If the knock Derek used at her place was thunderous, the bang of his fist against Joey’s door was positively booming. She glanced at the eaves, half expecting the house to shake. His knock must have been equally recognizable within the house, as the door flashed open seconds later.
Joey waved them in quickly. He peeked out the door after they stepped inside, as if he couldn’t do anything if neighbors were watching. He’d foregone standard Southwestern tile for plush carpeting in the dare-to-drink-wine shade of white. Family pictures covered one wall. Callie ignored the faces in the frames, more focused on the fact her fingers had heated and stiffened as she passed Joey.
He had the air of the type of guy people looked forward to seeing at the high school reunion. His square jaw and overall build made Callie think he’d played football, but if he had, the years away from daily practice had made him a bit doughy around the middle. His time escaping his problems with another person’s soul shoved behind his sternum had left its marks, too. The ashen tinge of his skin and the hollow look of his eyes were hard to miss now that Callie knew the signs of soul rental.
“Have a seat,” Joey said, extending his arm toward the couch right next to the front door.
Derek ignored him. If their host wanted to be comfortable, he’d have to start talking. Derek wasn’t about to let him have the edge. Callie followed his lead, and they walked toward a dining area. An Algebra II textbook rested at one end of the table. That explained the Toros pullover Joey wore. He had a kid at Gem City North High. Callie’d gone to South. They hadn’t been allowed to bring their textbooks home. Not that she was jealous. She had much bigger fish to fry than memories of poor school funding.
“You forget something?” Derek asked, without looking at Joey. He ran a finger along the spines of the books on a shelf. The power shift was heady. He was doing it to affect Joey, not her. She needed to remember she was one of the badasses here, too.
“I’ve been slammed at work. I meant to get down there—”
“You don’t look particularly busy right now.”
“Sarah’s going to be back soon,” he pleaded. He was a junkie, only his addiction was to filling his chest with another’s soul. Pathetic.
“Give it up, then.”
“I don’t have time to go now. Tomorrow morning.”
“No need. She can take it now.”
Callie pulled her shoulders back as pride soared through her. She was essential right now. No one had ever looked at her like she was vital to the job. Louisa appreciated the help in the kitchen, but Callie wasn’t the only person who could dice onions. Joey had mostly ignored her presence until then. Just like a rich guy. He hadn’t yet realized she had the ability to wield a device that could take his soul. She didn’t like the magic coursing through her veins, but she ignored the twin pangs of disgust and fear and pulled the flask from her pocket.
Again her body lit. The slowly rotating ceiling fan pushed enough air at her to tickle the back of her neck. Her fingers warmed against the stone. It was a new sensation, but a welcome one. The raging fire from last night was now more like wrapping her hands around a mug of hot cocoa. She’d prefer to swap soul storage of chocolatey goodness, but was just happy her hands weren’t on fire. She didn’t know—or care—whether the flask was dulling or channeling the pain. Now wasn’t the time to ponder her new magical nature. This was a rare moment of power. She was the woman to be frightened of. She was the one who you wouldn’t touch.
Callie strode toward Joey, head held high, and slammed the container’s opening against his sternum with more force than she would have thought possible with her slender arms. The muscles in his neck flexed until they were taut bolts that shoved his head backward. His nostrils flared while he stared at the ceiling, but Callie kept the pressure on. When the rush of magic abated, she stepped back and capped the flask. Her motions were quick, if imprecise. The need to get the flask returned to her pocket before it could flip her magic on again, and make her vulnerable, overrode all other thought. Derek watched her, but didn’t speak until she’d secured it and exhaled a steady breath.
Joey also regained his composure, though his face was noticeably three shades whiter. Derek wasn’t done with him, though. “Anyone else ask about that soul?” He inclined his head toward Callie, now the keeper of souls, apparently.
“You know I’d never—” Was blathering a side effect of soul extraction?
Derek cut him off. “Yeah, yeah, you’re an upright citizen. Just tell me if anyone else asked about taking that soul.”
