Leona moved through the museum like a quiet storm.
She didn’t raise her voice.
She didn’t make overt threats.
She didn’t need to.
Her presence rearranged priorities.
Exhibit meetings were rescheduled.
Facilities staff deferred maintenance on less glamorous leaks.
Donor calls went unanswered for an extra half hour.
All eyes turned, consciously or not, toward the anomaly graphs creeping across her tablet.
Isla found herself sitting in on more of Leona’s meetings than she’d ever imagined.
Not as a primary stakeholder, officially.
As “collections liaison.”
It meant she spent a lot of time biting her tongue.
“This spike here,” Leona said one afternoon, pointing at a jagged rise on the screen. “3:02 a.m., two nights ago, foundation-adjacent. Correlated with a minor tremor on your seismometer.”
Isla’s stomach lurched.
3:02 a.m.
The crack.
The roar.
Her knees on coal.
“It coincided with a subway train,” Ron pointed out, peering at the data. “We’ve had similar blips before.”
“True,” Leona said. “But the frequency is… off. See?” She zoomed in. “A standard train vibration has this signature. This spike is… slower. Deeper.”
She looked at Isla.
“How did it feel to you?” she asked.
Isla blinked.
Like the world about to split open and swallow me, she did not say.
“Like someone dropped a bowling ball upstairs,” she said lightly. “Jars got rattled in the lab. Nothing broke.”
“Any… sensations?” Leona pressed. “Pressure in your ears. Metallic taste. Heat.”
Isla’s thumb prickled.
“Headache,” she said. “But I still get those from the concussion.”
Leona hummed.
“Keep notes,” she said. “If anything changes, especially near the foundation, I want to know.”
Isla nodded.
She was already taking notes.
Just not for Leona.
When the meeting ended, she hung back as the others filed out.
“Dr. Ward,” she said. “May I ask… why?”
Leona glanced at her. “Why… what?”
“Why you do this,” Isla said. “You could have stayed in some cushy university post, writing security guidelines and consulting on insurance policies. Instead you’re… chasing something no one officially admits exists. In basements. With limited budgets and uncooperative boards.”
Leona studied her.
“It bothers you,” she said.
“What?” Isla asked.
“That I don’t flinch at ‘magic,’” Leona said. “That I talk about energy layers and curses like I’m discussing humidity control.”
She shrugged one shoulder.
“When I was twelve,” she said, “my grandmother took me to a church in Sicily. There was a statue there—a saint—people swore had cried blood. The local priest said it was an old story. Foolishness. The bishop ordered the statue removed. My grandmother knelt in front of it and said, ‘Even stone weeps when no one listens.’”
Isla’s throat tightened.
“Grandmothers,” she murmured.
Leona’s mouth twitched.
“Mine taught me to see where everyone else looked away,” she said. “When I saw the London reports, I recognized the pattern. The same story. Different stain. I don’t do this because I like basements, Dr. Reyes. I do it because ignoring these things doesn’t make them go away. It just makes us… tastier.”
Isla shivered.
“Do you think we can stop it?” she asked. “Whatever… it… is.”
Leona’s gaze drifted briefly toward the floor, as if she could see through concrete to the foundation.
“I think we can… bargain,” she said quietly. “Redirect. Contain. For a while.”
Isla’s skin crawled.
“Bargain,” she repeated.
“With what?” she asked. “Blood? Objects? Lives?”
Leona’s eyes met hers again.
“Better to negotiate terms than to let it write the contract in our sleep,” she said.
“Sounds like making a deal with the devil,” Isla said.
Leona’s mouth curved.
“If the devil is already in your house,” she said, “would you rather pretend he isn’t, or sit him down at the table and set some rules?”
Her words unsettled Isla more than outright denial would have.
“Some devils don’t keep bargains,” she said.
“Some do,” Leona replied. “As long as the terms benefit them.”
Her gaze sharpened.
“You’re very invested in this,” she observed.
Isla laughed weakly.
“I spend most of my waking hours under this building,” she said. “If it collapses into a hellmouth, I’d prefer to have some say.”
Leona smiled faintly.
“I like you, Dr. Reyes,” she said. “You’re honest. Mostly.”
Heat crawled up Isla’s neck.
Leona went on, “I suspect you’ve felt more than you’ve reported. You have the look of someone bracing for a wave that no one else can see.”
