Rogue souls, p.19
Rogue Souls, page 19
part #2 of Soul Charmer Series
Callie wasn’t so certain that was true. She could certainly think of plenty of people—including Ford and Nate—who maybe deserved damnation. Still. If they got in, there was a problem. The Charmer knew more about what was happening here, but did he actually know that it was part of why people were being killed to get his attention? Could Ford learn how to conduct soul magic from a book? The energy that allowed her to sense the magic in others swirled bright and beckoning at her core. It wasn’t something she’d had until the day the Charmer turned her into this. This power wasn’t a natural one. Could Ford conjure the same skill?
If Callie had learned anything in her apprenticeship it was that the Soul Charmer of Gem City always had a leg up on others, and anyone who tried to knock out that leg would pay in fire and blood.
The stones in Callie’s stomach settled heavy in her center. Could she avoid getting burned from the sidelines?
Fuck, she hoped so.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The night was charged outside the cathedral. It wasn’t the statutes of saints and their watchful gazes setting energy snapping along Callie’s skin. It wasn’t even soul magic. It was that sharp sense before a storm slams into the city. The air was thickening, preparing. Stars sparked in sync across the endless black sky. Callie watched them, as though their electric energy would ignite something fantastic. As though the answers could be laid out in specks of hot white above her instead of the pools of black tar congealing within her stomach.
Taking the truth to the Soul Charmer—that a mobster known for cherubic looks and a hankering for hacking body parts was after access to an infinite source of additional souls, was after the Charmer’s prime source of business—was not going to end well. She didn’t need the cosmos to tell her so. She scrubbed her left hand across her face. Whether it was the pressure or the frigid air, her cheek stung afterward and sobered her thoughts. Her other hand was clamped around the flask in her pocket. She had been stroking her thumb over the onyx inlay absently. She stilled it. The external container for magic, for souls, shouldn’t be the source of comfort. Unfortunately, fighting her feelings hadn’t ever changed them. So, she didn’t bother releasing her metaphysical blankie.
“You okay?” Derek’s rumbling voice was behind Callie’s ear. No wonder the wind wasn’t slicing into her neck.
“I honestly don’t even know anymore.”
“That sounds like a no.”
Callie shrugged. “I’m happy you didn’t deck your brother.”
“Punching a priest is off limits.” The humor in his voice was strained, but at this late hour everything had been pulled past its limits. Humor shouldn’t get to be an exception.
“Isn’t there a family clause or something? Does he ever get to be something other than a priest?” It was a silly question. A man of God was always a man of God. There were times life would have been easier of Josh had been a junkie who had come into the emergency room on her rotation and not someone she’d dive into a well to save over and over and over. It was hard to not be able to give up on people. It was a shitty thought, and Callie was shitty for acknowledging it. It wasn’t the first time Callie had contemplated how her life would be different if she could cut ties. And like every other time, she had to bite back the bile of imagined betrayal and subsequent shame. What the fuck was wrong with her for considering skipping out on those who mattered most?
Derek dropped his heavy arm over her shoulders, and the weight grounded her in a way she couldn’t fully describe. It was good though. He’d chosen to be part of this complete mess. Maybe she had, too. She wasn’t going to cut and run. On him or on the job. She’d picked both. It was rare she had the chance to choose, and she wasn’t about to let that go.
“Next time he drops his collar outside of a church, I’ll knock him once for you,” Derek said.
“Now, I didn’t say I wanted you to punch him.” She almost smiled.
“He’s earned at least one solid pop. He did hold back about people trying to get to the well.”
Callie’s mother and brother weren’t in her good graces at the moment. Broken beer bottles and thwarted magic and all. But they wouldn’t have kept secrets about her from her. Zara would have told the truth to see Callie squirm, she admitted to herself, but Josh would have had her back. Henry should have had Derek’s. “He knows what you do with the Charmer, yeah?”
