Isla woke to the sound of her phone buzzing angrily on her nightstand and the faintest echo of a kiss still tingling on her mouth.
She flailed for the phone, squinting at the screen.
7:03 a.m.
Three missed calls from Jay.
Two from Tim.
One from an unknown number she’d already saved in her head as Leona.
Her stomach dropped.
She thumbed to the latest text.
Jay: *Good news: Museum still standing. Bad news: crack-thing found a new toy. Call me.*
She sat up too fast.
Her head spun.
“Shit,” she muttered.
She hit call.
Jay picked up on the first ring.
“Reyes,” he said. “You alive?”
“Define alive,” she said. “What happened?”
“Remember how we warded the foundation corridor?” he said. “Apparently someone else decided to play copycat. The Hammond reported chalk symbols in their medieval wing this morning.”
Her blood ran cold.
“Chalk symbols,” she repeated. “Like ours?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “Less… collaborative, more… threatening. Upside-down crosses. Weird spirals. Latin-ish scrawls. Their security chief sent me pics. Leona’s on her way over there now.”
“Is the crack-thing…?” she began.
“Crackles, not quakes,” Jay said. “Sensors saw a little bump around 5 a.m., but nothing like yesterday. Feels more like… human interference than cosmic.”
“Someone’s trying to… provoke it,” she said.
“Or piggyback on it,” he said. “Either way, it’s not us, and Leona is… displeased.”
Isla swung her legs out of bed.
“I’ll be there in thirty,” she said.
“I figured,” he said. “Tim’s already at HQ. Cael’s sulking in the coal room.”
She froze, one sock halfway on.
“Sulking?” she demanded.
“He says he’s ‘monitoring,’” Jay said. “I say he’s sulking because you left him with a cliffhanger.”
Heat rushed up her neck.
“I hate you,” she said.
“You love me,” he replied. “Hurry up. Before Leona decides graffiti is the new binding and bans all chalk.”
***
By the time Isla reached the security office, Tim was on his third coffee and looked like he’d been there since dawn.
He pushed a cup toward her as she came in.
“Drink,” he said.
She obediently took a sip.
It was bitter and too hot and exactly what she needed.
“What’s the Hammond’s situation?” she asked.
He clicked through a camera feed.
Grainy black-and-white stills of the Hammond’s medieval gallery filled the monitor.
Even in monochrome, the chalk sigils popped on the stone floor.
Circles.
Lines.
Symbols Isla didn’t recognize.
Some overlapping older scuffs and ghost traces of footprints.
“It happened between three and five,” Tim said. “Their night guard swears he saw nothing. Cameras glitched for thirty seconds around four. Same signature as the theft. When the feed came back, voilà. Ward art.”
“Any objects disturbed?” she asked.
“Not physically,” he said. “But their sensors saw a weird EM spike around their crown case. Again.”
Her stomach tightened.
“The crown and our crown are… linked,” she said. “Even with ours here.”
“Mirrors,” Jay said, leaning over her shoulder. “One moves, the other shivers.”
“Leona’s already there,” Tim said. “She took Sister Agnès with her. Figured nun eyes might see something we don’t.”
“Did she tell them about Cael?” Isla asked.
He shook his head.
“She played that card close,” he said. “For now, it’s just ‘anomalous signature that overlapped with our recent incidents.’”
“Everything is ‘for now,’” she muttered.
Jay snapped his fingers.
“That’s the title of the inevitable documentary,” he said. “*For Now: The City That Almost Fell Into a Crack.*”
Tim gave him a look.
“Not helping,” he said.
Isla rubbed her temples.
“Whoever drew those symbols,” she said, nodding at the screen, “either knows enough to be dangerous or knows just enough to be stupid.”
“Could be both,” Jay said.
“They smell wrong,” a voice rumbled from the doorway.
They all turned.
Cael leaned against the jamb, arms folded, eyes on the monitor.
“Morning,” Jay said. “Love the outfit. Very ‘I woke up like this and might eat your destiny.’”
Cael ignored him.
He stepped fully into the room, crowding the space in a way that made the security office’s cheap furniture look like dollhouse props.
He moved closer to the monitor.
Inhaled.
