Page 24 of Heart, Haunt, Havoc
“Did they know Isabelle?”
Hearing her name in someone else’s mouth caused Colin’s heart to squirm. “Rebecca did, yes.”
“Your sister?”
Colin nodded. “Did your mother know Lincoln?”
“Yeah, she loved him,” they said. “Thought he was a good one.”
“Was he?”
They paused, forking pork and avocado into their mouth. “In the beginning, maybe. But I don’t know if I can say I everknewhim.”
“You loved him,” he said.
“I loved who he allowed me to see,” Bishop said. They focused on their dinner, sipping, chewing, dunking tortilla chips, and met Colin’s eyes with a brief, sad smile. “Deception, dark magic, demonology. Typical marital problems.”
“I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. I’ve never married, but I do know Lincoln loved you,” Colin said. He hoped he hadn’t overstepped. Hadn’t pressed his thumb to a softened scab. “I feel it in the house, I feel it…”On you.“…in his anger, his desperation, his loneliness.”
Bishop rolled their lips together. Their brows tensed, shoulders pulling toward their ears.
“Love is supposed to be indomitable,” they said under their breath. Someone scored during the soccer game and the speakers roared with cheers and music. A red-cheeked man clapped at the bar. Bishop turned toward the television. “But it’s a ghost, too. Still there, yeah. Still trapped in us. Just incorporeal. Gone, now.”
Colin didn’t know what to say to that. He thought of Isabelle and wanted to sayyes, wanted to sayno. He tapped the point of his shoe against Bishop’s shin beneath the table.
“You don’t mind staying for another drink, do you?” Bishop asked.
Colin shook his head. “No, I’m fine. We can stay for a while.”
“Good.” Bishop ordered another margarita. They took their time eating. “Because I don’t want to go home yet.”
Colin touched his toe to Bishop’s shin again.I know the feeling, he thought. They linked their boot behind his ankle, swaying their shoes back and forth.
Chapter eight
Colindidn’tsleep.
Leftover storm clouds spat snow and hail, and time warped throughout the night. After Colin and Bishop had finished their dinner, they stood together in the cold, watching their breath fog the air, and mist bend the light beneath a streetlamp. He’d imagined pressing Bishop against the wall in the alley attached to Cocina De León. Crowding them against the brick and asking them to swallow the yellow glow humming inside the lamp, kissing them hard and tasting magic on their lips. But he’d turned his gaze upward instead. Studied the starless sky and fixated on the place where Bishop’s shoulder touched his own.
Back at the house, Bishop had glanced at him and disappeared into their room, and Colin had paced in the guest bedroom, chewing his fingernails, and scolding himself for wishing he’d reattached the cameras. He’d never watched a client before. Never had the urge to invade someone’s privacy, never wondered about the way unfamiliar bedsheets might wrap around ankles and pool over shoulders. But he wondered about Bishop. About their body stretched beneath blankets, and their face suspended in peaceful sleep, and what he might do to keep them awake.
Time had shifted again, sped and slowed. Colin woke after dozing, dipping in and out of a dream about Isabelle, her ruined lips and sallow eyes, her piano-key rib cage and nightmarish voice. He’d remembered seeing midnight blink on his phone, then two o’clock, then four thirty, and couldn’t recall how he’d lost the hours in between. Maybe he’d slept. Maybe he’d touched himself. Maybe he’d sinned and prayed and hoped Bishop would come to his room again.
Exhaustion sank bone deep. He pawed at his face, listening to the quiet unravel as the blue hour bled into morning. He’d cleaned many houses, exorcised plenty of people, but he’d never lost his senses to a place before. Bishop’s home seemed to be taking its toll—made him unsteady on his feet, caused his thoughts to turn soupy and thin. He groaned, rubbed sand out of his eye, and fished his toiletries bag out of his suitcase, prepping a syringe with his weekly hormone dose. The needle pinched, like always, and red beaded on his hip, like always, darkening a permanent bruise splotched on his fair skin. He stored the used needle in a plastic disposal case and brushed his teeth in the hallway, dipping into the bathroom to spit and rinse before shying away from the mirror again.
Bishop opened their bedroom door and snared Colin in a quizzical look. “Why are you standing in the hall?”
He gestured lazily to the healing burn on his throat. “Last time, this happened,” he slurred, sucking foam off his toothbrush.
“Right.” They scrubbed their palm over their buzzed head. “Get any sleep?”
Colin laughed in his throat. “Hardly. You?”
“A few hours, maybe.”
“What time is it?”
“Early. Almost seven,” they said. Bishop propped their shoulder against the wall and met Colin’s gaze, standing in their flannel sweatpants and long-sleeved shirt. They straightened their glasses. “Tehlor’ll be here in a bit.”
