Page 36 of Heart, Haunt, Havoc
Ghost, he thought, first, thenno, only the haunted.
“Yes, I think it is,” he whispered. “I hope it is.”
Bishop sighed. They turned onto their side and scooted backward, nudging themself against Colin. “Don’t be rude,” they mumbled, almost playfully.
Colin draped his arm around them, pressing his nose to their nape. “Sorry,” he said, sighing against their neck.
The house quieted. Sleep came fast, like a snakebite, like a heartbeat, and Colin drifted off in the middle of a silent prayer.
The day came and went. Colin only stirred once, cracking his eyes open to find Bishop, awake and startled, blinking at him from the other side of the bed. Their pupils were blown, eyes glassy in the shaded room. He’d cupped their face, smoothed his thumb along their cheekbone, and hushed them like he would a child.
“It’s me,” he’d said, raspy and low.
They’d stuttered through a relieved breath and gone back to sleep.
The next time he woke, the bedroom had darkened as evening fell outside the window. He didn’t know the time or how long the two of them had been asleep. Didn’t know if hours or days had gone by. But Bishop was there, reaching for him, and Colin reached back. They ghosted his wounded cheek and cradled the back of his head, bringing their mouth to his. Closed the space between their sleepy bodies, tucked their thigh along the inside of his leg and kissed him slowly. Thoroughly, with intent, with the purpose ofnowandplease. The two of them were alone in the healing house, finally. Alone with each other.
Colin touched them reverently. He scooped his hand along their ribs and placed his thumb beneath their small breast, humming when they grasped his knuckles and fit his palm over their nipple, asking him to squeeze, sighing contentedly between his lips. Their fingers dusted his tattoos, trailing runes scattered across his torso, his arms, inked into the hollow of his hip. When he eased them onto their back, they went without protest, and when he touched them tenderly, they made weak, encouraging noises.
For a moment, Colin understood Bishop’s need for rough, relentless sex, the desperate kind, lonesome and strangled by heartbreak, because making love felt heavier, somehow. Gentleness caused his chest to lurch. Looking at them, eyes half-lidded and lips trembling, made him want to stay in Gideon, Colorado at the house on Staghorn Way.
How terrifying.
When it ended, it didn’t end. Bishop dug through the nightstand and found their strap, and everything started over. Them, straddling his waist, riding the silicone attached to his groin, breathing hard, unabashed, and extraordinarily free. Again, once more. Him, unmarred cheek pressed against white sheets, propped on his widened knees with Bishop’s hand around his skull, holding him still, fucking him slow and deep. Time didn’t seem to matter. He gripped comforter and skin, wrist and throat. Was held and handled, bitten and clutched to. After, once they were both limp and sated, Bishop tugged him into a steaming shower, and kissed him beneath the water.
The pair moved through the night together. Dressed together, cooked together—spaghetti, of course—dozed in the guest bedroom together, sipped tea together, and in the morning, when snow flurried past the windows and sunlight hid behind gray clouds, they wrapped Lincoln Stone in two thirty-nine-gallon trash bags and placed him in the basement wall together.
The concrete came away after a few swings from a sledgehammer. Dust puffed into the basement and Bishop swatted at the air.
They coughed, squinting behind their glasses. “I thought you were kidding about this.”
“The house has been exorcised. This body has, too. Keeping him here, bound to the place where he was cut away from demonism, prevents him from wandering back to you. You banished him, yeah, but you didn’tdestroyhim. If the vessel is somewhere he can’t return to, you’ll be safe,” Colin said.
“Fucking—” they smacked wet concrete onto a cinderblock and shoved it into place “—wonderful.”
Colin doused the body in Holy Water and Bishop blew cleansing smoke into the thin pocket between drywall, foundation beams, and brick, then they pushed the last cinderblock into place and stuffed the cracks and creases with concrete and sealant. The wall would take hours—days, even—to dry completely, but Colin and Bishop pulled the linen shelf in front of the structural scar, and let it be. Bishop stood with their hands on their hips. Breathed shallowly. Stared at the space they’d stored Lincoln and kicked the floor with the toe of their boot.
“It’s over,” they said on a sigh.
Colin nodded. “Yeah,” he said, and sighed, too. “It’s over.”
He didn’t wantthisto be over, though. Whatever the two of them had found together, whatever strange, wild thing they’d started. He wanted to keep it, to swallow it, to harvest it. He wanted Bishop Martínez.
“Do you have another job lined up?” They asked, uncertainly.
Surely, he might. If he checked his abandoned email, he’d find requests for consultations and inquiries from ghost hunting squads. He could be on the road in hours.
“Not yet,” he said, swallowing nervously. “I’ll probably head to my next consultation in a couple days. Is it all right if I stay until I confirm with my next client? I can get a hotel if you—”
Bishop tripped into bright laughter. “Dios mío,” they said under their breath, and shook their head. “You’re insufferable, Colin Hart. You know that, right?”
He met their eyes, lips quirked into a sad smile. “I’m aware, yes.”
“Stay.” They brushed past him, swatting dirt off their palms, and took the stairs two at a time.
Colin glanced at the wall concealing Lincoln’s body.
Bishop hollered, “Want a beer?” from the first floor.
