Arnav clung to Priya for a few more minutes, but got over his scare surprisingly quickly. I supposed his mother had healed him within seconds, and the monster that had hurt him had disappeared even before that. He was a little past the age where peek-a-boo was a source of wonder - he had some concept of object permanence, things existing even when you couldn’t see or hear them - but I could definitely imagine a two-year-old not being certain it had all even really happened, when all the evidence had disappeared.

Our trip home was uneventful. I spotted another bladetail in the sky above, but so did one of the combat groups. A flurry of projectiles swatted the slick-skinned avian down before it could dive.

When we reached our house, it was full of people bringing up today’s list of complaints and trouble. A large line was wending out of the kitchen, but both George and Tammy were out in the main room, talking with an elderly woman. The woman was seated on the couch while they stood, which ought to have made her look small and weak, but somehow it didn’t. Maybe it was the utter confidence on her face as she snapped at George.

“So what? You’re a strong young man, according to my grandson. I’m sure there are other retirees around that can handle a pen. Organize! Find some! With you and my grandson, we’ve already got two. And I’m pretty sure I heard that whiner in the orange shirt say she was here because there weren’t enough monsters to kill. If she’s so bored, she can help too. There! Three people, instantly. You really think we can’t find enough?”

I lifted Cassie out of the wagon. “Uh, enough people for what, exactly?”

George hadn’t noticed us come in, and looked hugely relieved to see us. “She wants us to get a crew of people to dig up your front yard!”

I’m not sure what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. “Dig it up? Why?”

“Yes. Mr. Zwerinski contacted me last night to let me know that I’d been chosen for the Points Siphon this afternoon, and why. That gave me all of last evening to come up with plans.”

“And… these plans involve people digging up my front yard?”

She looked irritated by my skeptical tone. “You want a wall around this Shop thing and secure housing, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, what do you want me to make that wall out of? Drywall? You want me to smash up all the other houses in the neighborhood for some skinny little bricks? Personally, I’d prefer stone.”

I frowned, trying to recall my grade-school science lessons. “Is that even feasible? I thought there was like a mile of dirt or something before you got to rock?”

She actually laughed. “Lord no! Some parts of the country, maybe, maybe you’re pushing a thousand feet or so. Here? No way. It gets deep as 80 feet or so, rarely, but that’s rare. Five, ten feet? You’ve got a good chance, but you can’t count on it. Northerners who move to the area are always asking me ‘Well, why don’t we put a basement on it? Why don’t we put another level on the parking garage underground?’ Cause there’s a damn good chance we’re gonna run into rock the second we scrape the dirt away! You can do surveys of course, but you really can’t never tell for sure until you start digging.” She frowned. “Had to do it sometimes anyway, of course, but it’s a headache and a half.”

I thought I got what she was saying. “Okay… but why put the quarry in my front yard? Won’t that make it harder to put a wall around the shop?”

She nodded. “A bit, and it might not work out. But, if the dirt is shallow here we can do double-duty. With this magic bullshit I won’t have to mess around with blasting or chipping, I’ll just be able to slice the rock into nice lil blocks for some big strong muscles to carry upstairs. If I’m careful about how I do that, I can cut chambers into the rock below that’ll be safer sleeping quarters than anything aboveground could possibly be.”

“Okay…” I said slowly. “I guess I can see the sense in that. But why start digging now? Won’t you be able to tell if it will work or not once you get the Points Siphon?”

“I was told we were in a time crunch. Some gangsters? Besides, I have Healing Touch already. I know what it feels like to wear yourself out doing space magic. I’ve been told if I pick my abilities right, my new ones will get much stronger, but I still don’t intend to send rocks flying through the air like some cartoon wizard. No. I’ll make cuts, nice and precise, and some people who can’t do that can carry the blocks where they need to go for me to fuse them together again. If we get the people together, they’ll be useful once I’ve got my new abilities too.”

She’d thought this through. Looking for a hole to poke in her logic, the only one I could see was one of luck. “If bedrock is 80 feet below my house, though, we’ll have dug a big hole into the area we’re planning to wall in.”

She nodded. “True. If we do this, we’ll need to make the wall bigger. But… eh… If it’s too deep by your house, we might have to abandon this plan entirely. There’s some variance in the depth of bedrock at a local level, but usually not extreme variance at short ranges. The farther away we put our quarry, the farther we’ll have to carry the stone, the less we can do.”

I glanced at Tamara. “What’s our backup plan if we can’t get to stone?”

She looked down. “I’m not sure. Dane didn’t… We’re not geologists or architects. We’d figure out something. Maybe knocking down homes and using what we could for construction materials?”

Tamara didn’t need to point out how much of a waste that would be. Our homes were filled with surprisingly-useful objects: portable soccer goals, paint, fabric, books, dishes, tools. If we started knocking down buildings, we’d lose a lot of that. Beyond that, we’d be far more limited in what we could build. My house only had bricks at ground height, with siding farther up. That left a skinny layer of bricks, maybe ten feet tall and four inches wide. Even if my math was off a bit, it didn’t take an architect’s understanding to realize you’d need to take down a lot of houses to make even a small fort, if you wanted the wall thick and secure.

