Heart, Haunt, Havoc (The Gideon Testaments, #1)

by Freydís Moon

Colin hadn’t earned his place yet, but he typically didn’t have to: haunted places never failed to recognize haunted people.

The house changed in their absence—inhaled and exhaled, rattled and shook.

Colin nodded. Strange. He offered a smile. They’re lying.

“Protection,” he said, and drew his hand away, balancing his fingertip on the pale tan line at the base of Bishop’s ring finger. “What’s this?” They tucked their hand into their lap. “Protection,” they parroted, and went back to eating. Strange, Colin thought, watching them. That sounded like the truth.

For years, Colin Hart had searched for oddities and spirits, ripped unwelcome breath from between the bones of crowded houses, braced for fangs and claws in demonic dwellings, but he’d never managed to scrape the inconsistencies out of himself. Hips, too wide. Shoulders, too narrow. Wrists, too small. Testosterone be damned, he still felt half-framed and hollow. As if his body was a home with too many unused rooms, too much open space. A place still under construction.

“So you’ve seen him.” “Couple times.” “Bishop.” “Colin.” They sighed his name,

They walked through the hall, paused at the staircase, and Colin saw the ghostly whisper of hands on their waist, slipping across them, holding on to them, causing their lips to pop open and their eyes to close. What did you two do to each other?

What did you two mean to each other?

Abandonment. Unfinished business. There was always something or someone that caused a house to want, to ache, to make itself known. There was always a reason for anger and lust and becoming lonesome.

“De las tinieblas vienes, de las tinieblas te vas,” Bishop hissed.

The pair stood before each other, posturing like birds of prey or venomous snakes, two creatures unused to the idea of being known, or seen, or held.

“C’mon, exorcist. Don’t make me beg.”

“Their heart is a bear trap.”

“I haven’t seen their heart,” Colin said. The half-truth slid past his lips like the beginning of a Hail Mary. “Even priests lie.”

“Sometimes shame is a lesson. Most of the time, it’s just a way for us to hate ourselves for the things we want.” They shifted their eyes to the door. “What do you know about shame?” “I’m Catholic,” Colin said matter-of-factly, and braved a touch to Bishop’s knuckles.

He uttered the prayer swiftly, but couldn’t chase the heat from his body, couldn’t detach from the foreign memories, couldn’t clear Bishop Martínez from his mind.

Her absence hollowed him. Stayed with him. Haunted him. He swiped his thumb across his watery lashes and set his phone face down on the floor, tucking her smile away.

Like this, Colin wondered about loneliness, how houses longed for occupancy and hearts yearned to be held.

Grief, and betrayal, and fine-tuned desperation were learned, lived, and endured. People got better from a burst cyst, from an undercooked pork chop, from an impromptu breakup. But no one fully recovered from loss like this. They simply adapted to the sound of it, calloused to the feel of it.

“I tend to appreciate distance, but somehow, I haven’t found the fortitude to stop wanting you. I think about you often: when I’m awake, when I’m asleep, when I’m alone. Do you know what that’s like?”

“To find yourself trapped in an unexpected orbit? To know someone’s power, to understand their pain, to get a glimpse of their heart?” He met their wide, tense eyes. “Before I slept with you, I daydreamed about you. Now that I’ve been with you, I’m consumed by you. How I feel about you, what I want from you . . . it’s thrilling; it’s excruciating. So, yes, you terrify me, Bishop.”

“Be scared of me,” they rasped, breathing hard against his chin. “But don’t be afraid to touch me.”

Love, dead or alive, somewhere between the two, still clawed at them. Colin saw it in their glassy eyes, knew it in their loose shoulders and open, empty hands. Love, like possession, like a haunting, refused to rest.

“I’m asking Tehlor if she’ll water my plants while we’re gone,” they said, like someone would say obviously.

“Drive, exorcist,” they said.