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.

“Aim your grievances at me,” he said, clearing his chalky throat. “I’m here to cut you away from this place—somewhere you’re not meant to be. Force my hand, and it will hurt. Go willingly, and I’ll extract you as gently as possible. But the homeowner is not the exorcist in this equation. Truthfully, I wouldn’t call myself that either.” He let his shoulders go heavy and sighed at the tense ceiling. Something, a few things, turned their eyes on him, watching from their hidden spots in the hollow walls and rusted keyholes. “But it is what it is, and I am what I am.”

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.

Fear sometimes happened all at once—seeping into his skeleton, rushing fast in his veins—and sometimes it happened slowly. A spear sinking through the soles of his feet, sliding behind his kneecaps, burrowing into his stomach.

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.

He remembered being young, searching for purpose and hope, and finding the dead instead. Hunting for angels in empty places, praying to a God who didn’t listen.

“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.

“I live in them. I fill their bones like marrow. Their blood is my blood. You’ll never clean this house, exorcist.”

“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.

“All gods require payment,” she said. Her eyes fell to Colin’s chest where his rosary sprouted from beneath his scarf. “Especially yours.”

For years, Colin had tried to find truth in God’s plan, desperately searched his heart for grace and forgiveness. But faith was a hard, mean, vengeful thing at times, and losing her had calloused him.

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

There was a way to package desperation like this. The kind early in healing, late in making.

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?” He huffed out an annoyed breath and glanced at Bishop, blushing hot. “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.”

“So far from God, so close to Hell, so rich in sin. More like us than you think, yes?”

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.