Williwaw in a Teacup

Claude

After our showers—my second of the day and it was only midday—Sonny came to my room to help with the tea-leaf magic. Not that he did much besides keep me company, but I liked having him around despite all the places my mind kept wandering. I had a new level of focus that seemed only to make its appearance now.

We were sitting on my couch again, had been for almost an hour already, except this time Sonny and I weren’t at opposite ends. We were in the middle, together. Jenny, for the most part, remained silent. Occasionally, it would let off a melodramatic yawn as though letting me know it was still there, and that we were boring it to death.

Whilst in the shower, Jenny had tried to ask me fourteen billion questions about what happened in the courtyard.

“You saw everything, and I am not talking about it,” I’d said after the first ten questions. And then when it still didn’t shut up, I began politely telling it, “Leave it, please.” Which morphed into, “Mind your own business.” Which eventually became, “Oh, just fuck off already.” And when even that didn’t shut the thing up, I began holding up a very particular finger.

Not that I cared what the house thought, especially when Sonny’s thigh almost, but not quite, touched mine. He’d put on a clean T-shirt—black, with illustrated mushrooms and the text MILF: Man, I Love Fungi —and shorts, not jeans. His bald, reddened knees poked out of the hems. The skin on his knees was thicker and a little scaly. Psoriasis, or a lot of time spent on all fours. I shook my head before my mind went there again. He was a gardener, of course he spent a lot of time kneeling.

The rest of his exposed skin was pale, peppered with dark hair, invitingly soft looking. I half wished I owned a pair of shorts so that our bare flesh might accidentally—and repeatedly—keep touching.

It should have been a distraction, having him so close and yet not close enough, but our release in the courtyard earlier had given me a sense of invigoration.

We hadn’t talked about what had happened earlier, and I wanted to, but I didn’t think now was the right time. I wanted to establish whether I could expect more frequent frotting forays, whether this meant our nil-wanking pact was back in place, or if that didn’t matter anymore since Jenny had witnessed everything, and whether I might look forward to other things with him. Could I kiss him when the moment struck? Could we do more than kiss and mutual masturbation? BJs? Sex?

Would he reach over into no-man’s-land and brush his fingers against mine?

Of all the possibilities, why did the thought of Sonny holding my hand under the duvet feel the naughtiest?

I shook my head. We needed to talk about what happened earlier, and what it meant for us, but another time. Because something was happening. The orgasm had brought about a new level of focus, and the air around me was charged. Electric.

I felt something manifesting in my core. Like a bubble, or a ball of heat, or something physical yet not physical. Perhaps this was the feel Sonny had talked about when he told me to feel the glamour, not think or imagine.

“It’s like something’s alive inside my chest. I don’t know if this’ll make sense, but it’s like a tree or a plant. Like the magic is being sucked out of the air and the ground through roots and is all pooling into the middle of me. In here,” I explained, pointing to the centre of my chest.

“Yes! You’ve got it! May I?” Sonny said. He hovered his hand a few centimetres above my sternum.

I nodded, because at that moment, with the prospect of him touching me again, I forgot what words were and how to use them. I assumed he would flatten his palm against me, over the top of my shirt, but he undid one button, then another, then slid his fingers between the plackets and against my bare skin.

And there was me hoping our knees might knock together.

My breath caught in my throat, my eyes fixed onto his face, and maybe even time slowed down.

He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. In real life and beyond that. His pupils were so dark it was difficult to tell what was dilation and what was iris, but it was impossible to miss the pink that painted his cheeks and nose and the tips of his pointy ears. How had I, Claude Stinkhorn, most miserable man in all of Remy, wound up with this gorgeous creature looking at me like I was... like I was something special?

“I feel it, too,” he whispered, as though conversing any louder would scare it—the magic—away. “You’re incredible—you’re doing incredible.”

At this, the magic seemed to grow. Or purr. I wasn’t quite sure.

“What do I do now?” I asked. “Do I wait for it to keep building? Or do I try to direct it? And if I direct it, how and where do I do that?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” Sonny said, his hand still on my chest. Hopefully, he’d forgotten about it, and would leave it there forever. “Aim it at the teacup. Inside the teacup.”

I nodded and closed my eyes, blocking out everything else around me—the birds chirping outside the window, Jenny’s nuisance yawning, the doom-like tick-tocking of the grandfather clock. Everything except Sonny.

The glamour seemed to vibrate inside me. It became cold—icy even. I felt it shift, move, as though it was trying to escape. Sonny must have sensed it too, because he lifted his hand away. I would have mourned the loss, but the glamour began to seep through my bones and flesh and skin like osmosis, and unceremoniously, it charged at the teacup.

The tea leaves didn’t so much swirl like a mini tornado, but shot a foot into the air and scattered over the table.