“They smell like… ink and incense,” he said. “Old church. Young sweat. No… dragon. No… wrongness beyond human.”
“Human magic,” Isla said.
“Yes,” he said. “Weak. Sloppy. But… tempting. The crack-thing likes… edges. These make… zigzags. Little paths.”
“Can it… use them?” she asked.
He made a face.
“A little,” he said. “Like giving a river a stick to poke at instead of a dam to break. Annoying. Distracting. Not… catastrophic. Yet.”
“Do we know who did it?” Tim asked.
“Hammond’s reviewing badge logs,” Jay said. “Checking who had access overnight. It could be someone on staff. Or an intruder. Or that grad student who always lurks in the medieval wing muttering about liminality.”
“We should go,” Isla said. “Before Leona spins this as ‘rogue practitioners’ and decides the answer is to ban anyone with chalk dust on their fingers from the building.”
Tim grimaced.
“She already suspects that,” he said.
Cael’s gaze flicked to Isla.
“You kissed me,” he said abruptly.
Her brain short-circuited.
Tim choked on his coffee.
Jay made a high, delighted noise.
“I—” Isla spluttered. “That is not relevant to Hammond graffiti.”
Cael tilted his head.
“It is relevant to me,” he said calmly. “We did… not discuss.”
Heat blazed up her neck.
“We will,” she said through her teeth. “Later. In private. Without Jay live-blogging it.”
“I would never—” Jay began.
Tim arched a brow.
Jay sagged.
“Okay, I absolutely would,” he admitted. “But only in my head.”
Cael’s mouth curved.
“Good,” he said. “Then we will… debrief later.”
“Stop saying ‘debrief’ about kissing!” Isla yelped.
Maya’s text popped up on her phone: *is he being weird about it? he’s totally being weird about it, isn’t he.*
She typed back with one hand: *yes. help.*
Maya: *i’m grabbing popcorn. continue.*
Tim cleared his throat.
“Focus,” he said. “Hammond. Graffiti. Tapeworm.”
Isla exhaled.
Right.
She could compartmentalize.
She was very good at that.
“I’ll catch the next train,” she said. “If Leona gets there before me, at least she’ll be too busy waving her tablet at the Hammond board to interrogate me.”
“I’m coming,” Tim said. “Official cross-institutional security solidarity.”
“I’ll stay,” Jay said. “Babysit the sensors. Try not to die.”
Cael rolled his shoulders.
“Walls will talk to me,” he said. “I will listen from here.”
Isla hesitated.
“You’ll… be okay?” she asked softly. “If it tugs again?”
He smiled faintly.
“I am not… alone,” he said. “Your nets hum. Your… coven words itch. It will find less to chew on.”
Her chest eased.
“Okay,” she said.
She grabbed her bag.
Thumbed a quick message to Maya: *going to Hammond. gossip later.*
And headed for the staff exit with Tim at her side.
***
The Hammond’s medieval gallery felt different in the light.
Isla had stood in this room at night, under emergency strobes and alarms, with Cael’s hand crushing hers and the crown singing in her bones.
Now, afternoon sun filtered through stained glass, painting the cases in reds and blues.
The chalk marks on the floor were jarringly bright.
A circle of symbols around where the thieves had hit before.
Like a target.
Or a claim.
Claire stood off to the side, arms crossed, jaw clenched.
Leona crouched by the chalk, her heels making little half-moons in the dust as she shifted.
Sister Agnès stood near the crown case, lips moving silently in what might have been a prayer or a curse.
“Dr. Reyes,” Claire said as Isla and Tim approached. “I hope your retreat came with hazard pay.”
“You have no idea,” Isla said.
Leona glanced up.
Her gaze flicked briefly to Isla’s hands.
To her thumb.
Then back to the floor.
“Impressions?” she asked, gesturing to the chalk.
Isla stepped closer.
Crouched.
The symbols were a messy amalgam:
A triple spiral that reminded her of Celtic carvings.
An inverted pentagram.
Latin phrases half-spelled.
*APERITE PORTA* written in a shaky hand that missed a letter.
“ ‘Open the gate,’” she translated.
“Or try to,” Sister Agnès said. “They spelled it like my first-year novices.”