Joey looked around his tidy home, as though spies might pop up from behind the credenza. “Some lady offered to take it. Said she’d fix me.”
“Fix you?” Derek asked, nonplussed.
“She didn’t seem all too lucid to me. The Charmer is creepy—” he paused, as though wondering if the criticism would earn him a smack. When it didn’t, he continued “—but at least he’s got all his marbles together. That woman definitely did not.”
“What exactly did she say?” Callie asked.
“She offered to purify me. Said she could tell I was masking myself and could make me the true person I was meant to be. I told her unless she was offering a billion dollars, she couldn’t improve my life that much.” Hear, hear for skeptics.
“Did she mention her name?” Derek was on edge, his jaw tightening.
“She gave me a card for when I changed my mind. Not that I’m going to, man.” He’d tacked on the last part. The Soul Charmer had cultivated a sincere amount of fear in him. Callie could relate. Joey pulled his wallet from his back pocket and produced the card.
“You kept her card?” Derek was at peak malevolence.
“So, I, um, could give it to you.”
Derek rolled his eyes at that bullshit, but accepted the card. It was for the chakra massage storefront. Lovely. “She short or tall, this crazy woman?”
“Tall.”
Callie’s mind raced. That meant the woman who offered to purify Joey hadn’t been Bianca. No one would mistake her for tall. Derek’s eyes narrowed. She knew he was thinking the same thing he was: Tess had long legs and the height to prove it.
Two of the three other retrieval jobs they did that night had also had run-ins with Tess, though not a one knew her name. Anonymous benefactors were real, but could Tess be classified as such? They were leaving the final stop, Callie’s flask a hot stone against her thigh, filled with another soul. While she’d expected the inherent grimy sensation of being good at something foul, she was surprised how much Tess and Bianca had gotten under her skin. Understanding others is how you avoid getting hurt, and she just didn’t get them. That made them the scary unknown.
Bianca had alluded to some masterful plan to cleanse the city. If she were donating millions to city renovation, avoiding credit could make sense. Not everyone said yes to her little proposal—it’d been a fifty-fifty split, half too fearful of the Soul Charmer (and probably Derek as well) to accept whatever she offered. Why not give a name? She didn’t hide where she worked. Though, maybe that was just a front. Leave your name and we’ll mystically pop up at your house later.
Derek swore under his breath while reading messages on his phone. “We’ve got another stop to make.”
“How many souls can this thing hold?” Callie wondered aloud.
“The most I’ve heard of is seventeen. So you’re good for at least one more, doll.”
She’d climbed on his bike expecting a drive to an apartment building. But when Derek pulled into the parking lot of St. Catherine’s Memorial Hospital, her stomach dropped to her toes. Only the pegs below her feet kept her insides from dripping to the pavement.
“Why are we here?” Her voice had gone reedy, but Derek had already killed the engine.
He avoided her gaze as he stowed their helmets. “Need to snag a soul real quick.”
“From here?” She bit back the urge to tell him she couldn’t.
Hospitals didn’t scare her. She used to find the
astringent-laced hallways comforting. Before she’d been sacked from her gig there because of a brother with sticky fingers. From the hiss of the automatic doors opening as they entered, to the muted commotion of heart rate monitors and EKG they passed, to the hearty clacking on keyboards from the nurses’ station, every sound inside the building reminded her of what she’d lost. Her plan to become a nurse, her better-than-average pay gig, her escape from being like her mom. She’d lost it all when she’d lost her job at the hospital. Derek couldn’t know how much pain walking down these hallways was causing her, but he must have guessed at least part of it, because his silence had grown tenfold.
He paused outside a closed patient room. The nurses had averted their eyes as Callie and Derek passed. He was known here, too. Great.
“This is going to be different.” He winced as though waiting for the wallop the words could deliver.
Callie narrowed her eyes. “How?” No point in avoiding bitterness now.
Derek pushed open the door, and Callie’s fingers pricked with simmering heat.