“Ooh, look at you go,” Jenny deadpanned.

“You did it!” Sonny yelled.

“Yes!” I punched the air, and then, without thinking, I pulled Sonny to me by the front of his T-shirt and kissed him.

Sonny let out a surprised little mewl, and I let him go.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Sonny did, about two hours ago,” Jenny said.

I flipped the house off behind my back. “It wasn’t exactly a storm in a teacup, though. The leaves didn’t swirl or anything. More like a gust.”

“A williwaw,” Sonny said.

“Yes!” I was grinning again. How did he have that effect on me? “That’s a perfect description for it. A williwaw in a teacup.”

“The fuck is a williwaw?” Jenny asked.

“So, we just keep practicing. And gradually we focus on making it swirl.” We . Sonny said we, and not you, Claude . I didn’t even know if he’d realised. “Eventually, it will become a storm. And also eventually, you’ll be able to conjure a lightning strike. We’ll get there.”

We.

“In the meantime,” he continued. “We should try out a few other things, too. Just to be sure. I’ve been thinking, there must be a reason why shroom lore isn’t so well known as other fae lore.”

I felt Jenny’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 perspiring more 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 whole I’ve forgotten my glasses squint-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.

However, if Mr Cope thought I’d offer a welcome to an estate agent, he had another think coming. Estate agents were like wasps—essential, unavoidable at times, but a parasitic nuisance the other ninety-nine percent.

“So, you’re Lord Stinkhorn’s... companion?” the serpent shifter said, slithering his attention to Sonny. “What does that”—he gestured between us—“entail?” It was the kind of nosy question someone would ask to determine if we were in a relationship.

Sonny answered before I had time to consider his words. “I work at Remy University. Claude and I are collaborating on a research project.”

Mr Greene’s eyes slid over the points of Sonny’s ears. He nodded and pursed his lips together. The serpent shifter was a lot younger than Mr Cope, but I was useless at guessing the age of anyone neither human nor fae. He had light green skin, with deeper green scales along the sides of his jaw and neck. He wore a pressed white button down, and navy polyester suit trousers with no jacket. He smelled like he wanted everyone to think he had expensive tastes. Like he drove fancy sports cars, and went to art gallery openings, and had famous friends, but in actuality, he’d probably bought his cologne based on the glossy adverts, not the actual scent itself.

“Please, I prefer Claude or Mr Stinkhorn, not lord. It’s just weird.”

Mr Greene shrugged a single shoulder.

It was Mr Cope who eventually spoke. “Sure thing, Claude. You can call me Wes. Your father and I were good friends.” Wes reached into a satchel and pulled out a clear plastic wallet with papers inside. “I have your probate here. Had to pull a tonne of strings with the Kingdom’s government to get that rushed through so quickly. These things usually take a lot longer, but anything for Angus’s boy. I just need a couple of signatures from yourself.”

“Thank you. For going to that trouble for me.” I accepted the official-looking papers from Wes. He or his secretary had placed sticky tabs next to the empty signature boxes to save me even more trouble.

Along with the probate was the last will and testament of my father. It seemed awfully lengthy for a document that could have been summarised into one tiny paragraph.

To my son, Claude Stinkhorn, I leave Stinkhorn Manor and all my worldly possessions. All of them. And see that he is made aware of the rhizome ritual... My heartbeat picked up in speed ... He should know what to do.

Damn him.

I threw caution to the wind. “You say you and my father were good friends?”

“Indeed,” Wes said. “We used to go to Gryphon World together all the time.”

My mouth opened, but no words came readily. I side-eyed Sonny and wondered if he was imagining the same thing I was—my father (a slightly older version of me) and this ancient summer fae riding the Sky Labyrinth, wearing gryphon ears, eating hot dogs. Going by Sonny’s smothered smirk, I’d wager he had been.

I brushed the thought aside. “Did he ever tell you about the rhizome ritual?”

Wes’s smile stayed fixed on his face. “Oh, yes, many times.”

The fingers of my left hand shot out, they made contact with the top part of Sonny’s bare knee. Fireworks fizzed up my arm into my chest, and Sonny stiffened beside me. The serpent shifter’s gaze followed the movement, but nobody else seemed to have clocked it.

“He won’t be able to tell you anything,” Jenny said, the edge to its voice letting me know it was still pissy.

“Did you ever accompany him during the ritual?” Please say yes, please say yes.

“Heavens, no. Angus told me if I went with him while he did... whatever he did, it would have completely destroyed our friendship.”

Destroyed their friendship?

Again, I looked at Sonny, who tilted his head curiously to the side.

“Told you,” Jenny said.

I ignored the nagging sensation in my gut to press the fae for more information. Like all of us, he couldn’t lie. He had nothing more of use to tell me. “So, the house is now mine?”

