The dreams start the night after I touch James's chest and feel the ghost of a heartbeat.

I fall asleep around midnight, my apartment dark except for the streetlight bleeding through the curtains in amber streaks. My body is exhausted—I've been running on coffee and adrenaline for seventy-two hours—but my mind won't shut down. It spins through possibilities, through lies, through the weight of what I'm becoming.

Then the dream pulls me under, and it's not my dream at all.

It's 1927, and I'm standing in a speakeasy that smells like spilled whiskey and cigarette smoke so thick it coats my tongue. The air tastes like copper and heat. My hands—except they're not my hands, they're bigger, stronger, with long fingers that know how to coax music from strings—are wrapped around a glass of bootleg bourbon that burns like liquid fire.

The woman across from me is laughing, and the sound is crystalline, dangerous.

Eleanor.

She has dark hair pinned in finger waves, and her skin glows under the amber stage lights. She's wearing a beaded dress that clings to her like sin, and when she leans closer, I catch the scent of her perfume—something floral and expensive, jasmine and rose. She smells like money and recklessness, and I'm drowning in her.

"You're going to get us both killed," she whispers, and her hand—small, elegant, with painted nails the color of blood—touches my cheek. The sensation is electric. Real. My pulse hammers in my throat, and I can feel the exact moment her fingers brush the stubble on my jaw.

"Worth it," I say, and the voice is mine but not mine. It's James's voice, rough and certain and full of a confidence I've never possessed.

She kisses me then, and I taste bootleg whiskey and recklessness and the kind of love that destroys people.

I wake up gasping.

My sheets are soaked with sweat, my heart is jackhammering, and my skin is hypersensitive—every thread of fabric feels like it's burning. The taste of whiskey lingers on my tongue. The phantom touch of her hand on my face hasn't faded.

"Jesus Christ," I whisper into the darkness.

The air in my bedroom shifts. Becomes heavier. Charged with that electric presence that means James is here, and he's—

"I'm sorry," he says, and his voice is raw. Shattered. "I didn't mean to—I couldn't stop it."

I sit up, pulling the sheets around myself like they're armor. My hands are shaking. "What the hell was that?"

"My memory." He materializes at the foot of my bed, and even in the darkness, I can see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands are clenched into fists. "Our bond—it's stronger now. You were sleeping, your walls were down, and I—"

"You flooded my mind with your memories without asking." I'm trying for anger, but my voice comes out thin. Fragile.

"I couldn't control it." He runs a hand through his copper-dark hair, and the gesture is so human, so frustrated, that it breaks something in me. "I've been dead for ninety-five years, Cass. I've been alone in the dark, and then you were there, and I felt—I felt something real for the first time since—"

He stops. The pain radiating off him is so visceral I can taste it.

"Since Eleanor," I say quietly.

The name hangs between us like a blade.

"You saw her." It's not a question. His pale gray eyes find mine across the darkness. "In the memory."

"I saw her." I'm still tasting her perfume, still feeling the ghost of her hand on my face. "I felt what you felt. That's not fair, James. That's not consent."

"I know." His voice is small. Broken. "I'm sorry."

But I'm not angry anymore. I'm terrified, because I understand something now that I didn't before: James isn't a ghost. He's not some supernatural entity that I can keep at arm's length, some problem to solve and move past. He's a person. A real person with real memories and real pain, and I just experienced his heart breaking in real-time.

"Tell me about her," I hear myself say.

He's quiet for a long moment. Then he sits on the edge of my bed, careful not to touch me, and he starts talking.

He tells me about Eleanor Kessler, who was beautiful and reckless and the sister of Vincent Kessler—a name that makes my blood run cold. He tells me about meeting her at the Velvet Room, where James played saxophone every night and Vincent ran the gambling operation. He tells me about how she used to sit at the best table, nursing champagne, watching him play with eyes that promised everything.

"She was trapped," James says, his voice distant. "Vincent controlled everything—her money, her social circle, who she saw, where she went. He kept her like a bird in a cage, beautiful and useless. She wanted to escape."

"And you were the escape route."

"I was the escape." He doesn't deny it. "We were going to run. I had money saved, enough to get us to New York, to start over. She was going to leave him a note, and we were going to disappear."

I pull the sheets tighter. "What happened?"

"Vincent found out."

The way he says it—flat, final—sends ice down my spine.

"He came to the alley behind the Velvet Room on October 14th. I was taking a break between sets, smoking, thinking about the life we were going to have. And then he was there, and he was—" James's hands clench into fists. "He was calm. That was the worst part. He wasn't angry. He was calm, like he was simply collecting a debt."

I can see it playing out, like the memory is bleeding into my consciousness even without the full sensory flood. Vincent's tailored suit. His expensive cologne. The cold smile.

"He said Eleanor was his to control, that I'd overstepped, that I needed to understand the cost of taking what belonged to him." James's voice is hollow. "He said it like I was a piece on a chessboard."

"James—"

"He had a knife. No, that's not right—he had something wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped it slowly, like he wanted me to understand what was coming. And I—I tried to run, but he was faster, and he—"

He stops. Looks away.

"He put his hands around my throat," James continues quietly. "And he squeezed, and I couldn't breathe, couldn't scream, and all I could think about was Eleanor, and whether she was safe, and whether she'd wait for me, and—"

He stops talking. Just stops.

I'm crying. Actual tears are running down my face, and I don't know when that started.

