The hospital had done three blood tests (two at my insistence since I was positive the prior results were incorrect), all of which showed I had not ingested any form of fungus, hallucinogenic or otherwise.

"Are you going to be OK with the séance we are supposed to go to tonight?" Sarah asked wearily as we slowly made our way up the dark back stairs to the upper floor. The pub was a popular one with the younger crowd, as evidenced by the large flat-screen TV blaring music videos. The building, however, was thankfully thick-walled, so the noise was muted on the second floor.

"You heard the doctor—I'm fine. Just a few bumps and bruises; nothing a couple of aspirin can't fix."

She paused at her door and gave me a concerned once-over. "I know, but I still feel like you should be in bed, not attending séances with me."

"Don't worry about it," I said with a careless wave that I felt far from feeling. "I wouldn't miss the opportunity for exposing some hokey medium."

"Portia!"

"I know, I know. I promised I'd go into this with an open mind. But I'm going to enjoy proving you wrong."

"There's that little matter of the cloud that followed you that you have yet to explain," she said with obnoxious cheerfulness.

"I explained it perfectly well. It was either the result of hallucination by a yet-as-undetermined source, hypnosis, or visual trickery."

"Smoke and mirrors, you mean?" she asked archly.

"Smugness ill becomes you," I said sternly, pulling my room key from my pocket. "I will offer scientific proof as to the non-existence of the cloud just as soon as I have soil from that faery ring analyzed. It could well be that there are elements at work other than possibly hallucinogenic fungi."