“Sure. Why not?” I dipped through the opening and wisely waited for Zayne to join me, since I legit could see nothing due to the tree branches blocking out any and all light.

My steps slowed and then stopped. The absence of light was disorienting, causing my heart to start jumping. This was as bad as the blindfold. Maybe worse. My stomach turned cold as I stared at the different shades of nothingness.

“Careful,” Zayne warned, moving ahead. “The branches are really low in here. I need to move them out of the way.”

“Thanks. I...” Drawing in a deep breath, I told myself to get over it and just ask for what I needed. “Can I put my hand on your back? Is that—”

Before I could even finish, Zayne’s hand wrapped around mine, and a second later my palm was flat against his back. With a ragged exhale, I curled my fingers around his shirt and whispered, “Thank you.”

“No problem.” There was a pause. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

My still-in-training Guide Gargoyle led me around trees and low-hanging branches that would’ve surely knocked me out. I counted my steps and noted when Zayne slowed to announce a large rock or fallen tree limb. It took fifty-two footsteps before the thickness of the darkness shifted and shapes began to form in the silvery moonlight.

We stepped onto a lawn that hadn’t been tended in years, the grass reaching my knees. Bushes and weeds choked a driveway that was cut off by the chain-link fence. I took a step and realized sticker bushes had latched on to my leggings.

Ugh.

Letting go of Zayne’s shirt, I reached down and brushed off the little buggers and then straightened, getting my first look at the building.

It was... Um, it might have been lovely in its heyday.

Now the monstrous building looked like something straight out of a horror film. Several stories tall, it had two wings and a whole lot of boarded-up windows. I couldn’t even tell what color it was supposed to be. Gray? Beige? Dusty?

“Well...” I drew the word out. “That definitely looks haunted.”

“Then you’ll come in handy, won’t you?”

I shot him a look behind his back as he made his way through the jungle of a yard to the side of the building. Stopping at a boarded and chained door, he looked back at me. “You still feel the demon, right?”

“Yeppers peppers.”

“Yeppers peppers,” he repeated, shaking his head as he moved to the nearest window. He grabbed one of the boards and yanked. Wood cracked and gave way. He propped the board against the side of the building.

I stepped in and gripped the next board and then pulled. The old wood broke free, and I started to toss it.

Zayne stopped me. “The boards have nails still attached. If we come back out the way we came, I don’t want you stepping on one.”