

“Aaaandsemester!” I said, snapping my arms together in a director’s clapperboard manner, dismissing the class.

Like a swarm of hornets whose nest had been shot at, the students rose all at once with cacophonous buzzing. People packed up their uni shit and made their way out of the lecture hall for the last time that term.

Some of my class called out,“Happy Spring Fest, Sonny”as they walked by. Some stopped to thank me, or to receive a famous Professor Daye elbow pat. A relic from my bygone pickpocketing days, and though those days were behind me, the motion transferred effectively to congratulating or comforting students.

Well... Those days were sort of behind me.

These days, I didn’t deliberately steal, but old habits died hard. I plunged my hand into the back pocket of my jeans and thumbed the small gold cufflink I’d swiped from Claude Stinkhorn. The breath left my lungs in a rush of frustration andexasperation, and... something else. Something I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

“Hey, Sonny,” said Marnie, a petite gorgon who always sat in the front row and never took out a notepad or pen. I wasn’t even sure she carried a bag with her. “Are you going to Mash’s this Friday?”

I shot my partner a questioning raise of the brow. He shrugged.

“Unequivocally, unashamedly, one million percent, no,” I said to Marnie. “But you have fun. Let off some steam. Not too much, though, okay? And drink nothing that comes out of his big yellow plastic keg. That stuff’s lethal.”

She laughed, cast the werewolf a knowing look which I understood meantwell, I tried,and walked away with her shoulders a little hunched. Even so, she grabbed a flyer for my spring break soil-themed workshops on her way out the door.

“She’s into you,” Mash said to me, after most of the students had left.

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