Page 78 of Shroom for Improvement

IfeltJenny’s attention snap to the moment, though the house made no noise.

“I was wondering... hear me out... what if the reason is that it—the ritual—is embarrassing?”

“Embarrassing in what way?”

Sonny scratched the back of his neck, then the tip of his ear, then the arch of his perfect brow. “Oh, gods, this is going to sound ridiculous, but...” He shook his head. “No, I can’t. It’s too crude.”

Jenny made a strange noise, half-whimper and half-whine, but said nothing.

“No, it’s fine. What were you going to suggest?”

He laughed. “Well, one of the most commonly believed attributes of the stink—”

But Sonny never finished his sentence because there was a series of knocks on my bedroom door.

Jenny groaned. “You have visitors.”

“We have visitors, apparently,” I said for Sonny’s benefit. I got to my feet and Sonny followed.

“You have visitors. Not we,” Jenny said.

I opened the door to Oggy and Willow. Their waist-length hair was jet black and seemed to grow longer by the second. Both had crystal-blue eyes today. Both appeared to be perspiringmore than I’d ever seen them perspire. Two men flanked them. A summer fae so ancient I felt the sudden pressing need to find him a place to sit, and a serpentine shifter of some sort.

“That’s Mr Cope. He’s been in me before,” Jenny said. I would never get used to hearing that. “And the other guy, I’m not sure. He has an ugly soul, though.”

“Lord Stinkhorn... Claude,” said one of the sentry fae. I still hadn’t figured out an effective system for telling them apart yet. “This is Mr Wes Cope, he’s—he was—your father’s lawyer, and this is Mr Cameron Greene, from Greene’s Property Management. Gentlemen, this is Lord Stinkhorn and his companion, Professor Sonny Daye.”

Why did the word companion make my insides feel all wobbly?

“Come in,” I said, because my fae-no-lie mouth wouldn’t allow me to welcome them, or to say how nice it was to meet them. I shook both their hands, starting with Mr Cope.

I stood aside to let the men enter my room, the sentry fae just behind them, and pointed towards my couch. Which had now become couches. I wanted to thank Jenny for that touch, even though I got the strong sense the house did not like the men.

It was the strange pulsating that thrummed beneath my feet, in my chest, in my fingers. It sounded like a rattlesnake’s hiss.

“Who the fuck invited the estate agent?” Jenny said, confirming my every suspicion.

The two men sat on my original couch, and Willow and Oggy perched like sentinels on either end of the new couch. Sonny and I squashed into the centre, the left side of my body—my shoulder, arm, thigh—mashed against his right. His mossy incense scent invaded my nostrils, and I fought the knee-jerk reaction to pull him onto my lap and let myself become enveloped within his familiarity.

“It’s lovely to finally meet Angus’s son. You look so like him,” said the ancient summer fae. Mr Cope was Black, with short silver-grey hair and a beard and moustache combo. He wore a richly embroidered tunic, as was the style with many fae who’d never stepped foot outside of the Kingdom, and swirling gold jewellery around his fingers and running up the points of his ears. Beside me, Sonny sat on his hands.

Typically, fae didn’t show signs of aging until they were tailing their second or third millennia, so the fact that Mr Cope had wrinkles and age spots, and was doing the wholeI’ve forgotten my glassessquint-frown was telling. Going by my estimate, he must have been nearly three thousand.

By contrast, my father would have been approximately eleven hundred when he died. No spring chicken by any means, but he could have eked out another nine to twelve hundred years. I glanced over at Sonny who, compared with myself, our guests, and the sentry fae, seemed so young.

How long was the average lifespan of a magpie fae? Why was I thinking that now? And why was I suddenly picturing Sonny as an old man?

“May I fetch you gentlemen a cup of tea?” asked either Willow or Oggy. I think Oggy. She stared at the coffee table strewn with dried tea leaves, a slight furrow to her brow.

“Tell them to piss off,” Jenny said.

“Got any pro—” the serpent shifter began, but I held up a hand to cut him off.

“Refreshments won’t be necessary.” I didn’t want these men inside my house any longer than necessary.

My house.I’d really just thought that.

Beside me, Sonny freed his hand. He hid his smirk behind a nose scratch. It made me feel strangely vindicated. And warm.I had no intention of hosting, or even being remotely hospitable. I’d known Mr Cope would turn up at some point. Elektra, the lawyer orc, had told me, but in fairness, I had forgotten until now.

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