The bedroom is quiet — an unnatural quiet. The kind only a haunted place can hold. The two of you lie together on the silk sheets. Your head rests on his chest. His heartbeat is, of course, nonexistent. But he strokes your hair in lazy, absent motions.

He’s staring at the ceiling. You feel it — the shift in his energy. That stillness that’s too still.

“It was raining that night.”

You lift your head slightly. He doesn’t look at you.

“The night they came for me. The police. I had blood on my hands — and not just metaphorically, for once.”

A pause. Then he laughs softly, bitterly.

“You should have seen the look in Hazel’s eyes. Like I’d already dragged her to Hell with me. Perhaps I had.”

You reach up, thumb brushing under his eye — no tears, of course. He’s long past the ability. But the ache is there. Heavy.

“James…”

He finally turns to you. His mask has slipped. For a moment, he’s not the showman, not the killer, not the king of the Cortez.

He’s just a man who died alone.

“They didn’t give me a trial. I was judge, jury, executioner… and condemned.”

You press a kiss to his chest. He stiffens. Then softens — slowly, carefully, like he’s unused to being handled gently.

“You didn’t deserve to die alone.” “And yet, I did. Marvelously. Blood on the wallpaper. Gunpowder in the air. The pain was... exquisite.”

A silence stretches. Then you whisper,

“You’re not alone now.”

He turns to you fully, hand against your cheek, voice low and dark and reverent:

“Say that again. Say it until it’s the only thing I remember when this godforsaken hotel tries to drag me back into the past.”