Leona’s equipment arrived in anonymous gray Pelican cases that screamed “government contractor” to anyone who knew how to read their scuffs.
They were wheeled into the sub-basement on a Tuesday morning, while the museum above buzzed with field trips and retirees.
Isla watched from the end of the corridor, clipboard in hand, wearing her most harmless cardigan.
Leona walked beside the facilities manager, pointing out spots where she wanted devices mounted.
“Here,” she said, gesturing to a concrete pillar. “And here. Anywhere the original stone meets later construction.”
Her tech—mid-thirties, tattooed forearms, expression bored—popped open a case and started pulling out sleek, palm-sized disks.
They looked like fancy smoke detectors.
Isla knew better than to trust appearances.
She stepped forward as they approached the first junction between old and new walls.
“Dr. Ward,” she said brightly. “Need a hand?”
Leona’s eyes flicked to her.
A small smile curved her mouth.
“Dr. Reyes,” she said. “Just the person I wanted. Your institutional knowledge will be very useful here.”
“I’m flattered,” Isla lied.
The facilities manager—Ron, perpetually overworked—grunted.
“If you start drilling into these walls, I want it on record that I objected,” he said. “The last thing we need is another leak.”
“No drilling,” Leona assured him. “Adhesive mounts. Completely reversible. I’m not here to damage your precious infrastructure.”
Isla’s thumbs itched.
“We should be careful near the old foundation corridor,” she said casually. “Engineering flagged some potential instability. We posted a temporary no-entry until they can shore it up.”
Leona raised a brow.
“Convenient timing,” she said.
Isla smiled.
“Cracks wait for no man,” she said. “Or woman.”
Leona’s lips twitched.
“All the more reason to monitor stress,” she said. “I’ll place sensors near, not in. For now.”
Her tech—she’d introduced him as Arun—slapped a disk onto the concrete and tapped at a tablet.
It beeped.
A small green light blinked to life.
“What do they measure?” Isla asked, leaning in with what she hoped passed for academic curiosity rather than existential dread.
“Temperature, vibration, EM flux, a few proprietary metrics,” Arun said, distracted. “Think of them as very nosy thermometers.”
“Nosy about what?” she pressed.
He glanced at Leona.
She nodded.
“Think of the world as layers,” Leona said, watching the corridor rather than the device. “Physical. Emotional. Energetic. Most instruments only measure the first. These… listen a little deeper. For anomalies. Spikes. Patterns that don’t fit the surrounding environment.”
“Like… earthquakes,” Isla said.
“And things that behave like them,” Leona said softly.
Isla’s scar prickled.
“Do they… send alerts?” she asked. “If they detect something?”
“Real-time data feed to my tablet,” Leona said, holding it up. Graphs squiggled across the screen. “If there’s a spike, I see it. We can cross-reference with camera footage, staff movement logs, HVAC cycles…”
“Blame Tim for everything,” Arun muttered.
Leona’s mouth twitched.
“Security is often the easiest scapegoat,” she said. “But not always the right one.”
“You think this is… bigger than an inside job,” Isla said.
Leona’s gaze sharpened.
“I think someone—or something—is exploiting the blind spots in our understanding,” she said. “And I don’t like being blind.”
“Same,” Isla said quietly.
Leona studied her.
“You were very quick to volunteer to assist,” she observed. “Most staff avoid extra duties like the plague.”
“I like data,” Isla said. “And I don’t like surprises in my basement.”
Leona’s eyes crinkled faintly at the corners.
“Then we’re on the same side,” she said.
If only, Isla thought grimly.
“Dr. Ward,” Ron interjected. “About the old corridor. The cracks are real. We had a small tremor last week. I don’t want you bringing in tripods and cables before engineering signs off.”
“Understood,” Leona said. “We’ll respect your tape.”
For now, Isla heard.
They moved down the hallway.
Leona stopped every few meters, tapped the wall, listened.
She lingered near the door to the foundation.
Her fingers brushed the caution tape.
Isla’s heart climbed into her throat.
“You said engineering flagged this,” Leona said. “Have they dated the stress marks?”
“They’re old,” Isla said quickly. “From when they cut the new elevator shaft in the seventies. We’ve had minor settling ever since.”
“Mm.” Leona squinted at the seam where original stone met poured concrete. “Funny. It feels… newer.”
The scale under Isla’s feet—metaphorically—wobbled.
Her scar burned.
“Probably just the latest tremor,” she said, forcing a laugh. “This building complains whenever the subway sneezes.”
Leona hummed noncommittally.
She tapped the wall with her knuckles.
She closed her eyes briefly.
Isla watched, fascinated despite herself.
Was she… listening?
On some level beyond hearing?
Leona’s lashes lifted.
Her gaze was sharper when it returned.
“Arun,” she said. “Put two devices here. One on each side. Even if we can’t go in yet, I want to know what it’s doing.”
Arun slapped disks onto the wall on either side of the door.
Green lights blinked.
Graphs twitched on Leona’s tablet.
Isla’s stomach lurched.
“There,” Leona said softly. “Feel that?”
Isla didn’t need the sensors.
She felt it in her bones.
A low, restless hum under the floor.
The hoard.
The crack.
Cael.
All of it.
Ron frowned.
“I didn’t feel anything,” he said.
“Subtle,” Leona said. “For now.”
Arun squinted at his screen.
“We’ve got a baseline fluctuation,” he said. “Nothing wild. Like… a sleeping dog twitching.”
Leona smiled thinly.
“Wake-up call comes later,” she murmured.