Isla’s fingers tightened on her clipboard.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked quietly.
“The truth,” Leona said. “Not all at once. Not in front of the board. Here. With me.”
Isla’s heart pounded.
She thought of Tim’s warning.
Of Cael’s wariness.
Of Jay’s tapeworm jokes.
Of Abuela’s story about the wizard whose blood tied the dragon’s sleep.
Of Leona’s own confession about her grandmother.
She made a choice.
A small one.
A next right move.
“Sometimes,” she said, carefully, “when I’m in the archives, it feels… thicker. Like the air’s… watching me.”
Leona’s eyes lit.
“Since when?” she asked.
“A few weeks,” Isla said truthfully. “It’s worse near the Schmiedler crates.”
“Headaches?” Leona asked.
“Yes,” Isla said. “And… heat. When I touched one particular object.”
Leona leaned forward.
“What kind of object?” she asked.
Isla hesitated.
“A… scale,” she said. “Organic. Unidentified. From the Schmiedler overflow.”
Leona’s breath hitched.
“You touched it?” she asked. “Barehanded?”
Isla nodded.
“It cut me,” she said. “I fainted. Probably just… blood sugar. But when I woke up, the room felt… different.”
Leona’s gaze dropped, almost unconsciously, to Isla’s hands.
Her thumb.
“May I?” she asked.
Isla’s pulse leaped.
“Yes,” she said.
Leona stepped close.
Took Isla’s hand gently.
Turned it palm-up.
Her fingers were cool.
Clinical.
She ran her thumb lightly over Isla’s, searching.
Her touch paused.
On the faint scar.
“Interesting,” she murmured.
Isla’s skin prickled.
“Scar tissue,” she said quickly. “From the cut.”
Leona’s eyes flicked up.
“The tissue around it is… different,” she said softly. “Denser. Like it healed too fast. Did you see a doctor?”
“Yes,” Isla lied. “She said it was fine.”
“Hm,” Leona said.
She released Isla’s hand.
Electric tension lingered in the space between their fingers.
That same feeling of being… read.
“Where is the object now?” Leona asked, voice deceptively casual.
“Lab,” Isla lied. “Awaiting analysis. I haven’t had time to run the full panel yet.”
Leona’s mouth curved.
“I’d like to see it,” she said. “Soon.”
Alarm flared.
“Of course,” Isla said. “I’ll… schedule a time.”
“Good,” Leona said. “And Dr. Reyes?”
“Yes?” Isla croaked.
“If you faint again,” Leona said, “call me. Not Tim. Not Halpern. Me.”
Isla’s stomach twisted.
“Why?” she asked, unable to help herself.
Leona’s gaze was very, very level.
“Because sometimes,” she said, “the difference between ‘magical anomaly’ and ‘stroke’ is how quickly someone pays attention. And I make a habit of paying attention to the right things.”
Isla swallowed.
“I’ll… keep that in mind,” she said.
She left the meeting feeling like she’d just agreed to something without reading the fine print.
***
In the coal room, Cael paced.
He’d taken to wearing one of Jay’s faded band t-shirts.
The image on the front—a skeleton riding a flaming motorcycle—suited him.
It also made him look… almost human.
Almost.
Isla hovered in the doorway, watching the way his shoulders shifted under the thin cotton.
“You’re staring,” he said without turning.
“I am not,” she said automatically.
He glanced back.
His mouth curled.
“You are,” he said. “Does it please you?”
Her cheeks flamed.
“You look ridiculous,” she lied.
“Liar,” he said mildly.
She stepped fully inside.
“We have a problem,” she said. “Well. Another problem.”
“Leona,” he said, reading her tension.
“She wants to see the scale,” Isla said. “I told her it was in the lab. Awaiting analysis.”
He stopped pacing.
“That buys us…” he said.
“A day,” she said. “Maybe two. She felt… something in my scar. She’s not stupid. She’s connecting dots. If she gets her hands on the scale, she’ll see the same… not-normal you saw.”
He frowned.
“Could she… use it?” he asked. “To open more cracks?”
Isla thought.
“She’d like to,” she said. “On purpose or not. She thinks she can bargain with whatever’s in there.”
His eyes flared.
“Fool,” he snarled. “You do not bargain with a flood. You build dams. And then you move uphill.”