He walked in. Curiosity made her follow.
He inclined his head toward the patient’s bed. “He’s not exactly conscious.”
Kapow! There was the punch. Only it smacked Callie square in the stomach. Traction held the man in the bed’s right leg and arm aloft, a brace cradled his neck, and an arc of nasty staples left a red semi-circle above his temple. He didn’t move when they entered the room. When Callie checked the IV bag, she knew why. Derek reached to rest a hand on her shoulder, but she pulled away. “No,” she said, filling those two letters with undiluted determination. “I won’t steal souls for him. I don’t build his fucking collection. There’s a line, Derek, a goddamn line, and this is way over it.”
“Oh, man, no. It’s not that.”
The tingle of heat in Callie’s fingertips fell to the back of her mind as her disgust rushed to the forefront. She planted her hands on her hips and waited for an explanation that wouldn’t make her vomit.
“He—Jerry, this guy—had a bad reaction to the soul he rented. We need to get it out of him.” Derek fumbled his words, and while seeing him off-kilter eased Callie’s ire, she wasn’t about to help him out of the hole he’d dug. “You’ll be able to feel the soul magic when you get closer. No stealing.”
Callie pursed her lips. It didn’t sound like a lie. “What do you mean by a bad reaction?”
“Souls aren’t always a perfect fit.” He scrubbed a hand against the back of his neck.
“And?”
“When quality isn’t an issue for the user, there’s always a chance of bad consequences. The rented soul might not be cooperative. Jerry’s borrowed soul fought his own and the mish-mash of all of it had him mentally off.”
“You’re avoiding details, Derek. Tell me the whole story.”
He sucked in a quick breath. Busted. “He drove his car into the side of a train car. His kids were in the backseat.”
Bile churned in Callie’s stomach. The urge to heave at the horror was there, but important questions had to be asked. “His kids?”
“They’re okay. The train was parked. Jerry, though, is in a medically induced coma, and if we don’t get that soul out of him he’s not going to have a chance at recovery. That borrowed soul wants to die.”
Callie hadn’t considered the possibility the soul she’d rent wouldn’t want to be a part of her. Did unattached souls have wants and needs? “Is the Charmer keeping people’s souls from moving on to an afterlife?”
“Above my pay grade, doll. I’ve got no clue if there is a heaven or a hell. What I do know is the Charmer never keeps a soul for rental for more than six months. He jokes and calls it freshness purgatory. Take it however you want.”
She’d prefer not to take it at all. Celestial progression had never been a top priority for Callie, but if her rented soul wanted to move on, she sure hoped it could hold out until after it was free of her body. “Any promises this won’t happen to me?”
“You’re not going for bottom of the barrel goods, doll. The Charmer will make it a good match for you. I promise.”
Could Derek even promise that? She didn’t know, but it eased her fear regardless. Callie performed her first soul extraction on an unconscious man. The magic was there, the extra soul ready to move, but the act twinged her muddied morals anyway.
They didn’t speak again until they were outside the hospital.
Callie and Derek sidled to his bike. “You mind taking the flask to the Charmer?” She held it toward him, careful to keep her fingers on the silver parts.
He laughed, but it was paired with a grimace. “No can do.”
The less time she spent with the Soul Charmer, the better. He didn’t only climb under her skin like the unknown—though that was a huge factor—it was as though he tried to take up residence in her body. He’d already coerced her into collecting souls on his behalf (which she had to admit gave her a heady rush) and infused her fingers with magic. Every time she encountered the man, he changed her. She wasn’t ready for more.
“I don’t know if I can,” she said as though she had conflicting plans in her datebook, and not a bone-deep fear.
Derek accepted the flask from her, and she sagged with relief. The feeling was temporary. He stepped close enough for the energy between them to percolate against her skin, and then he slipped the soul holding cell into her coat pocket. “I’d help you on this if I could, but you’ve become pretty key to this Tess business.”