“Someone’s been reading grimoires without a dictionary,” Isla muttered.
“Do you… feel anything?” Leona asked.
She reached out with that other sense.
The one that had woken with the scale.
The chalk hummed faintly.
Not like the wards in their own corridor.
Those pulsed steady and warm.
This felt… itchy.
Scattered.
Like someone had shouted into a canyon and was now waiting for an echo that wasn’t coming.
“It’s… noisy,” she said. “Like feedback. But not… deep. Surface static.”
Tim snorted.
“Everyone’s stealing your metaphors,” he said.
Leona straightened.
“The entity noticed,” she said. “Briefly. The Hammond’s sensors saw a flirt of activity. The crown case rattled. Then your… static trick at HQ kicked in and the alignment broke.”
“You saw our spike too,” Isla said.
“Hard to miss,” Leona said. “Congratulations. Your wards sang.”
A little fizz of pride popped in Isla’s chest.
“We sang louder,” she said.
“For now,” Sister Agnès murmured.
Claire rubbed her temples.
“So,” she said. “We have an invisible thing chewing on cracks and now we have humans trying to invite it to dinner. Wonderful. Do I need to start screening all my grad students for occult tendencies?”
“Yes,” Isla and Tim said in unison.
Leona’s mouth twitched.
“Actually, yes,” she said. “At least review their internet histories.”
Claire groaned.
“God,” she said. “I went into this field to argue about iconography, not demons.”
“Welcome to interdisciplinary studies,” Dr. Malik’s voice said from the doorway.
He’d come up behind them, evidently dragged along by Leona.
His geeky excitement clashed hilariously with Claire’s horror.
Sister Agnès made a small sign of the cross.
“This is… serious,” she said.
“We know,” Isla said.
Leona’s gaze swept the chalk again.
“Whoever did this,” she said, “has read enough to be dangerous and not enough to be effective. Yet. We need to find them before they… learn more.”
“Staff?” Tim asked.
“Possibly,” Claire said. “Or someone with access. Intern. Volunteer. Contractor. We’re going through badge logs. So far, nothing suspicious.”
“What about visitors?” Isla asked.
Claire made a face.
“We’re not exactly the Met,” she said. “We don’t have tourists sleeping in the galleries. But… someone could have hidden in a bathroom. A closet. Waited out closing.”
“Camera blind spots?” Tim asked.
“A few,” Claire admitted. “Especially in the transitional spaces between wings. We never thought someone would use them for… chalk rituals.”
“You never think that,” Sister Agnès said dryly. “Until they do.”
Isla traced one of the chalk spirals with her eyes.
Something about it tugged at her.
“Leona,” she said slowly. “Does this… look like anything you’ve seen before?”
Leona hesitated.
“Parts,” she said. “The spirals. The gate words. The… cheap theatrics. London had a few would-be magi who tried to ‘help’ by drawing circles around affected objects. They mostly succeeded in annoying the entities and making themselves dizzy.”
“Any of them… connected to Schmiedler?” Isla pressed.
Leona’s gaze sharpened.
“You’re thinking lineage,” she said.
“I’m thinking obsession,” Isla said. “Someone who… collects… bad ideas about old things. Schmiedler fans. People who romanticize cursed collectors. There are forums.”
Maya would have called them “curse stans.”
Claire’s mouth twisted.
“We did a Schmiedler retrospective ten years ago,” she said. “ ‘The Man and His Collection.’ There were… people. Intensely interested in his ‘mystique.’ We got emails. Letters. One guy sent a zine about ‘anti-colonial counter-appropriation’ of cursed objects. I filed it under ‘do not reply.’”
“Can we… find him?” Tim asked.
Claire frowned.
“I might still have the file,” she said. “Give me a day.”
“This is why archives matter,” Isla said under her breath.
Claire snorted.
“Don’t let the board hear you,” she said.
Leona straightened.
“In the meantime,” she said, “we treat this as a warning. Humans are… sniffing around our cracks. Some out of curiosity. Some out of genuine desire to help. Some out of ego. We can’t control all of them. But we can… guide.”
“You want to… recruit them,” Sister Agnès said.
“If they’re reachable,” Leona said. “Better they be in the room with us than scribbling in galleries unsupervised.”
