“Ah, sure look it!” she exclaimed, then turned to call up the stairs, “Bryn, she brought the whole school home with her again for dinner.”

Tamara retorted, “Not the whole school, just the junior class.”

“And a junior-plus-two-annums,” Scylla added with a grin.

Bryn appeared behind Mama D. Even standing two steps above her wife didn’t quite make her as tall as Delia, but what Bryn lacked in height she made up for in authority. Her shock of platinum blond hair stood in stark contrast to her tan skin—not to mention the black eyebrows over her dark eyes. She looked us all over, her mouth drawn in a mock frown. “I guess I’d better put the kettle on. I wasn’t counting on quadruple the mouths to feed.”

“Oh, don’t bother—” I started, but she silenced me with an appraising glance.

“Isaak, did you have cena at home?”

I shook my head, and Bryn nodded. “I’ll put the kettle on,” she repeated. She disappeared back up the stairs, and Mama D hustled her way into the basement.

“All right, so who do we have here? I know this love already,” she said, coming up behind Henry and propping her elbows on his shoulders, resting her chin on the top of his head as he squirmed, “and Isaak of course. But here’s a new face!” She grinned at Scylla and stuck out her right hand, nails manicured in five different colors. “Nice to meet you, my dear. Delia Randall-Torres.”

“Scylla Hwang. I’m a friend of Tamara’s from the weekend project.”

“Ah, a collegian! Lovely. So, what are you four up to down here, fiddling with my very expensive and highly off-limits equipment?”

Tamara slid off her stool and opened the lid of the 3-D scanner. “It’s about something we found on the site today, Mama.”

Delia frowned. “Are you supposed to be bringing those things home, Tam? I thought I read something on the permission slip that said everything on the site was GSAF property.”

“I know, but I’m not so sure about this one.” Tamara held out the object and pointed to the DRT maker mark in the corner.

Delia took the artifact and stared down at it, her eyebrows furrowed. “Now what in the bleeding…” She stormed over to the workbench, yanked open the rightmost drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass and a tool I didn’t recognize. “Tamara, baby, hand me my glasses?”

After a few minutes’ inspection, she looked up at the four of us. “You found this out in the hills?”

“Yeah.”