Sleep was… complicated.
Isla lay in her bed, the city’s muffled noises filtering through her window, and stared at the cracks in her ceiling.
Her body ached.
Her head throbbed.
Her thumb hummed.
She half-expected Cael to slide into her dreams the way he had before, all gold and hoard and too-close.
He didn’t.
Maybe he was giving her space.
Maybe he was too busy wrestling the crack-thing.
Maybe he was making good on his promise to wait.
Instead, her subconscious replayed the day in fragmented flashes.
The convent.
The blood.
The stones.
Tim’s hand in hers.
Cael’s voice chanting in a language older than the building itself.
Abuela laughing over coffee.
Leona’s sharp gaze when she’d said “witch.”
They all tangled together into a knot that didn’t fully loosen.
In the morning, her eyes felt grainy.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from Halpern: *Staff debrief on retreat at 10. Board attending. Bring notes.*
She groaned.
“Of course,” she muttered. “Why would I be allowed one morning without a meeting.”
Another text, from Tim: *Leona wants to ‘follow up’ after debrief. Heads up.*
A third, from Maya: *did you die? if not, dumplings tonight.*
She smiled.
*Not dead. Complicated. Yes to dumplings,* she replied.
She hauled herself into the shower.
Hot water pounded over her shoulders, steam fogging the mirror.
For a fleeting, embarrassing moment, she imagined Cael under the spray, water beading and running over the rune-scars on his chest, steam curling around his throat—
She slapped that image aside.
“Absolutely not,” she told herself.
She dressed.
Jeans.
Museum shirt.
Red sweater, per Maya’s orders.
She hesitated over her grandmother’s necklace—a simple silver chain with a small, worn cross—and fastened it around her neck.
Armor didn’t have to be made of metal.
Sometimes it was faith.
Sometimes it was stubbornness.
Sometimes it was both.
***
The debrief was… excruciating.
Not because of the topic.
Because of the pretense.
They gathered in the conference room: Halpern, Leona, the board chair, three trustees, Tim, two interns who’d actually spent the weekend at the rented cabin playing board games, and Isla.
“Thank you all for participating in our first staff wellness retreat,” the board chair trilled. “I hope you found it… restorative.”
Isla thought of bleeding on cursed stones.
“Enlightening,” she said politely.
Halpern gave her a sideways look that said he knew her well enough to catch the edge under her tone.
Leona sat at the far end of the table, tablet in front of her.
Her expression was neutral.
Her eyes were sharp.
“Dr. Reyes,” the chair said, “why don’t you share some highlights from your workshop on provenance ethics?”
Isla swallowed a hysterical laugh.
She pulled up her notes.
Talked.
About Schmiedler.
About colonial theft.
About the responsibility of institutions to acknowledge the violence in their collections’ histories.
About the need to repair relationships with communities harmed by past acquisitions.
The board chair nodded along, half-listening.
One trustee looked vaguely pained.
Leona watched her with a faint, assessing smile.
When she finished, Halpern cleared his throat.
“Very good, Reyes,” he said. “We’ll… revisit some of those ideas in our acquisition committee.”
“Before or after the donors threaten to pull funding?” Isla muttered under her breath.
Tim coughed to hide a laugh.
Leona’s lips twitched.
After the retreat report, the conversation shifted to Leona’s sensors.
She pulled up graphs.
Lines and blips and spikes.
“This,” she said, pointing, “is your sub-basement’s baseline. Noisy, but predictable. This—” she zoomed in on a jagged shimmer “—is the tremor from a few nights ago. This—” another dip and spike, around the time of their ritual “—is… interesting.”
Isla’s palms went clammy.
“Where is that?” the board chair asked, leaning in.
“East of the city,” Leona said. “Rural. One of several such anomalies in the region over the last decade. Coinciding more often than not with lands that have… old stories attached.”
She flicked to a map.
Colored dots glowed.
“Well sites,” she said. “Ruins. Shrines. Anywhere people have gathered for a long time to talk to things they couldn’t see.”
“Ley lines,” one trustee muttered, half-mocking.
“Old word for an old idea,” Leona said easily. “The earth has arteries. Energy moves. People have always been drawn to those flows. Sometimes worshiping them. Sometimes damming them. Sometimes pretending they’re not there.”
“You think we should… engage?” the chair asked, wary. “With these… flows?”
“I think,” Leona said, “you should not ignore data. Whether you call it seismic anomaly, electromagnetic flux, or classic haunting, the pattern is there. Something is moving. It has been for a while. Schmiedler’s collection is one magnet. Your building is another. If you want to stay ahead of it, you need to accept that you are in the current.”
Halpern shifted.