“Not all strays want to be adopted,” Tim said.
“No,” Leona said. “But some do. And some just need better toys.”
Isla thought of herself.
Of the first time she’d touched the scale.
Of the way she’d almost fallen.
If Cael hadn’t answered.
If Abuela’s prayers hadn’t wrapped around her scar.
If she’d found a chalk tutorial online instead of a dragon.
“You can’t stamp out… curiosity,” she said quietly. “You can direct it. Or leave it to fester.”
Claire sighed.
“You sound like you’re volunteering to run a workshop,” she said.
Isla blinked.
“What?” she said.
“ ‘Cursed Objects and How Not to Fuck With Them 101,’” Claire said. “Our field trip kids would love it.”
Maya would, too, Isla thought.
Leona’s lips curved.
“Not a bad idea,” she said. “Public education as containment.”
“I was joking,” Claire said weakly.
“Jokes are often proposals in disguise,” Sister Agnès said.
Tim groaned.
“I did not sign up to be a camp counselor for baby warlocks,” he said.
“Too late,” Isla said. “We already have interns.”
He conceded that with a grunt.
Leona locked her tablet.
“Clean the chalk,” she said to Claire. “Carefully. Bag a sample for analysis. We’ll see if there’s any residual… charge.”
“There is,” Cael’s voice rumbled faintly in Isla’s mind.
She resisted the urge to look around.
Kept her gaze on the floor.
Felt, rather than saw, the faint tug of his awareness pressing against the foundation.
“We’ll strengthen our own wards,” Leona went on. “Here and at home. And we’ll keep eyes open for anyone whose notebooks are full of spirals.”
“Great,” Claire muttered. “I always wanted to profile our visitors.”
“You already do,” Tim said. “You just call it ‘audience engagement.’”
***
On the train ride back, Isla slumped into a seat and let her head thump against the window.
“Are we… doing any good?” she asked quietly.
Tim sat across from her, long legs braced, hands wrapped around a to-go cup from the Hammond café.
“Define ‘good,’” he said.
“Preventing catastrophe,” she said. “Making things less broken instead of more. Not just… reacting.”
He considered.
“We’re buying time,” he said. “Every ward, every static burst, every working group meeting, every chalk line—it all buys us days. Weeks. Maybe more. For the city. For the people. For the objects. Is that good?”
“It’s… something,” she said.
He leaned forward.
“You’re not going to fix all of it,” he said gently. “You know that, right? That you can do everything right and still… lose some things. Some people. Some battles.”
Her throat tightened.
“I know,” she said. “I just… don’t want to look back and see places I could have pushed harder. Or walked away sooner. Or… chosen differently.”
He nodded.
“Welcome to being human,” he said.
She snorted.
“You say that like you’re not half-dragged into this,” she said.
He smiled wryly.
“I’m human,” he said. “Just a stupidly stubborn one.”
She looked at him.
At the lines of his face.
At the calluses on his hands.
At the quiet way he occupied space.
Maya’s question echoed.
*Do you ever wish it was just… us?*
She did.
Sometimes.
Often.
Too often.
Except then she pictured that world without Cael.
Without Abuela’s stories.
Without the hoard.
Without the cracks.
And it felt… flat.
Safer.
Smaller.
Wrong.
Her brain was a mess.
Her heart worse.
She changed the subject.
“You didn’t say anything about… last night,” she blurted.
He blinked.
“Last night,” he repeated.
“The kiss,” she said.
**Shit.**
She hadn’t meant to say that.
Tim’s brows shot up.
“Oh,” he said. “That.”
Her face burned.
“I didn’t… I mean… you were there,” she stammered.
He smiled, slow and careful.
“Yeah,” he said. “I saw.”
She wanted the train to derail so she could jump into the crack and disappear.
He leaned his forearms on his knees.
“I’m not… blind,” he said. “I see you. I see him. I see… the thing between you. The thing between us. I meant what I said—I’m not asking for anything now. Or expecting. Or… competing.”
“You’re allowed to be jealous,” she said quietly.
He exhaled.
“I am,” he admitted. “A little. Sometimes. I see the way you look at him. The way he looks at you. The way the room… tilts when you’re together.”
