Forty minutes later, Ivy circled back through the sewers. She found Janice sitting on a crate, pendant still around her neck, shadows milling confusedly ten feet away like dogs who’d lost a scent.

Ivy laughed—a real laugh, raw and relieved. “So we keep the pendant?”

Tonight’s target was a gala at the Meridian Museum. The prize: a cursed jade pendant said to bring misfortune to anyone who possessed it for more than a week. Their client, a mysteriously calm woman in a turtleneck, had paid half upfront.

“What are you doing?”

“Janice, no—”

Ivy extended her hand. Janice took it.

The moment her fingers touched the jade, the lights went red. Sirens. But not museum sirens—something deeper, like a building groaning in its sleep.