Karma peeled the second notice off her front door and read it in the cold. WARNING. VIOLATION. DEMOLITION. Heavy black letters over a red bar, one corner already curling. The inspector had signed the bottom in blue pen. She had six months from the auction to bring the house up to code. Four were gone. She bought this place at a city demolition sale because no one else wanted it. She wanted it. She wanted a finished home in her own dark, whimsical style, and she wanted it here, in these rooms, with this porch, with the copper-footed tub upstairs that she had spent two weekends scrubbing until her hands cracked. She walked around the side of the house and looked at the foundation. The red brick bowed outward in a slow slant. A crack ran from the sill to the dirt. Small stones had already pushed loose at the base. She pressed her palm flat against a brick and felt it give. Inside that wall was everything she had done in four months: the new wiring she pulled herself, the plumbing she soldered on YouTube nights, the black clawfoot tub sitting under a tarp on sawhorses in the yard, half-patched, waiting for her to finish resealing the copper before it went back inside. She went in through the back and down to the basement. The bulge looked worse from this side. A contractor had come Tuesday and written a number on a scrap of drywall. Steel beams, driven and anchored, ten thousand dollars. He said two weeks of work once paid. He said sooner was better. He said the inspector would accept the engineer's letter if she had one on file before the deadline. She had four thousand in her account. She sat down on the case of canned mocha coffee by the stairs. Catpocino was already inside it, curled between the plastic-wrapped cans, yellow eyes watching her over a paw. Karma scratched the top of the kitten's head. She counted what she could sell. The T.A.R.D.I.S. print. The ebony lounger. Two commissions she had turned down last month because the basement kept eating her weekends. She could take them back. She could list the second lot she'd bought at the same auction. She could ask her sister, which she had said she would never do. Karma got up, went to the kitchen counter, and pinned the violation notice to the wall above her laptop where she would have to see it. She opened her email and wrote the contractor. Start Monday. She would have the deposit Friday. Then she opened three tabs, listed the lounger, listed the print, and messaged the two clients she had turned away. Catpocino climbed out of the coffee case and sat on the notice's curled corner. The house was still standing. She had five days to keep it that way.