Home for Horny Monsters - Book Five

In Hot Water

Eulalie spotted the fairy fluttering overhead. "Can you talk to them?" she asked.

"No," she replied. "I was trying to use the broom to wake you and they decided to help me out."

"I can work with that. We need a sequence to follow." Eulalie pulled a band of webbing from her spinnerets and began weaving. The rats didn't understand English, but solutions came easy to those who looked for them. "Establish communication with rats. Communicate desire for portal home. If no portal home, then portal somewhere safe, investigate current situation. What does their king look like?"

"You probably saw him. Crown with glasses." Sofia walked toward her. "What are you doing?"

"Bypassing the language barrier to accomplish our first task. If they can understand situational context, it should be possible to convey our needs." Weaving a rat with a crown was child's play, especially done in a chibi art style. When she held up her final product, it was an image of their king in the middle of a tapestry of silken strands.

The rats chittered excitedly for a moment, then went silent as she wove another image. When she held it up, their fear stink faded even further. This image was a picture of her surrounded by food and cartoon hearts. She was certain that Sofia probably had pen and paper somewhere, but her web art was far more precise than anything she could do by hand.

That, and she had a bad habit of nibbling on crayons. It was a childhood habit she just couldn't break, and she hated having to pick wax out of her teeth.

"What are you doing?" Sofia asked.

"Establishing that I'm not a threat." Her next image showed her and the king holding hands. The rats looked at one another, but it seemed they were grasping the situation. "Do we have any idea how they figure out where they're going?"

Sofia shook her head. "If you want somewhere specific, I'm sure they have a method. But it's something Reggie delegates."

"Well, we can't have them taking us just anywhere, can we?" It took her almost an hour, but by the time she was done, the rats were busy gnawing a hole on an open portion of the wall. It didn't take them long, because she only needed a hole big enough for her hand.

"Well?" Sofia had left and come back with food for everyone. "Any luck?"

"Let's find out." Eulalie pulled her phone out of her pocket and stuck it through the hole. On the other side of the hole, she could hear the distant bustle of humans talking to each other.

"That was pretty clever," Sofia said, looking over her shoulder. "Getting them to gnaw you a hole to a Starbucks."

"It doesn't even matter which one, they're on every corner." Eulalie connected to the wireless network, as her phone's reception wasn't great.

She tapped with purpose, using one of her government accounts to run a search for property records. It didn't take long to discover a man named Murray who lived right next to Mike.

"Do you suppose he lives alone?" Eulalie asked.

"I have no idea. Wouldn't someone have come looking if he didn't?"

"My thoughts exactly." She pulled up Murray's address and then searched for a street view. Once she had a picture, she pulled her hand back out and started weaving again. The delicious smell of roasted coffee beans reminded her of her father.

She smiled, caught up in the memory of how he would hold his mug first thing in the morning. He enjoyed how the heat seeped into his fingers, relaxing him.

Once finished with her web, she held up her phone for the rats to see. After they looked at Murray's house, she showed them a drawing of her and the rats standing inside of it.