Page 32 of Heart, Haunt, Havoc
“Watch your mouth, priest,” Lincoln snapped, growled and shouted, howled and snarled. Man and not, human and not. He leaned as far forward as he could, jutting his face toward Bishop. “I haven’t stopped loving you. Why do you think I’m still here, huh? Why would I stay…?”
Bishop stood with their hackles raised, swaying uncertainly on their feet. Gold glittered in the blood ringing their nostrils, and their throat moved around a slow swallow.
“Because you needed me,” they said, so,sosoftly. 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.
“That’s what he told you, right?” Lincoln said. “Before or after he fucked you? C’mon, Bishop. Think for a minute. Of course, he told you that. He’s tryin’ to crawl back under the Vatican’s wing and you’re an easy way to make that happen.”
Their mouth tightened.
“Don’t listen to him,” Colin tested, watching Bishop carefully.
Lincoln rambled. “He’ll do anything to buy his way back in.Anything!You know that; you know—”
“I cut your heart in half,” they said, hardly whispering, hardly speaking at all. Their voice wobbled, strained and callous. “And I know the only reason I’m alive is because you needed me tostayalive. You can’t out-witch me, Lincoln, and you can’t out-smart me, and you can’t out-maneuver me. I’m what you wanted to become, remember?”
Gold flooded their sclera, sharpening their pupils into points. The remaining flame-tipped candles stretched their shadow into the shape of a jaguar on the wall behind them, lengthened by the banister, turned huge and monstrous by trapped light.
“I know who you are—I know who youwere. And I…” They faltered, inhaling roughly through their nose. “I’m letting you go, Lincoln Stone. I’m banishing you from my body, I’m banishing you from my soul, I’m banishing you from this house…”
Lincoln snapped his blunt teeth at the air. “You think stabbing me made you strong?” He spat out a laugh. Holy Water still singed his skin, opening like pink pools on broken flesh. Hunger rippled outward, darkening his voice, turning his eyes solid black. “Please. You were nothing but a kitchen witch before me, singing lullabies to bay leaves and carving wellness spells into corn husks.”
“And look at me after you,” Bishop said. Heat flooded the basement—desert heat, the sweltering kind that burned on every breath, made a person squint and recoil, caused lungs to shrink and squeeze. Their shadow crawled along the wall, detaching from their ankles to creep around the back of the recliner.
Damn.
Colin stepped in front of Bishop. “Hey, look at me,” he said, ducking to find their golden gaze. “Bishop—hey.” They tore their eyes away from Lincoln and stared at Colin, lashes flicking, brow tense and wrinkled. Power pulsed from them. Rippled off their skin like wind skipping waves. “If you kill him again, it starts all over,” he said, as tenderly and truthfully as possible. “He exits the body, occupies the house, and we go back to square one. That’s why he’s pushing you. If you physically kill him or you spiritually kill him, he wins. Don’t let him take this from you.”
“Still trying to stifle you,” Lincoln hollered. “Still trying tosaveyou, because he couldn’t save his sweet, soft-skinned Isabelle.”
Bishop chewed their lip. Their feline shadow towered over Lincoln, jaws split for stormy teeth, paws flexed and blurred, looming in the air. “I’m taking back what’s mine,” they said. They tipped their chin toward Colin, roaming his face with quick, purposeful glances. Mouth, throat, eyes. “People don’t get tostealwithout consequences. He doesn’t get to colonize my fucking magic.” They brushed his waist with their fingertips and stepped around him, slender digits undulating in quick, electric pulses. They swirled one hand through the air and their shadow reared back. “Don’t worry—he’ll live.”
There was a frightening thrill to it: being in the same room as Bishop Martínez and their magic. Especially then, especially there, on the cusp of undoing their own haunting.
Bishop flicked their wrist and sent the cat-like shadow into Lincoln’s space, digging at his reanimated corpse with misty claws. Lincoln jerked away from the chair, gasping and shouting. The ropes left welts on his arms, Holy Water sizzled on his skin, and Colin almost flinched when Bishop’s shadow wrenched open Lincoln’s mouth and dug around inside him. Excavating. Yanking stolen magic from behind his teeth.
Bishop bent their fingers, knuckles whitening as Lincoln bucked and cried out. The house trembled. Beams creaked, the staircase wheezed, and windows vibrated, resisting the spiritual cut—the last, lingering attachment from Lincoln Stone to Bishop Martínez. Finally, the shadow found what it was searching for, and two golden flecks floated from the depths of Lincoln’s throat.
The magic glinted, turning in the air like dust caught in a slow-motion breeze. Lincoln stared at the yellowish substance. His chest heaved, expression folding into defeat, and watched the magic cross the room, sinking delicately into Bishop’s open palm.
Blood flowed in a thin rivulet from their left nostril, curving over their mouth, gathering on their chin and dripping onto their shirt. They breathed easier. Straightened in place and called their shadow back to them, swaying from exertion as the dark, translucent jaguar reattached to their ankles.
“Leave this place,” Bishop said, sighing the words like a prayer.
Lincoln exhaled a hard, trembling breath. “Now, I can’t protect you,” he said, half-lidded eyes settled on Bishop. Colin heard the truth in his weak voice.
Bishop opened their mouth, but Colin stepped in front of them, guiding them backward with a gentle shove. He glanced over his shoulder and nodded curtly.
“You’ve done your part,” he said, pushing one of his fallen sleeves to his elbow. Around them, wind stirred, and candles flickered. “Let me do mine.”
“What…” They turned their gaze from Colin to Lincoln. Their pupils fanned outward, expanding, shrinking, and their slender throat flexed around a nervous swallow.
“I’m sorry,” Lincoln whispered. He rested the back of his head against the recliner and closed his eyes. As two of the last three candles died, light became harder to find, shadows deepened, turned the atmosphere daunting and stagnant, and Colin readied himself for the inevitable.
Bones cracked, like a boot on a twig. Lincoln made a desperate, young noise—a muffled, choked-off cry—and his mouth shot open.
Colin patted Bishop’s hip and said, “Stay behind me.”
Like something out of a nightmare, long, clawed fingers curved around Lincoln’s cheeks. Marchosias poured from his body in thick, black ropes, erupting in syrupy pulses. Oily substance crawled over Lincoln’s face and throat, shaped like a breathing anemone, shifting like thorns on a liquid stem, and began to reshape itself.
