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Sweet Goddess, it would have been so much easier to build a new place from the ground up than tear this thing up by the square inch. But Raven wanted renovations. She didn’t want to waste the space. And I had to agree that the brick building would hold up pretty damn well for years to come.
My nose twitched. Something was rotting somewhere. We would probably have to rip most of the ceiling panels out and replace them.
“Asbestos?” Leo asked in a low voice. He held his breath and squeezed his nose.
I nearly fell over from laughing. “Dude, kid, no.Leo, breathe.” I carefully pried his hand away from his face. “Raven gave me a full report. She had the building inspected for asbestos and mold before we even came back. Everything is good.”
He hauled air into his lungs with a look of relief. A few gulping breaths later, he gave me a toothy grin. “That’s good, Dad.”
“How in the world did you learn aboutasbestos?”
“Miss Garrington let me use the computer while you worked.”
Nostalgia practically kicked in the door. “Miss Garrington was a nice lady, wasn’t she?”
“She was asuitableteacher, yes.”
“She must have let you read the dictionary while you were with her.”
Leo nodded poshly. “She let me read whatever she had on the shelves.”
“At this rate, you’ll be on your way to college before you’ve even gotten through elementary school.”
“Most colleges require—”
I rustled his hair again. “Leo, I was joking.”
Childish chuckles resonated in the hallway. Haunting shadows shifted around us as we wandered through to explore the rest of the building. Though it was relatively safe, I was starting to regret not making us wear masks. The smell was awful.
Leo waved his hand over his nose. “Rotten.”
“Another stellar word from the dictionary.”
“Dad, what’s that sound?”
I frowned. “What sound?”
During my observation, I had missed the faint sound ofthumpsechoing from somewhere inside the building. We were only in the east wing that led to a staircase, but it felt like the sounds were coming from all around us. Each room we passed held various abandoned items—chairs, desks, paper boxes, and disheveled bedding.
I turned us around and headed back for the lobby. “Let’s check the west wing.”
Across the lobby was the opposite hallway. This one was better lit, with wider windows in the rooms to let more sun into the dreary place. The thumping grew louder as we traveled, taking us to the end of the hallway that turned to the west of Silverdawn land, facing a gorgeous lake crowded by trees. This hallway was beautifully lit, much better than the last.
We should have walked down here first.
“No ghosts here,” I assured Leo while patting his shoulder. “Too much light.”
“We can put a garden out there. Can we do that, Dad?”
I peered through the floor-to-ceiling windows that were smudged with soot, fingerprints, and grime. “Actually, yeah. That might be a great area for it. With the lake right there, we could have a lot of produce and herbs.”
“The daycare can be on this side.”
While Leo gestured to the offices on our right, I noticed the thumping sound again. The quiver in his fingers told me he did as well. Someone must be in the building. Projects with such grand results would require many people. And as Raven had established with her report of the place, it would take a team of ten people or more to do the renovations in the time outlined.
“Someone must have gotten a head start,” I assured my kid, but I wasn’t so sure myself. This building wasn’t exactly on a well-used path.
Bravery didn’t need to come easily for him. He was still just a pup. Most of his senses were still in development, despite how much he tried to act like an adult. That was probably my fault, seeing as he’d spent just about every waking moment inside a damn gym. The good news was that his immune system was stellar and his social skills were beyond that of most adults. The bad news was that he didn’t get tons of time with me.