“We are a museum,” he said. “Not a… magical research institute.”
“You can be both,” Leona said. “Or you can be dinner.”
The bluntness startled a laugh out of Isla before she could stop it.
Leona’s eyes flicked to her.
“What do you think, Dr. Reyes?” she asked.
Every head turned.
Isla’s mouth went dry.
“I think… we have a responsibility,” she said slowly. “To our objects. To our staff. To our visitors. To our city. If ignoring something puts them at risk, we don’t get to pretend it’s outside our purview because it makes us uncomfortable.”
The board chair frowned.
“You’re suggesting we… what?” she asked. “Add ‘paranormal containment’ to our mission statement?”
“No,” Isla said. “I’m suggesting we stop pretending our mission exists in a vacuum. That we acknowledge when our collections intersect with… other forces. And that we listen to the people—and things—that have been dealing with those forces longer than we have.”
She thought of Abuela.
Of Cael.
Of the crack-thing.
Leona’s gaze sharpened.
“Who, specifically, should we be listening to?” she asked, voice mild.
Isla’s heart stuttered.
She heard the unasked question.
What do you know.
What aren’t you telling me.
She forced herself to smile.
“The communities connected to our collections,” she said. “Descendant groups. Local historians. People like Dr. Ward, who study… anomalies. We can’t do this alone.”
Leona’s mouth curved.
“Good answer,” she said.
The board chair looked relieved.
“Perhaps we can convene a working group,” she said. “To explore these intersections. Dr. Ward, you could… advise.”
“Happy to,” Leona said.
Isla’s gut clenched.
A working group.
A committee.
A slow formalization of everything she was trying to keep under the table.
Tim caught her eye.
His expression said, *We’ll handle it.*
She wasn’t sure she believed him.
***
After the meeting, people trickled out.
Halpern was cornered by a trustee.
Tim got pulled into a side conversation about overtime budgets.
Isla tried to slip away.
“Dr. Reyes,” Leona said, intercepting her by the door. “Walk with me.”
Every instinct screamed *no.*
She smiled.
“Of course,” she said.
They moved down the staff corridor, past offices and storage rooms.
Leona’s heels clicked softly.
“So,” she said, tone conversational. “How was your head after the retreat?”
“My head?” Isla echoed.
“The concussion,” Leona said. “Any… flare-ups? Dizziness? Strange dreams?”
Isla’s thumb tingled.
“Mostly just… exhaustion,” she said. “Hiking. Workshops. Team-building. It was a lot.”
“Hm,” Leona said. “And at night? Any… visitations?”
The word landed heavy.
“From… stress?” Isla hedged. “Sure. Nightmares.”
Leona studied her.
“From anything… else?” she pressed.
Isla’s heart thudded.
She thought of Cael in her dreams.
Of the hoard.
Of Abuela.
Of the crack.
She thought of Leona’s offer: call me before you call Tim.
She chose her words carefully.
“I dream of… old places,” she said. “St. Bartolomé. The convent. The archives. Sometimes… they feel more… real… than they should. But I’ve always had vivid dreams. It’s how my brain processes.”
Leona hummed.
“And when you touch certain objects,” she said. “You… feel more.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Isla said quietly.
Leona stopped.
Turned to face her.
They were alone in the corridor, the hum of the building a low backdrop.
“You are a sensor,” Leona said. “Whether you like it or not.”
Isla swallowed.
“I… notice things,” she said.
Leona’s gaze was sharp and strangely gentle at once.
“I know what that’s like,” she said. “Being tuned to frequencies everyone else insists don’t exist.”
Isla believed her.
She also didn’t trust her.
“Why me?” she asked. “You have your gadgets. Your graphs.”
Leona’s mouth twitched.
“Machines can be fooled,” she said. “Eyes can be lied to. Spreadsheets can be… massaged. People who feel things in their bones? Harder to fake.”
“People lie too,” Isla said.
“Yes,” Leona said. “But their bodies betray them. Their scars glow.”
Isla’s thumb burned.
Leona’s gaze flicked down.
“Does it ache?” she asked.
Isla forced herself not to hide her hand.
“Sometimes,” she said.
“When the cracks move,” Leona said. “When the hoard hums.”
The casual use of the word made Isla’s heart seize.
“You keep saying things like that,” she said, voice thin. “Like you know more than you’re saying.”
Leona’s smile was humorless.
“I know enough to know there’s a dragon under your building,” she said quietly.
The hallway spun.
Isla gripped the wall.
Leona reached out instinctively.
Her hand hovered over Isla’s arm.
Didn’t touch.
Consent.
Interesting.
“How—” Isla croaked.