Heat crawled up Isla’s spine.
She forced herself to breathe.
“Is that… dangerous?” she asked, pitching her voice just right to sound like a concerned staffer, not someone who knew intimately exactly how dangerous it could be.
“Only if we ignore it,” Leona said. “You can help me by flagging any staff reports of… oddities. Headaches. Vertigo. Sudden changes in mood in certain locations. People are walking sensors, too. Most institutions just don’t log their readings.”
“I can do that,” Isla said.
She thought of the first time she’d touched the scale.
Of fainting on the linoleum.
Of chalking it up to low blood sugar.
How many other conservators had brushed off similar episodes?
“I’ll get you copies of any incident reports from the last year,” she added. “Anything that might be relevant.”
“Good,” Leona said. “And Dr. Reyes?”
“Yes?” Isla asked.
Leona’s gaze pinned her.
“If you feel anything… unusual,” she said, “I want to know. Immediately. Don’t second-guess yourself. Don’t be a hero. Heroes die young.”
Isla’s throat tightened.
“I’m not a hero,” she said.
Leona’s lips curved in something not quite a smile.
“Good,” she said. “Those are easier to work with.”
***
She found Tim in the security office, watching the new sensor feeds march across one of the monitors.
“Tapeworm Lady set up her toys,” he said without looking up.
“Don’t call her that where the cameras can hear you,” Isla said dryly. “They’re loyal to her now.”
He snorted.
“How bad?” he asked.
“Bad-adjacent,” she said, sinking into the chair beside him. “She put two devices by the foundation door. They’re already reading baseline anomalies. She can feel it. Even if she doesn’t know what ‘it’ is yet.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Of course she can,” he muttered. “How’d she react to you?”
“Like I’m a shiny new dataset,” Isla said. “She told me to report any… feelings.”
Tim’s mouth twisted.
“You gonna?” he asked.
She hesitated.
“Yes,” she said. “Selective feelings. Curated. Edited. The safer weirdness. If I stonewall her completely, she’ll know I’m hiding something. Better to give her… some truth.”
He nodded.
“How’s Cael?” she asked.
“A little too pleased about the scale,” Tim said. “Also very annoyed that he can’t just burn Leona’s gadgets.”
“He tried?” she asked, alarmed.
“Stood under the vent and blew smoke at it,” Tim said dryly. “I told him if he tripped the fire alarm again, I’d leak his existence to the tabloids myself.”
Despite everything, a laugh escaped her.
“He doesn’t like being hunted,” she said softly.
“Who does?” Tim replied.
They sat in silence for a moment, watching the graphs flicker.
The sensor by the foundation door twitched upward.
Just a hair.
“Is that…?” she began.
“Crack-thing rolling over in its sleep,” Tim said grimly. “Or Cael snoring.”
“Do dragons snore?” she asked.
“You tell me,” he said.
Her cheeks warmed.
“I wouldn’t know,” she lied.
He glanced at her.
“Uh-huh,” he said.
She punched his arm lightly.
He grinned.
The moment of lightness steadied her more than coffee could have.
“You really okay?” he asked, quieter.
She looked at him.
At the worry lines at the corners of his eyes.
At the way his fingers tapped unconsciously near the panic button on the keyboard.
“No,” she said. “But I’m… not alone. That helps.”
He exhaled.
“Good,” he said. “Because if you go down, we’re all screwed.”
“Comforting,” she muttered.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
***
That night, her dreams were restless.
Not caverns.
Not cracks.
Fragments.
A woman’s hand on a dragon’s muzzle.
Leona standing in a London gallery, sensors blinking red.
Abuela lighting a candle.
Her own face reflected in the crown’s polished gold.
She woke tangled in her sheets, heart racing, thumb throbbing.
The clock read 3:17 a.m.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
She grabbed it, half-expecting Cael’s voice in her head.
Instead: a text from Maya.
*you up?*
Of course she was.
*Yeah,* she typed back. *Dragon insomnia.*
Maya: *is that like regular insomnia but with more fire?*
Isla: *and more eldritch horror.*
Maya: *oh good, you’re coping with humor, my favorite red flag.*
Isla exhaled slowly.
*Leona’s sensors are up,* she wrote. *She can feel *something.* We moved the scale. Crack-thing tried to come through again. Cael held it. I helped. 0/10, do not recommend as couples therapy.*
Maya: *you just called it couples therapy*
Isla: *DELETE*
Maya: *nope :)*
Maya: *seriously tho. you okay?*
Isla stared at the screen for a long moment.
*No,* she wrote honestly. *But I’m not alone. Weirdly that’s the scariest part.*
Maya: *because now you have something to lose*
The words hit harder than she wanted to admit.
*yeah,* she typed.
Maya: *sleep if you can. yell if you can’t. or if dragon boy tries any more unsolicited thumb kissing. I will fight him.*
Isla smiled into the dark.
*thanks,* she wrote.
*for what?*
*being my non-magical hoard.*
Maya: *ew, feelings. go to sleep*
Isla put the phone down.
Stared at the ceiling.
“You hear that?” she whispered into the dark. “You’re not the only one who gets to keep things.”
Cael’s voice brushed the edge of her mind.
*Jealous?*
She rolled her eyes, even though he couldn’t see.
*Sleep, dragon,* she thought. *We’ve got work tomorrow.*
A low, amused rumble answered.
Then the hum of the hoard curled around her like a blanket.
She slept.
No cracks.
No crowns.
Just the steady beat of two hearts, out of sync and closer than they had any right to be.
***
End of Chapter 13.
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