"What happened to her?" I ask.

"Vincent told her I'd abandoned her. That I'd taken the money and run. She believed him because she wanted to believe him, because the alternative was admitting that her brother had murdered the only person who'd ever loved her." His eyes are hollow. "She married a banker six months later. Had two children. Died in 1982, never knowing the truth."

The injustice of it hits me like a physical blow. Ninety-five years. Ninety-five years of James trapped in darkness, unseen and unheard, while Vincent walked free. While Eleanor lived her entire life believing a lie.

"I'm going to kill him," I say flatly.

James looks at me, and there's something almost like a smile on his face. "I know you will."

"No, I mean—" I stop. Take a breath. "I'm going to expose him. I'm going to tell Detective Webb everything, and I'm going to make sure Vincent pays for what he did."

"That will destroy you," James says quietly. "Vincent has leverage over you. Financial leverage. He's been your primary investor for years."

"I don't care."

"You should care." He leans forward, and the cedar-and-rain scent of him fills my lungs. "You've spent twelve years building a life. I won't let you burn it down for me."

"You don't get to decide what I do with my life."

"I know." He reaches out slowly, giving me time to pull away, and touches my cheek. His hand is ice-cold, but the touch is so gentle that it breaks me all over again. "But I'm asking you. As someone who loves you. Don't do this."

The words hang in the air between us.

"You don't love me," I whisper. "You're bonded to me. You're confusing possession with affection."

"I'm not." His thumb brushes across my cheekbone, and I can feel the exact moment his hand starts to solidify, pulling energy from my body to become more real. "I've had ninety-five years to think about love, Cass. I know what it is. It's Eleanor laughing at something I said. It's you, standing in a library at midnight, searching for the truth about a man you've never met. It's watching you smile—really smile, not that performance smile you use on clients—and feeling like I can finally breathe again."

"Don't," I say, but I don't pull away.

"I'm in love with you." He leans closer, and now his forehead is almost touching mine. "I've been in love with you since the moment you first felt me in that apartment. And it terrifies you because you've built walls so high that nothing real can get in, and I'm—"

"You're the first thing that's ever threatened to demolish them," I finish.

He nods, and his breath—phantom breath, the ghost of breath—touches my face.

I close my eyes.

"I can't do this," I whisper.

"I know."

"Vincent has too much power over me. If I expose him, he'll expose me. The fraud, the cons, all of it. I'll go to prison."

"I know."

"So what are we supposed to do?"

He doesn't answer. Instead, he kisses me.

It's not like Eleanor's kiss—it's not passionate or reckless. It's tentative, careful, like he's afraid I'll shatter. His lips are cold but becoming warmer, and I can taste the old tobacco and the cedar wood, and underneath it all, something uniquely James. Something that tastes like longing and desperation and the kind of love that burns through time itself.

I pull him closer.

My hands find his face—the sharp cheekbones, the strong jaw—and I can feel him solidifying under my touch, becoming more real with every second. His arms wrap around me, and he's pulling me against his chest, and I can feel his heartbeat. Faint, but real. A phantom heartbeat that shouldn't exist but does because our souls are bound together in a way that defies physics and reason and every rational thought in my head.

"I love you," he says against my mouth. "I know you're terrified. I know you don't know how to let anyone in. But I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you."

"This is insane," I say, but I'm kissing him again, and his hands are in my hair, and I'm drowning in the scent of him, in the feeling of him, in the absolute certainty that I've never wanted anything more than I want this moment to never end.

But it has to end.

Because reality has a way of intruding on perfect moments, and my phone is buzzing on the nightstand, and when I finally pull away from James, I see that it's 6 AM and I have seventeen missed calls from an unknown number.

I grab the phone with shaking hands and call back.

"Ms. Mercer." Detective Marcus Webb's voice is tight. Controlled. "We need to talk. Now."

"What happened?"

"Vincent Kessler reported a break-in at his office last night. Several files were stolen—specifically files related to his business dealings with James Ashford. He's claiming you had something to do with it."

My stomach drops.

"That's insane. I wasn't—"

"I know you weren't. But he's threatening to press charges, and he's also threatening to go public with some interesting information about your spiritual guidance business. Information he says proves you've been committing fraud."

I can feel James's presence beside me, tense and dangerous.

"Where are you?" I ask.

"My office. Come now, and come alone. If Vincent sees you with anyone else, he'll go straight to the DA."

The line goes dead.

I look at James, and his face is a mask of rage.

"He's setting a trap," James says flatly.

"I know."

"You can't go."

"I have to." I'm already pulling on clothes, my mind racing through scenarios. "If I don't show up, he'll assume we're working together, and he'll burn me. He'll burn us both."

"Then I'm coming with you."

"You can't. If Marcus sees you—if anyone sees you—" I stop. Take a breath. "Vincent doesn't know about you yet. That's our only advantage. Let's not waste it."

James moves toward me, and for a moment, I think he's going to argue. But then he stops, and I watch him pull himself back together, watch him lock down the rage and the fear and the desperate love behind a mask of control.

"When this is over," he says quietly, "we're going to have a very long conversation about self-preservation and stupidity."

"I'm counting on it."

I kiss him once more—quick, fierce, a promise and a goodbye all at once—and then I'm out the door and into the cold Chicago morning, driving toward a confrontation that will either free us both or destroy everything I've built.

The echo of James's heartbeat follows me all the way to the precinct.