“He’s part of the reason I ended up with the Soul Charmer.” He offered this morsel of his past, but it came with a finite cut. The hard edge of finality suggested Derek understood Callie wanted to know more of him, understand him, but he wasn’t ready to divulge. She couldn’t blame him. They were still new, and already broken. Shattered people don’t build a foundation for a relationship in weeks. She had secrets she couldn’t imagine ever sharing. Begrudging his privacy would only make her an asshole.
The interior of Callie’s car wasn’t any warmer than the street outside had been, but at least they were blocked from the frigid gusts. Callie tugged on her seatbelt, and then slouched in the seat until her chin was forced to her chest. “Can I just sleep like this?” she mumbled.
Derek turned the car on and cranked the heater. It pumped cold air at peak volume but would eventually warm up.
“You care if we crash at my place?” Derek asked.
She’d never been to his place. They were always on the move or he was coming to check on her, pick her up, keep an eye on Josh. It had made sense to stay at her apartment. Curiosity had twitched in the back of her brain about what his place would look like, but she hadn’t ever questioned why they hadn’t stayed there. Her heart squeezed at the opening to see more of his life, but the rest of her body was too burned out to react appropriately. “Is it close?”
He nodded. “Just a few blocks.”
“Works for me.”
The car didn’t have time to warm up before Derek was pulling into a covered space outside a squat row of adobe homes. He turned off the car, but Callie didn’t move. She wasn’t asleep per se, but her body was ready to give up. Between being awake for more than twenty-four hours, the emotional explosion with her family, the discovery of the soul well, and meeting Derek’s brother, she was tapped.
She got out of the car and followed Derek around the front of the houses. The third one in had an aquamarine front door and a slightly overgrown bougainvillea out front. Derek’s. Callie got the sense he hadn’t changed a thing since he’d taken over someone else’s lease. The interior was all grey furniture and black tables. Derek helped her take off her coat and hung it in a front closet. His home was a reprieve from the whistling wind and wicked cold outside. Burning wood simmered in the air. His tiny fireplace was empty, but one of his neighbors must have been utilizing theirs. The scent lodged itself in Callie’s nose, and the comfort of its subtle warmth only added to her drowsiness.
“Bedroom is straight back. Bathroom’s on the right just inside. I’ll get you some water.”
Even after all they’d been through today, even after having an awkward conversation with his brother less than ten minutes ago that had to be battering his mind, Derek was looking out for her first. Like this was any other night. She should have been sweet or gone to hug him, but she was simply too drained to do anything more than stumble down the hallway to his bedroom. She hit the bathroom, and then stripped down to get in bed. His mattress was far firmer than hers. She was so used to sinking in that the lack of give when she sat on the bed startled her. Derek walked in with a glass of water. He brought it to her. She gulped down half the glass, and then set the cup on the nightstand. Derek met her beneath the sheets and pulled her to him. She curled against his side. His pulse tapped a steady beat beneath her ear, and she fell soundlessly to sleep.
Fingers of light stretched toward Callie when she woke. She squinted against the bright sun from the window on her right. She rolled to face the other wall and remembered where she was. The hard bed, the dark grey sheets, the poster of Springsteen on the wall? Right. Derek’s house.
The whining groan that escaped her was three parts “oh, God, what did I do?” half a cup of “Do I still have to fix everything?” and a pinch of FML. She chased it with a confused, “Where are my pants?” for good measure.
The door to the bathroom opened. Derek exited in a wall of steam with nothing but an orange towel around his waist. His hips were angled forward and his shoulders back, every bit the peak of causal masculinity. He was relaxed, which Callie delighted in seeing almost as much as she liked the sharp groove his muscles cut just inside his hips. She pulled in a long breath and flounced back on the bed. Languid and contemplating pulling herself together enough to take advantage of a fresh-from-the-shower Derek. Citrus and soap filled the room, and Callie held the clean relief of both in her lungs as long as she could.
“Doll, you leave your phone on vibrate?” Derek asked, already bending down to nudge through Callie’s discarded jeans.