Wes nodded. “I just need your signature, and then yes, Stinkhorn Manor and the surrounding acres are yours. Congratulations.”

He offered me a pen, but I shunned it, and took my own from my inside jacket pocket. I used to have two of these pens—inscribed with my name in gold lettering—but I lost one at work a few years ago. I signed on the dotted lines where the sticky tabs indicated I should, and Mr Cope tucked the papers, including my father’s will, into the plastic envelope again.

“We will store these in our vaults for safekeeping, and we’ll mail you copies within the next couple of weeks,” he said. “In the meantime, I’d like to properly introduce my good friend Cameron Greene. He runs a property management company in Agaricus, but his services cover the entire Kingdom.”

I offered Mr Greene a curt nod, because again, any words of welcome would not leave my fae mouth. I was starting to feel that either Mr Cope was somehow stretching the truth when it came to declaring folk as good friends, or he kept terrible company.

“Elektra from the Remy branch called me,” Wes continued. “She said you were looking to sell the property.”

“No way are you selling me!” Jenny shouted.

“But I understand in this situation things aren’t quite that simple. It wouldn’t work out, not if you have to perform a ritual every six months to keep the property standing, which is why I asked Cam to get involved.”

I turned to Cameron, genuinely curious. I hadn’t thought about what I’d do with the house for a long while. I had always intended to sell, but Wes was right, the ritual complicated things. Considerably.

Mr Greene smoothed out his shirt sleeves. “Mr Cope and I have had a lengthy discussion about your predicament, and we have arrived at a conclusion I feel would be exceedingly beneficial for all parties involved.”

“All parties. Pfft,” said Jenny.

“Instead of selling the property and risk the new owner failing to perform the ritual properly—”

“Or at all,” Jenny added. “Since it has to be you, Claude.”

“We rather thought the best practice would be to keep you on as owner, relocate the guests from the bed and breakfast into the main house, and charge them rent in alignment with the current market value. My team at Greene’s would manage the entire property for you. All you’d need to do is turn up once every six months, perform your duties, and head back to whatever endeavours you were doing before. You would, of course, receive incredible financial compensation for this regarding rent payments.”

“So... I’d be a landlord?” I wasn’t totally opposed to the idea, but I couldn’t keep the disgusted look from my face. The only thing more parasitic than estate agents were landlords.

“Landlords aren’t terrible people,” Mr Greene said with a smarmy little laugh, like he had read my thoughts.

Beside me, Sonny gave a subtle but derisive snort. It did not escape the estate agent’s notice.

“And what would happen to the guest house?” I asked.

“You could sell the guest house as an ongoing concern, or we could convert it into apartments. The guests would stay on as residents. We may have to increase their rent. What do they currently pay, say per week?”

Everybody looked at the sentry fae.

One of them squeaked. I think Oggy. “Well, currently the guests …”

“Tell me they pay to stay here?” Mr Greene said.

“Yes, of sorts. They, um... Well, John pays in compliments mostly,” Oggy said.

“Compliments?!” he scoffed.

“And Mr Dupont is a fan of antiquities and antique hunting, so he often exchanges his findings for his food and board.”

“Good gods,” Mr Greene turned to me. “Were you aware of this? Are you bothered by it? I’m going to assume you have plans to deal with this blip?”

My fingers twitched, and I realised they were still next to Sonny’s thighs. “Uh...” Oh shit, I shouldn’t have looked down at his legs. I’d forgotten the question. “Oh, right. I guess I’m aware of it. Now. And as for whether it bothers me the tenants do not pay for their keep? No, I can’t say that it does.”

“Are you serious?”

“He’s fae. He cannot lie,” Sonny said, and for the first time in the three years since I’d met him, he sounded pissed off.

A thought struck me. “Oggy, Willow?” I moved my head quickly from side to side, hoping that if I misnamed them, neither would notice. “Do I pay you both for managing the property and the guest house and doing all the cooking?”

“Uh,” one of them said. Probably Oggy. “Define pay.” Definitely Oggy.

“No, you don’t pay us a wage,” Willow added. “With money nor compliments. You’re actually quite rude most of the time. We do it because we’ve been assigned Stinkhorn Manor.”

Damn those bloody manners of mine.

“The old Lord Stinkhorn used to pay us, but his contract ended when he died.” Oggy’s words were soft, like she was trying to make excuses for me and my terrible behaviour.

I’d been an idiot. Why had I come to this place and not bothered to do any research into the logistics of it?

“Well, that needs to change. Right away. How much is the going rate for maintaining a listed property, running a guest house, cooking, cleaning? How much did my father pay you? How does thirty thousand silvers a year sound? Each.” It didn’t seem a lot to me, but I guessed they didn’t need to pay for board or food.

