Page 17 of Mercury Rising

“Hello, Eddie. It’s wonderful to meet you.”

Eddie stared at him for a few more very long seconds before holding out his hand, which Mercury took.

“Pleased to meet you too. Are you rich?”

“Eddie!” Nick said.

“It’s okay,” Mercury cut in. “I suppose I am, really.”

Brooke sat on the sofa next to Eddie, who scooted up to make room for one more. They both stared expectantly at Mercury. It appeared a grilling was on the cards.

Mercury sat between them. He caught Nick’s eye, who winked at him.

Yum!

“Must be weird for you coming here,” Eddie said.

“I’ll be honest, I was shitting myself.”

The two sisters, who were now sitting on the other sofa, giggled.

“We have a swear jar at Bodhi House,” Nick explained.

Immediately, Hassan scampered and grabbed a half-filled jar from underneath the coffee table.

“It’s fifty pence every time you say a bad word,” he said solemnly.

Mercury dug in his pocket and found a pound coin that he put into the jar.

“That’s a pound,” Hassan said.

“Silly bloody me,” Mercury replied.

All the kids fell about laughing.

“What do you do for a living?” Olena asked.

“He’s an influencer, dummy,” Brooke replied. “I saw it on the news.”

Mercury shuddered to think how scathing those reports would have been. People hated influencers. Until they wanted something promoting. Then they were very useful indeed.

“What’s a fluenza?” Hassan asked.

He knelt at Mercury’s feet, staring up at him.

“I help people promote their stuff,” Mercury said. “I have a few followers on the socials so if I attend their launches or like their products, then other people sometimes do.”

Brooke frowned at her phone. “You’ve got five hundred thousand on Instagram. How many on TikTok?”

Mercury shifted uncomfortably. “Last time I checked, about two hundred and fifty thousand. I…well, I’ve not done a post since all this happened. It’s probably about three people now.”

Eddie gasped. “It’s four hundred thousand now.”

It appeared his foray into criminality hadn’t done his profile any harm.

“Why haven’t you posted anything?” Hassan asked.

“Oh, well. I didn’t much feel like it.”