She spends the next hours building her fortress. The kitchen window is covered with cardboard that is nailed in place with strips of packing she scavenges. The windows she didn’t nail shut during her pre-Longwood madness she nails shut now. She sweeps up broken glass and moves heavy boxes, building a wall to cover the shattered door.

While she works, she draws up two lists. One is of the supplies she needs Mel to procure. The other is of questions for Marion. Marion can do just about anything on the computer. Whether she will or not, Rose has yet to find out. Like many members of the Digitari, Marion is more than a little paranoid about being tracked across cyberspace by unfriendly individuals or agencies.

Rose needs Marion to feel safe.

She needs Mel to be safe.

That means keeping Mel out of the plan to a certain extent. Mel is not a girl for being kept out. She is smart and good at solving problems. She also has youth’s confidence in her own immortality. Unlike most young people, Mel knows for a fact that grown-ups are fragile. Death can snatch them when one least expects it. Taken together, these two attributes place Rose’s granddaughter in danger of unnecessary martyrdom.

When the bulwark of boxes guarding the broken door is complete, Rose finishes it by shoving the couch against the mass. On one side, she leaves a dog-door-sized space sufficient for her to squeeze in or out if she isn’t concerned about dignity. This is camouflaged by a lightweight box. The upstairs bedroom she leaves as the intruder has redecorated it.

Downstairs, in the coat closet by the front door, she makes a nest to sleep in. Should a new monster be dispatched, he will have little choice but to break in via the front door. If Rose is awake, at the first sound, she’ll run to the back of the house and slither out her dog door. If that option is unavailable, she will stay in her nest. With luck, the monster will thunder by the unassuming coat closet and toward the stairs. At that point Rose will quietly slip out the way he came in.

That is the theory, at any rate. And the story she’ll spin for Mel.

Having rendered the house as unappealing and unoccupied-looking as she can make it, Rose calls Marion.

She tells her of the night’s adventure.

“So,” she finishes up, “we can clearly see that I am not crazy, and therefore we can postulate that I am not demented. People were drugging me.”

Marion takes a few seconds to digest the story, then says, “Good. Now I can quit humoring you and genuinely be on your side.”

“Thank you,” Rose says sincerely.

Marion gets down to business. “Here’s what I have. All this is public access: Facebook, blogs, promos, profiles, chat rooms, tweets, YouTube. It is all out there for anybody to find.”