“At that point, maybe it would be worth using the middle school as a quarry.” I suggested. “Cinderblocks have to be better than regular bricks, even if we’d have to get them from farther away.”

A knock at the door distracted everyone from answering, and I turned to pull it open. On my doorstep was Darryl, recognizable by his distinctive motorcycle outfit. It was obvious why he hadn’t opened the door himself; his arms were occupied carrying an assortment of heavy-duty shovels.

“I’ve got eleven, Nana!” he called. “That good?”

“That’ll get us started!” she told him.

My brain whirred. I was awful with names, but I hadn’t been introduced to this woman before. I’d heard about her through a story, and I was oddly much better at remembering stories, even unimportant ones. Not that I’d classify this story that way; Darryl’s frustration and sorrow about steering his grandmother into taking healing abilities, which wouldn’t help her personally, had made an impression on me. “Wait… You’re Darryl’s Nana Helen?”

“I’m Helen. But yes, Darryl’s my grandbaby.” She emphasized ‘grandbaby,’ giving Darryl a sly look and a mischievous grin as she said it.

“Nana…” He groaned, then shook his head. “Fine. Fine. I’m your grandbaby. Can you get your rickety old behind up and tell this lil toddler where to get digging?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sass makes me go senile. I think I’ve forgotten.”

There was a pause, and I regretted the fact that Darryl’s motorcycle helmet covered his face. Then he turned around.

“Fine, then. I guess I’ll just dig any old where, then!”

There was a crash as he dropped his bundle of shovels to the ground and pulled the door shut behind him. The rattle over the shovels almost drowned out Helen’s cackling.

I glanced at her, concerned. “That’s my lawn you’re sending him off to excavate. I’m Meghan Moretti.”

She waved a hand at me, unconcerned. “Eh, he’s a smart boy. With the tree roots and the Shop, there’s really only one spot in your yard that’s suitable. He’ll find it.”

I thought about it. I could see what she meant, but…

“Kind of in a line between the front of the Shop and my front door?”

She nodded.

“I wouldn’t think there’d be space to go around a pit there unless you knocked over my house.” I tried to keep my voice level, but failed. Priya shot me a warning look.

Helen looked unruffled. “That’s probably on the docket eventually, but that’s not the plan in the short term. Short term, I’d use your house as one side of the wall. It’s not perfect, but none of this first wall will be. We’ll slap something together quick that’ll last long enough that we’ll have time to do a better job.”

Damn, the moxie on this woman. Oh, yeah, probably going to destroy your home eventually, just as cool as a cucumber. I was equal parts appalled and impressed.

“No!” said Gavin. “You can’t do that! We live here!”

I heard Micah respond. “She said she’s not doing it right now, but I don’t think she should do it at all. That’s a bad idea. Like, a really bad idea.”

I’d sort of forgotten the kids were behind me, and as I turned to look at the boys, I caught a glimpse of Cassie running around my other side. She went right up to Helen and held both hands out in front of her, like someone motioning for a car to stop. “No! You can’t knock over our house. You! Can’t!”

Cassie’s last two words were emphasized with a scrunch-faced glare and exaggerated stomps of her feet. Helen’s mouth was pressed into a line, and I could tell she was trying not to crack up at my daughter’s angry face.

“Okay, then,” she said. “Thank you for telling me.”

“You’re! Welcome!” Cassie shouted, then turned and marched away, face still clouded with anger.

“Cassie, it’s rude to shout at people. Please say sorry to Ms. Helen.”

Cassie frowned up at me. “I was not rude! I said ‘Welcome’. Welcome is pwite!”

“Saying ‘You’re welcome’ is polite, but shouting is still rude. Please say sorry.”

Cassie came up to me and buried her face against my leg, pretending she couldn’t hear me.

“Cassie…”

She made some kind of inaudible squeak.

“I couldn’t hear that, Cassie.”

“I’m! Sorry! For! Shouting!” Cassie yelled.

Helen couldn’t hold in a snort at that one, and Micah and Gavin giggled as well. Micah started to explain to Cassie why shouting an apology for shouting wasn’t right, but Helen spoke over him.

“Apology accepted, Cassie.” She met my eyes. “Lord, it’s been a while since even my grandbabies were that little. They’re a handful, eh?”

“They can be,” I said, picking Cassie up. She was snuggling me aggressively, looking for comfort. I wasn’t sure whether she was more upset at being made to apologize or at the prospect of someday losing our house, but I wasn’t going to begrudge her some cuddles. “They’re good kids, though. Speaking of which… Boys, why don’t you grab a board game to play with the Turners and head upstairs? We have a couple hours until lunchtime. If there’s problems, come get me, but I would deeply appreciate it if you could play nicely until then.”

The kids headed upstairs with Latice and Catacombs of Karak, and I sat down on the couch next to Helen, carrying Cassie and, by extension, Pointy. The plush turtle poked her head up over Cassie’s shoulder.

“So,” she said to Helen. “Let’s talk about your ability choices.”