“Almost always do.” She sat up and held out her hands like she was expecting a communion wafer and not a phone to be placed within them. Spend one night outside a confessional and all the habits come pouring back.
He tossed it her way, and then moved to grab her clothes from the floor and placed them at the foot of the bed. He didn’t hover as Callie unlocked the phone. Derek grabbed a pair of black jeans, yanked them on, and headed out of the room. “I’m going to see if I have anything edible in the pantry,” he called as he left the room.
“Okay,” she mumbled.
She stared at the screen. Four missed calls. Two voicemails. All from Cedar Retirement Home.
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
There were not enough fucks in the world for this.
“What time is it?” she snapped her gaze from one nightstand to the dresser and then to the other searching for a clock. Completely forgetting her phone displayed the time at the top of the screen. The digital read-out from the alarm clock on Derek’s side read 11:52 a.m.
She wasn’t just late for work. She’d missed almost the entire thing. She hadn’t called. She hadn’t texted. Callie stared down at the notifications of the missed calls and began to shake. Tears weren’t falling. Maybe her body already knew it needed to conserve water, because she sure as shit wasn’t going to make enough to cover both rent and the water bill now.
4:42 am Missed Call
4:44 am Missed Call
4:45 am Voicemail
5:22 am Missed Call
8:02 am Missed Call
8:03 am Voicemail
Callie’s thumb hovered over the button to access her voicemail. Imagining the disappointment in Louisa’s voice would be worse than the real thing. It had to be. Right? Callie tapped the button and brought the phone to her ear.
“Callie, are you okay? Is Josh okay? Worried about you, honey. Please call.” Louisa’s genuine concern poured over the line like agave nectar. The sweetness stuck to Callie, choking her pores and reminding her how she’d let someone down. Someone that chose to care about her.
Callie sucked in a ragged breath. Derek peeked in the door. “Callie, are you . . .” he trailed off. Her face was hot, and her vision beginning to blur. She probably looked as much of a mess on the outside as she was on the inside. He stalked toward her and sat next to her on the edge of the bed. Callie’s feet didn’t reach the carpet. Derek’s bare foot slid beneath hers and his arm curled around her waist. He would keep her grounded. She would not completely lose it. She bit her lower lip and tapped the second voicemail.
Derek stayed quiet, because he was a smart man and her rock and better at handling crazy crying girls than anyone she knew.
Louisa’s second voicemail opened with a long sigh. More than three hours of waiting, worrying had changed Callie’s boss’s attitude. “I don’t know what’s happening with you. Know that I’m worried. That I care. I want to hear from you, to know you’re okay, but also you left me short staffed this morning. I’ve given you more freedom than we give other employees, but we have a firm policy about not calling in. I’m sorry Callie. A no call-no show, means no job. We will mail anything in your cubby along with your last paycheck to your apartment.” Another long sigh. Then Louisa added in a rushed whisper, “Please let me know you are all right. If you’re in the hospital with Josh, I can make them give you your job back. I think. Just call me, Callie.”
Callie slowly lowered the phone from her ear, and then tapped the button to lock the device. She didn’t want to see the screen and its accusing list of missed calls again. She stared at the chipped purple polish on her toenails. She focused on Derek’s hand now on her thigh and the raised, patchwork of scars on his knuckles. She wanted to punch something. To scream. To earn scars to match how badly she’d ruined things. Instead she let tears track down her cheeks and topple onto her lap. Derek wiped them away with a touch so light she almost couldn’t tell he’d done so. He rested his forehead against the side of hers.
“How bad?”
“It’s good you have room for me in your bed, because I’m not going to have a place to live within four weeks.”
“You got evicted? For what?”
Callie shook her head but couldn’t appreciate his indignation now. “No. I was supposed to be at work at four thirty this morning. I was here. Sleeping. After spending a day trying to solve the Soul Charmer’s bullshit problems.”
