Chapter 1

My influencer roommate paid a small fortune to grow a tub of "all-natural" beauty mud in our bathroom.

Ten days later, the thing crawled out of her face — in front of three hundred people at a party.

And I'd known it was coming from the day I first saw what she was growing.

The smell hit me the second I opened the door to our shared bathroom. Dead rat, rotten eggs, and sour milk, all at once.

I swallowed hard and made myself look at the sink.

The marble counter used to be white. Now it was buried under lumps of black-brown sludge, and the sludge was steaming faintly, like something under it was breathing.

It got worse. A layer of dark red fuzz had spread into the corners of the room and crept up the grout between the shower tiles.

"Tinsley! What the hell are you growing in here?"

I yanked the bathroom door open and shouted into the living room.

Tinsley was curled up on the couch with a ring light, filming a TikTok.

She rolled her eyes so hard it looked like it hurt, flicked her bleached-blonde hair, and stabbed the pause button like I'd personally ruined her day.

"Sloane, can you not scream every five minutes? You're killing my whole energy."

She picked at her ridiculous acrylic nails, talking down to me the way she always did. "That's my Amazon raw fermentation mud. I paid serious money for it — got it off a shaman on the dark web. It has to ferment in heat and humidity so it can soak up the energy of the earth. Get it?"

"Soak up the energy of the earth?"

I almost laughed. I walked right up to her.

"Do you have any idea that pile of sludge is growing fungus? This whole bathroom is one step away from a biohazard lab."

"Oh my god." She slapped a hand over her mouth and let out a little scoff. "You are such a brainwashed corporate drone. Those are Miracle Red Lotus spores. The shaman said they eat the toxins out of your deep skin layers — pure, natural skin renewal. Someone like you, who smears synthetic chemicals on her face every day, wouldn't know real natural healing if it bit you."

I took a slow breath and forced myself calm.

My mom is a senior fungal pathologist at the CDC, and I grew up around her microscopes and petri dishes. I knew exactly what that dark red fuzz was.

It was not Miracle Red Lotus spores.

Deep in the South American rainforest, there's a fungus that eats flesh. It loves heat and damp.

And here's the part that makes it a nightmare: its spores crave the fat under mammal skin.

The moment they touch you, they burrow into the follicles, root down into the fat layer, and start feeding and breeding there.

When they're fully grown, they tear straight through the skin and squeeze out fat, white sacs.

It's banned at every border. In a bad case, it kills you.

"Tinsley, I don't care which con artist sold you this garbage. I'm only going to say this once."

I held her eyes and spaced the words out. "That is an unscreened flesh-eating fungus. If you don't want your whole body to rot, lose a limb, or die of blood poisoning, you throw it in a biohazard bag and burn it. Right now. Then you bleach this entire bathroom."

Tinsley froze for a second.

Then she burst out laughing, high and sharp.

"Ha! Sloane, did the lab fry your brain? Your mom stares into a microscope for a living. Who are you, the CDC?"

She shot to her feet and jabbed a finger into my shoulder.

"This is my belief. This is my freedom. You don't get a say in how I live. And if you touch my mud one more time, I'll report you to the dean for racial discrimination and destroying private property."

Looking at her face, twisted up with that much arrogance, whatever pity I had left for her was gone.

"Fine."

I stepped back and brushed off my shoulder where she'd poked it, like she'd left something contagious there.

"Remember you said that. As of right now, that bathroom is all yours. Dani and I will use the one down the hall."

"Whatever! Bunch of ungrateful hicks."

She dropped back onto the couch, smug, and hit record again. "Hi guys! Today I'm showing you my exclusive all-natural skincare secret —"

I turned and walked back to my room without another word.

She wanted to rub a flesh-eating fungus into her own face on camera. I'd warned her once. I wasn't going to do it again.