Page 88 of Shroom for Improvement

“How am I lying? I’m fae.”

Mash scrunched up his face in bitter disappointment. “But you’ve done other stuff, no?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Sonny, you absolute dog!” Mash howled like the werewolf he was. “First Josh, now what’s his name? Claude. You get on your knees for him? Or—”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.” I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice, but why was everything with Mash about fucking? Fucking or partying. Though partying was usually just a means to get to the fucking. “Sorry, mate.” I decided to be honest, not that my fae-mouth would let me lie. “It’s... complicated. I might have feelings, and there’s so much going on. I still need to figure shit out.”

“Oh, fuck, not the feelings!” he said, dramatically holding the back of his hand to his forehead like a swooning damsel. “But in all seriousness, if you have feelings”—he pretended to gag, which made me smirk—“you should, like, explore them. I’ve known you for ten years and you’ve never had feelings before.”

I gathered up all the air in my cheeks and puffed it out slowly. Mash was right. Dammit, I hated when Mash was right. Though what was the point if I was returning to my uni job and Claude to his underground-railway job? But wait... regular couples had jobs. Regular couples usually only had weekends or evenings to date.

Why did I want more than what regular couples had?

“Enough about me,” I said. “What’s up with you and Marnie? I told you not to fuck her. So, what, you ignored me and now she’s pissed with you? She threatening to tell the dean?”

On the screen Mash’s eyes went as wide as the moons. He shook his hand, then smacked himself in the face. His laptop camera panned over to the left and there, beside my colleague, sat the young gorgon herself. She’d pulled the bedsheets up overher chest, her shoulders were bare, and on her head she wore a silk sleep bonnet.

“Hey, Prof,” she said, a smile stretching across her cheeks.

“Uh, hi, Marnie.” I angled my camera away so that my embarrassment wouldn’t be so easy to spot on the FaeTime screen. I gave a nervous laugh. “Please don’t get my friend into trouble.”

“I won’t, so long as he behaves himself,” she said, tittering.

Ah, boy... Mash behaving himself? Yeah, he was fucked.

“Anyway, mate, I gotta go now.” Mash snatched the laptop back from Marnie. “Don’t forget to message the doc.”

“Yeah, I won’t.”

“Okay, love you,byyyyeeeee,”he said, laughed, and hung up the call.

I closed my laptop, placed it on the desk, and ran my hand through my hair. What was I supposed to do? Chase my dream and meet with Theodora, or stay with Claude and see this ritual through?

I needed to speak with Claude. Maybe he’d be able to guide me one way or another.

“Come in,” Claude called after I’d padded across the short hall and knocked on his door.

I let myself in. He was standing next to the spiral staircase, already wearing his pyjamas, and holding two steaming mugs.

“What took you so long? I asked Oggy for some hot chocolate, do you want some? Honestly, I think that may have been the longest day in history.” He climbed the steps, and I watched his pyjama-clad legs disappear to the mezzanine level. “You coming?”

I couldn’t tell him.

Maybe tomorrow I’d somehow muster the courage.

The Trip Sitter

Claude

I left my hand between us again that night, and the next few nights, in case Sonny happened to reach out with his. He never did. I wondered if I should make it more obvious to him, but a part of me worried he already knew it was there and pretended not to have noticed.

Sonny had shakshuka for breakfast, which he let me try. It was almost delicious enough for me to reconsider my usual triple portion of eggs royale. Then after our meal, we came out to the paddock. Sonny foraged for liberty caps while I stood over the tablet at the ley lines and tried to summon anything. A lightning strike, a rain cloud, a thunderclap. Hell, at this point I’d be happy with a gust. Didn’t even need to be a williwaw. A little floosh of wind would be nice.

I’d been there for about an hour and nothing dramatic had happened so far. I had been hoping my earlier success would have spurred me on, but over the past week, something seemed to weigh me down. I had a feeling it had everything to do with a serpent shifter and the terrible house survey.

Every now and then, Sonny would pass through the line of trees in the distance. He’d said the best place to find magic mushrooms was in grasslands and where sheep had been grazing. Jenny had said there weren’t many sheep around these parts, but there was a family of satyrs that often walked in its woods. Each time Sonny passed by me, he would give a huge smile and a wave and my stomach would flip, and then I’d remember all the things and it would drop deep into my gut again.

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