Page 12 of My Neighbor Literally Bites

"That's what I said. Asking permission." Theo winks at me, and I notice Alaric almost smile before he buries it away. I've started collecting those twitches.

We work through the morning. They settle into a rhythm that surprises me, Theo narrating decades of the property's history while Alaric keeps the cord taut and resets the heaviest bricks as if weight is only a suggestion. I watch how his hands move, he isn't showing off. He's just patient, steady like that makes the whole garden feel less likely to collapse.

Lily wanders out around ten, hair in a knot, headphones around her neck, and surveys the half-dismantled wall.

"You're letting the weird neighbor demolish our garden."

"He's restoring it," I say.

"Restoring it," Alaric agrees, not looking up. "Hand me that pointing trowel. The small one."

To my astonishment, she does. She kneels at the toolbox, finds it, and slaps it into his palm like a surgical nurse. "You owe me. I have an entire list of things to repair."

"Such as."

"The back gate shrieks. The front step wobbles. Something in the shed smells disgusting."

"Make the list. I'll do the gate first." He accepts it like she's a foreman handing down a work order, and she beams at being taken seriously. He treats her seriousness as a fact rather than a phase. Most adults can't even manage that.

By noon my hands ache and there's grit under every fingernail. We get the lower course reset, level and stubborn, the bricks fitting back together with a satisfaction I feel somewhere behind my ribs. I step back just to look at it.

"That's better," I say.

"That's the footing doing its job," Theo says. "A wall's only as honest as what it stands on." He gathers his tools. "I'm off to feed the dog. Back tomorrow if the weather holds." He pats the nearest brick on his way out, a goodbye, and Alaric and I are the only ones left.

We tackle the bowed middle section together, and neither of us can line them alone without making the whole thing lean again. He holds the string line while I set the next brick, his attention fixed on me. He isn't watching to catch me failing. He's just staring, I can't figure out if it's admiration or caution.

"Use the flatter edge," he says.

"I've got it."

"You do." He doesn't say anything else. He lets me find the angle, and curse quietly when it rocks out of place, and only when I ask does he brace the low part with two fingers.

The final brick gives me trouble. I crouch beside the wall, damp grass against my shin, trying to guide it into place while keeping the mason's cord clear. I need the chisel tucked beside Alaric's boot, but it sits too far away unless I risk the brick slipping.

He reaches for it first. His hand closes around the worn wooden handle, then sets it into my open palm, and for a moment his fingers stay there, warm and rough with old work, beneath mine. We don't move a muscle.

There's dust on my cheek; I feel it, gritty, and he lifts his free hand halfway as if to brush it away. Then he stops himself.

"You should finish," he says, low. "Before the mortar sets."

"Right." My answer sounds too raw for brickwork. "The mortar."

I turn back to work the wall. Beside me, he holds the brick steady without releasing it.

10

ALARIC

The walk back to my own land takes less than two minutes and feels like crossing a border I shouldn't have. By the time I reach the gate, the dust from the Marlowe driveway still clings to my boots. I notice it on the steps of my own house—pale grit tracked across dark slate—and I stand there longer than the observation warrants. A century of careful habit, and I have carried her dirt home without thinking. That is the part that troubles me. Not the work. The ease of it.

I spent the afternoon handing tools to a teenage girl and answering her questions about mortar as though I were any neighbor with strong hands and time to spare. Lily asked whether the wall would outlast us. I said it would outlast her grandchildren. She laughed. Hannah looked over at the sound, and for one unguarded moment her face held softly. I close the door on the memory and on the day.

The study is the only room I keep lit. Old glass in the windows warps the sun into something liquid. I pick up the phone I have not used in years.

Elias answers on the second ring, which means he has been waiting for someone, though not for me.

"Blackwood." His voice is dry, amused. "I assumed you were dead. It would have been more polite than the silence."