“Try telling her that,” Isla said. “She thinks dams are a temporary inconvenience.”
He resumed pacing.
“What will you do?” he asked.
She exhaled.
“Show her something else,” she said. “A decoy. We have other weird organic samples. Horn. Shell. Keratin. I can doctor one up to look plausible. Give her data to chew on while we keep the real scale off her radar.”
He eyed her.
“Lying to a hunter,” he said. “Bold.”
“Necessary,” she said.
He stopped in front of her.
Close.
Too close.
“You are very good at lying when you decide something matters,” he observed.
“Thanks?” she said weakly.
He reached up.
Very slowly.
Gave her plenty of time to step back.
She didn’t.
He tucked a stray curl behind her ear.
His fingers lingered a fraction of a second longer than necessary.
Goosebumps erupted along her arms.
“Do not lie to yourself,” he murmured.
Her breath hitched.
“About what?” she whispered.
“About this,” he said.
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
Everything in her went very, very still.
“We have enough existential threats,” he went on, voice low. “Do not add… denial… to the list.”
Anger flared.
Relief too.
“I’m not denying anything,” she said. “I just… don’t trust it.”
“Good,” he said. “Trust is not given. It is… hoarded.”
She snorted, half-laugh, half-choke.
“Of course you’d say that,” she said.
He smiled faintly.
“Isla,” he said.
Her name in his mouth was a slow exhale.
She hated that she loved it.
“We are bound,” he said. “By blood, by hoard, by… foolish choices. I will not pretend otherwise. But I will not take what you do not offer.”
Heat shot through her.
“I don’t know what I can offer,” she said frankly. “I don’t know who I am in all of this yet.”
He nodded.
“Then we… wait,” he said.
Her heart stumbled.
“You… what?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“I have slept three hundred years,” he said. “I can wait a little longer for you to… catch up.”
It was the furthest thing from the impatient, rapacious dragon of myths.
It undid her more than any stolen kiss could have.
“You’re infuriating,” she muttered.
“Yes,” he said.
“Don’t die,” she blurted.
He blinked.
“I am very hard to kill,” he said.
“Don’t burn out,” she corrected. “Don’t throw yourself into cracks without… telling me.”
He tilted his head.
“You would follow?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, without thinking.
His pupils blew wide.
“Then I will be… more careful,” he said quietly.
She swallowed.
“We have to be,” she said. “Because this isn’t just about you. Or me. Or the hoard. It’s about…” She gestured up. “Everyone up there who has no idea what’s under their feet.”
He nodded once.
“Then we make… better terms,” he said. “With each other. With the thing. With this… Leona.”
“Terms?” she echoed.
“Conditions,” he said. “Your word. We decide what we will do, and what we will not. Before it is asked of us.”
Her chest ached.
“We’re writing our own contract,” she said softly.
“Yes,” he said.
“We don’t know the clauses,” she said.
“Then we start with this,” he said. “I will not harm your people unless there is no other path. And I will not choose that path without telling you first.”
Her eyes stung.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Then… my turn.”
He waited.
“I will not… offer you to anyone,” she said. “Not Leona. Not the board. Not the crack-thing. I will not use you as a sacrifice to save my own skin. Even if it would be… easier.”
Something in his face crumpled.
Just a little.
“Foolish,” he said softly. “Brave.”
“Story of my life,” she said.
He nodded.
“Then we begin there,” he said. “Two clauses. Two fools.”
She laughed wetly.
“Romantic,” she said.
He smiled.
“Do not tell Tim,” he said. “He will never let me live it down.”
She wiped at her eyes clumsily.
“I have to go doctor some fake scales,” she said. “Before Leona decides to come down here with a microscope.”
He nodded.
“Isla,” he said again, as she turned to go.
“Yes?” she asked, not looking back.
“If she touches you wrong,” he said, voice low and dangerous, “I will burn her sensors and the hand she used.”
A treacherous part of her thrilled at the possessive edge.
The more rational part sighed.
“Consent, Cael,” she said over her shoulder. “Applies to murder too.”
He growled softly.
“I will… discuss with you before any murder,” he amended.
“Progress,” she said.
She left the coal room with her heart a mess and her priorities somehow sharper.
Terms.
Conditions.
They had so little control over the cracks under their feet.
They could at least control how they stood together.
***
End of Chapter 14.
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