They left early in the morning while it was still cool and relatively quiet. Dragos insisted Pia wear at least some protection. When she grumbled, he gave her a level look.

“Do we know what we’re going to find when we investigate?”

She narrowed her eyes. “No.”

“Precisely. We don’t. That’s why we’re going to investigate. Is there the possibility we might run into something dangerous?”

“We probably won’t, you know. This whole area was surveyed before we decided to develop here.”

When Dragos decided upon something, his patience could be ruthless. He pressed. “When the area was surveyed, the engineers didn’t know anything about the unseen. So is there the possibility that we might find something dangerous?”

“Fine.” She glowered. “There is the possibility we might.”

“If we are going to indulge ourselves in overkill, I want to see some of that indulgence spread in your direction,” he said.

In the end she decided, with his approval, on wearing leather leggings and half armor that protected her torso. He strapped his sword to his back, and she chose to arm herself with a bow and a quiver full of arrows. It was the weapon she felt most comfortable with using. Her sword work was indifferent at best, and if for any outlandish reason they ended up in some kind of hand-to-hand conflict, she would do more harm by getting in the way. When Dragos fought he was an unstoppable juggernaut. Her best contribution was the accuracy of her aim.

They left the dog with Jocasta and Ramone. Pia had pumped breast milk for Niall, so when they dropped the baby off at Graydon and Bel’s, they had several uninterrupted hours ahead of them.

He wanted to check out the site of the concert hall first, so that’s where they headed. Construction had already begun in several different places, but the building dust had not yet gotten too irritating yet. Once at the site, Dragos found the foreman and asked a series of questions about what they had already tested for.

He was being thorough, but to Pia the conversation was all blah blah blah, so she wandered off to study the frame of the building that they had erected again. She didn’t go far, and Dragos always kept her in his line of sight, but she did get enough distance so that their voices blended into the background.

The warm sunshine felt good on her exposed arms and face, and the breeze off the water felt refreshing. Opening her senses wide, she studied the beams, the cloudless blue sky overhead, and the raw ground that was strewn with building materials and tools.

When Dragos finally joined her, he asked, “Do you sense anything?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “It’s nice here. How about you?”