Her chest ached.
“But I also see the way you look at the objects,” he went on. “The way you look at this city. The way you look at your parents. You have a big heart, Reyes. It’s messy. It hoards things. People. Stories. I’m not going to ask you to… shrink it to fit what’s comfortable for me.”
Her eyes stung.
“That’s… unfair,” she whispered.
“What?” he asked.
“That you’re being… this decent,” she said. “It would be easier if you were a jerk. Or if he was. Or if I was.”
He smiled.
“You’re not,” he said. “And he’s… trying very hard not to be. Which is weirdly endearing for a creature who used to eat knights for breakfast.”
She laughed wetly.
“Did he tell you that?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “You did. In the way you talk about him.”
She buried her face in her hands.
“I hate you,” she mumbled through her fingers.
“You love me,” he said.
She dropped her hands.
Looked at him.
“I do,” she said, voice small. “In a… different way. Maybe. I don’t know.”
He nodded.
“Same,” he said. “Which is why I’m not going anywhere. Whether you end up with him. With me. With no one. With a dragon crown and a pile of cats. I’m in this for the long haul, Reyes. Cracks and all.”
Tears spilled over before she could stop them.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
He reached across the aisle.
Took her hand.
Squeezed.
Not possessive.
Not demanding.
Just… there.
She gripped back.
For a brief, fragile moment, the tether between her and the hoard hummed in harmony with the simpler, human thread between her and Tim.
It was too much.
It was everything.
She let herself lean into it.
Just for the length of a train ride.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”
***
Back in the museum, the wards whispered underfoot.
The cracks simmered, sullen and thwarted.
The hoard gleamed.
Leona read the Hammond chalk samples and frowned.
Sister Agnès muttered at a statue and smuggled extra salt to the crypt.
Dr. Malik drew more equations with a little less skepticism.
Maya texted Isla a meme of a dragon curled around a cup of coffee with the caption: *ME PROTECTING MY EMOTIONALLY CONSTIPATED FRIENDS.*
Isla smiled at it.
Then tucked her phone away and went down to the coal room.
Cael was waiting.
Of course he was.
He leaned against the far wall, arms folded, expression carefully blank.
“You went to Hammond,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
He nodded.
“I felt the… tickle,” he said. “Their chalk. Their crown. Your footstep.”
Her stomach flipped.
“You felt… me?” she asked.
“Always,” he said simply.
Her heart did that stupid somersault again.
She took a breath.
“About last night—” she began.
He held up a hand.
“Stop,” he said. “Before you… apologize.”
She blinked.
“How do you know I was going to apologize?” she demanded.
“Because humans always do when they want a thing and are afraid they shouldn’t,” he said. “They call it ‘a mistake’ so it hurts less if it is not returned.”
Her throat tightened.
“You’re not… returning it,” she said.
He smiled faintly.
“I am… treasuring it,” he said.
Heat flooded her face.
He stepped closer.
Not too close.
Just enough that she could see the faint stubble on his jaw, the new worry line between his brows.
“You kissed me,” he said. “On purpose. With consent. That is… not a thing I will let you… erase.”
She swallowed.
“I’m scared,” she admitted. “Of… choosing wrong. Of hurting you. Of hurting Tim. Of… losing myself in all of this.”
He nodded.
“I am scared,” he said. “Of chains. Of fire I cannot control. Of… wanting you more than is safe for either of us.”
Her breath hitched.
“So we are both… cowards,” she said weakly.
“Or wise,” he countered.
She snorted.
“That would be a first,” she said.
His mouth curved.
“We do not have to decide now,” he said. “About… us. We have cracks. We have hoards. We have… wards. We can… hold… both. For now.”
“For now,” she echoed.
He reached out.
Lightly.
Brushed a knuckle down the side of her face.
“Later,” he murmured.
It sounded like a promise.
Not a threat.
Not an ultimatum.
An option.
Her heart settled.
Not completely.
Never that.
But enough.
“Okay,” she said.
They stood there.
In the coal-scented half-dark.
Between hoard and crack.
Between human and dragon.
Between fear and want.
And for one long, fragile, incandescent heartbeat, the world did not shake.
***
End of Chapter 26.
---