The silver and stone didn’t tug on the wool fabric or cause it to sag on one side. It didn’t need to. The tremendous weight on her chest more than accomplished that. Derek climbed on to his bike. He sat there, leather clad, with the idling engine emitting enough of a rumble to tickle her sternum, and waited. Would the back tire bottom out when she climbed on? Those two souls, the enormity of what she’d been roped in to, and the mountain of teeming fear settled inside her core had to be more than mere steel and rubber could manage.
She was bigger than her fear, though. Or at least she pretended to be. What was she going to do? Walk home? It was fifteen miles and she was wearing a ratty pair of Chucks.
Not fucking likely.
—— CHAPTER TWELVE ——
The Soul Charmer’s storefront would forever be creepy. Not that Callie had visited all that often. Derek led them through the front door this time, and the familiar stale scent of long-burning incense lodged itself in her sinuses immediately. She’d been waking in the middle of the night lately, smelling the cheap hippie shit and having to remind herself she was in her apartment and not rooted in the squishy carpet at the soul rental den.
She and Derek squelched their way across the room. What lay beneath that threadbare flooring? Rotting corpses was the best guess, if only because it’d explain the dank tinge underlying the incense.
As they bypassed the counter, the door to the building swung open behind them. The woman who bustled in rushed right to the counter in front of them. “I need a soul for tonight,” she blurted. It wasn’t clear if the proclamation was directed at Callie or Derek. Dark circles underscored her eyes. Perhaps several days without sleep had made it hard for the woman to differentiate between people. Callie wouldn’t know. As long as she got four hours, her body didn’t bitch.
Derek took the lead. “Wait here.”
“Can’t you help me?” When soliciting borderline-legal goods, it was best not to whine. This lady apparently had never gotten the memo to always be kind to your dealer. She was also wearing like-new shoes. Callie couldn’t keep a new pair clean more than a week. What kind of person was desperate for a soul, but had time to drop dollars on new shoes?
“Nope,” Derek said as he pressed his hand against Callie’s lower back and ushered her in front of him and through the curtain portioning the shop from the back workspace.
There was no avoiding the meeting with the Soul Charmer. She’d accepted this. Derek’s fingers lingered, a security blanket and a reminder sh
e wasn’t going into this alone. Lot of good that’d done last time. He’d stood silent while his boss had forced magic into her body. Her knees now locked, and Derek stumbled into her.
“What’s wrong?” He scanned the floorboards and the ceiling, as if expecting an attacker wedged within the rotting wood to emerge.
“Do you have my back?” she asked, both hoping he’d hear her need and hating that she couldn’t do this on her own.
“Did you not feel me slamming into you?”
He overstated the situation, and she flushed. “Pretty sure I’d be on my back if you used that kind of force,” she said, but the chill of the eerie hallway in the Charmer’s emporium smothered the entendre.
The moment of brevity was worth it though, as Derek’s cheeks turned a subtle pink. Vulnerability exposed, he answered her original question. “Yes, I’ve got you.”
“You know—”
“I do.” She believed him, but Derek continued. “I’ll step in if I have to.”
Trusting Derek had to be a bad idea. Yes, he’d protected her in bars and diners and when her hands went “flame-on,” but he also worked for a man who terrified Callie. One she couldn’t say with one hundred percent certainty was totally human—there had to be some reptile gene splicing in action there. And yet Derek worked with him, willingly. The seedy business of soul renting was only a couple rungs up the ladder from the wares Ford shilled.
And yet.
Derek’s hand found her back again, and despite the reservations rumbling in her head, she started toward the next doorway without any additional urging.
Like the previous time, she still stumbled through the passage. She scrubbed her hands together, as though it’d remove the oily feeling the Charmer’s magic left on her skin. It might have worked, if the oil was something tangible. Derek didn’t flinch at the magic—maybe he was used to it, or maybe he didn’t feel it the same way she did—but he also didn’t acknowledge Callie’s obvious reaction.
Borrowed Souls: A Soul Charmer Novel Page 15