The sentry fae gasped.

“W-what would we do with all that money?” Oggy asked.

I shrugged. “Buy things you want, go on vacation, travel the Eight and a Half Kingdoms, take the CrossRealm train from the Mythic Realms to the Human Realms and back up again.” That’s what I would do. “You get holidays and time off, right?”

“Oh, yes, of course we do. Whenever we want it,” Oggy said.

“We’re rather partial to a spot of dilly-dallying, aren’t we?” Willow said, to no one but Oggy.

I nodded, smiled, felt slightly less like a complete shit. “Dilly-dallying is a fine choice for a recreational activity.”

“You’re telling me you don’t collect fees from your guests, but you want to pay staff? How exactly will you be doing this with zero turnover?” Mr Greene said.

“I don’t like this guy,” Jenny said. “Look at the way he’s sitting, taking up all your couch like that. If he spreads his knees any wider, he’ll dislocate a hip. I’m gonna fire that teacup right into his junk—”

“Okay!” I jumped to my feet, blanked on what to do or say next. As much as I disliked the guy, I didn’t want to watch a live castration. Or get pulled into an expensive lawsuit.

Mr Cope must have read the room because he also stood. “You don’t have to decide anything right away, of course. The house is now one hundred percent yours. We... Cam is merely offering you a solution to your immediate problems. One that could be a financial win for both of you.”

Mr Greene got to his feet as Sonny stood. “We’re happy to come to whatever agreement is the most suitable for your boyfriend and yourself.”

My boyfriend and myself. I almost laughed, but my thoughts tripped over themselves, and my mouth had frozen open. I waited for Sonny to correct the serpent shifter. He never did. Perhaps he’d been waiting for me to correct him, but now the moment had well and truly passed, and the word boyfriend hung heavy in the air between us.

I shot a look at Sonny, whose expression was unreadable or... oh no, was he horrified by the word?

Mr Greene continued as though he’d said nothing soul-splitting or ground-shaking. “If you want to continue living here, we can section the house off and reserve a few rooms for you both—” Mr Cope elbowed him. “A whole wing if you’d prefer.”

“Is Sonny your boyfriend?” Jenny asked.

“No,” I said, answering Jenny’s question, but of course, nobody else had heard the house. “No, that won’t be necessary yet. I haven’t made up my mind what I’d like to do with the property. I think for now, it’s best to keep my options open.”

“Fantastic.” Mr Greene slapped his hands together. “Would you be up for giving Wes and I a tour? I could take some photos and digital measurements, and get back to you with some costs and rental projections? I mean, based on what I’ve already seen so far, you’re looking at...” He puffed out his cheeks. “Upwards of a hundred Gs.”

“A hundred thousand silvers?” I looked at Sonny, whose mouth hung open as he stared back at me.

“Easily. And that’s per year. This space is so large you could fit at least twenty apartments into it. Possibly more. Plus, there’s the rest of the land, and I’ve heard there are a few outbuildings, too.”

“Claude Stinkhorn, you traitorous bastard,” Jenny said. “You’ve made Oggy cry, you selfish, selfish man.”

“Listen, I haven’t decided anything yet,” I argued back to Jenny. I turned to Oggy, whose eyes were beginning to glisten, her face red. “What would happen to you guys if I sold up? What happens to sentry fae if they no longer have a place to watch over?” It was a question I’d been meaning to ask for a while, considering the chance of me fucking this ritual up was so astronomically high.

Willow shrugged. I only knew it was Willow because Oggy had her face buried in her hands. “We go into the ether.”

“The ether?” It sounded ominous as fuck. Bile crept up my throat.

“The fucking ether, Claude. You would send these beautiful childlike creatures into the ether?” Jenny said—shouted actually.

“Then I cannot sell.”

Mr Greene placed his hand on my shoulder, but removed it after Sonny glared at him. “Let me be frank with you. I’ve had my eye on this house for over two centuries now. This house was the entire reason I set up the flagship office in Agaricus. I’m not about to let something so easily remedied become a deal breaker. The sentry fae can stay. We will create new positions of management for them. Everything will stay as it is. It will be like nothing at all has changed except for a few teeny tiny signatures on a piece of paper.”

I closed my eyes. Tried to block out Jenny’s repetitive, “You bastard, Claude. You utter, utter bastard.” Tried to block out Oggy’s snuffles. The predatory way Mr Greene stood rubbing his hands together like a praying mantis. The thought of returning to Remy, to work on the U-train again. The thought of only seeing Sonny twice a day for three to five minutes each time. The sound of ancient Mr Cope’s ragged breathing.

I couldn’t make a decision right now, not under all this pressure.

But I couldn’t very well go into the decision-making process without knowing all the facts from all the options.

“Sure, let’s give you a quick tour.”