Derek made nonsense calming noises and rubbed her back. The effort was appreciated, although it didn’t change anything.
“Can you call and explain?”
“No. Explaining that my unpaid apprenticeship took priority over the job that pays my bills would not go over well.”
“It wasn’t just your apprenticeship. We’re trying to find a killer.” He was so earnest. The plea on his face almost stung with how much Callie wanted to simply acquiesce.
“That’s not something we can tell other people, and you know it. It doesn’t change anything. It’s not something other people would understand. Hell, Louisa thinks the Church has signed off on soul magic. She isn’t going to take the idea that people are killing one another over souls well at all.”
Derek frowned, and Callie could almost see his mind spinning and seeking an answer for her. A way to fix it. She let out a long breath and leaned into him.
“I don’t have a job now. I . . . I . . . I don’t know what to do with that.” It was the understatement of the century. She’d spent her entire adult life trying to make her way with honest work. Legit, hard work. No cons, no crime, steady hard work for steady meager pay. And she’d blown it because she was off hunting a person who killed a kid and stole from the Soul Charmer? She didn’t carry a badge. It’s not like she was a cop and would get to do the right thing and put the bad guys in jail. There were too many grey areas at this point to even be sure that she wasn’t classified as one of the bad guys. Ford was definitely worse, so on the scale that made him the relative bad guy, but fuck. The lady who made breakfast and lunch for senior citizens was definitely a whole lot farther away on the evil bastard scale. She’d liked being that person, and now she wasn’t her anymore.
She could try to get a job somewhere else. It wasn’t like Cedar was the only retirement home in Gem City. Who would want to hire someone with erratic schedules and who came in with dark circles under her eyes because she’d spent the evening extracting souls from delinquent soul renters or tracking the kind of nasty person who would kill a kid to get one over on a business rival? Hell, at this point she wouldn’t hire herself.
“We need to talk to the Charmer,” Derek said with the finality of someone who had a plan. Only he hadn’t shared it and whatever plan involved going to see that sketchy fuck right now was not something Callie was emotionally prepared for.
“I can’t. I need to call Lou. Apologize. Whatever.”
“Is she going to give you your job back?” Pointed question. He definitely had a plan.
“Not unless we want to doctor some medical records to say I was in the hospital.”
Derek scowled at her.
She was having a crisis and he was scowling? “What?”
“You’re doing complicated, dangerous work for the Charmer, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said weakly.
“You lost your day job because his shit spilled all over your life, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Fucker needs to pay you, and I know for a fact he pays well.”
“I need him, though. Until he takes this magic out of me, I can’t do shit about it.”
“He’s a shit teacher. You learned about pulling souls out and putting them in bottles without his help. You’d manage if he didn’t offer more lessons.”
He had a point, but the idea of being on her own doubly in one day was not appealing.
“He needs you. He doesn’t have anyone else who can do what you do with the souls. He needs an apprentice, even if he won’t admit it. We tell him he needs to start paying you, or you’re done.”
“That kind of ultimatum sounds like it would end in me getting blackened with flames again.”
“Maybe, but afterward he’d agree to pay you. I’ve worked for him for years. You’re going to have to trust me on this.”
“Okay,” she agreed, though it lacked any enthusiasm.
“Put on some clothes. I’ll make coffee—it’s all I’ve got—and then we’ll go talk to him. We’ll get you a paycheck, and then I’ll buy lunch.”
He made it sound so simple. Like he solved crises of potential homelessness every day.
“Okay,” she said again, but this time with actual agreement.
Callie had only ever wanted to live a straight life. No crime, no cons, nothing she would be embarrassed to tell a priest she did for a living. She’d already been doing underhanded shit for the Charmer for weeks. She’d struggled with what it said about her. Her days were dealing with the very people she’d been trying to escape her whole life. She was hiding crimes from the cops. Yet the Cortean Church was a part of it. A priest had told her as much last night. The job was borderline legal, if not ethical.