Leona tilted her head.
“Patterns,” she said. “Spikes. Ancient curses. An object that looks suspiciously like a scale. A conservator who faints over it and develops a scar that behaves like an old binding. Seismic anomalies that look less like earthquakes and more like… something big rolling over.”
She held Isla’s gaze.
“And the way you flinch when I say ‘hoard,’” she added softly.
Isla’s brain scrambled for denial.
Lies.
She found… none.
“You don’t have proof,” she said weakly.
Leona smiled.
“I don’t need proof,” she said. “I need… allies.”
The word startled her.
“Ally implies… equality,” Isla said.
“It implies shared interests,” Leona corrected. “You want your city safe. I want whatever’s chewing on the foundations to stop treating museums like snack bars. We’re on the same side.”
“Are we?” Isla asked quietly.
Leona’s eyes flickered.
“For now,” she said. “As long as your dragon doesn’t decide to flip the board.”
“He’s not—” Isla began.
“Monstrous?” Leona supplied. “Dangerous? Beyond your control?”
Isla’s jaw clenched.
“He’s… more complicated than your graphs,” she said.
Leona’s mouth curved.
“I never doubted that,” she said. “Dragons usually are.”
“Usually,” Isla repeated faintly.
“You think he’s the last,” Leona said.
“He is,” Isla said, with more conviction than she felt.
Leona’s gaze went distant for a beat.
“When I was in London,” she said, “we thought there was one source. One… knot. We were wrong. There were… echoes. Shadows. Things that fed off the same currents but wore different skins.”
“You think there are other dragons,” Isla said.
Leona shrugged.
“I think clinging to ‘last of his kind’ makes for a good story and a bad strategy,” she said. “But that’s a problem for another day. Right now, we have one under our feet. Bound, half-fed, very attached to you, and entangled with an entity that doesn’t understand ‘mine’ the way he does. I would *rather* have you and him on my side than against me.”
The frankness disarmed Isla more than circumspect manipulation would have.
“What does ‘on your side’ look like?” she asked.
Leona smiled thinly.
“Information,” she said. “You tell me when the cracks move. When he stirs. When your thumb burns. I tell you when the sensors spike, when the board gets nervous, when other sites start humming. We share data. We coordinate. We don’t undercut each other in front of the people with money and guns.”
“And if our interests diverge?” Isla asked.
Leona’s gaze sharpened.
“Then we renegotiate,” she said. “Or we declare war. But I’d prefer to delay that as long as possible.”
Isla thought of Cael.
Of the way he’d called Leona “hunter.”
Of his vow not to harm her people without telling her first.
Of the terms they’d begun to write.
“I can’t… promise… for him,” she said carefully.
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Leona said. “I’m not that foolish. I know better than to ask a witch to leash a dragon.”
“Stop calling me that,” Isla muttered.
Leona’s lips twitched.
“Get used to it,” she said. “The land has. Whether you like it or not, you’re tethered. You can either pretend you’re a bystander and get dragged, or you can lean into the pull and steer.”
“You make it sound so simple,” Isla said.
“It’s not,” Leona replied. “It’s… messy. Bloody. Terrifying. But you’ve already chosen. You bled on stones. You walked into a thin place and shouted back. You can’t go back to being just a conservator, Dr. Reyes.”
Her chest hurt.
“I don’t want to lose her,” she whispered. “The part of me that loves fiber counts and solvent ratios and quietly mending holes in tapestries. I don’t want to be… only… this.”
“You won’t,” Leona said. “People like you never are only one thing. You’ll still cry over cracked chalices. You’ll just also occasionally stop reality from fraying.”
“Occasionally,” Isla repeated weakly.
Leona’s gaze softened unexpectedly.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I didn’t want this either. I wanted to be a standard-issue historian. Write papers. Go to conferences. Drink bad coffee. The world had other plans. It always does for those who can see the joints.”
Isla closed her eyes briefly.
“Terms and conditions,” she murmured.
Leona’s brows lifted.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Isla said.
She opened her eyes.
Met Leona’s gaze.
“I’ll share what I can,” she said. “Within the bounds of… other agreements I’ve made.”
Leona’s eyes flicked briefly down.
To the faint line of the scar visible above Isla’s sweater cuff.
“Fair,” she said. “And I’ll do the same. Within the bounds of my contracts.”
They regarded each other.
Two women with grandmothers who’d believed in statues that wept.
Two very different sets of tools.
One crack.
“Call me Leona,” she said. “If we’re going to lie to boards together, we might as well be on a first-name basis.”
“Isla,” Isla said.
Leona’s mouth curved.
“I know,” she said.
***
End of Chapter 19.
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