—— CHAPTER TWENTY ——
“You’ve got to take that thing in for me.” Callie foisted the soul-filled flask at Derek. She couldn’t face the Soul Charmer again. She didn’t want to know if Tess was still in the basement. She didn’t need to see the burns on the woman’s legs again. The Charmer wouldn’t resist taunting her in front of Derek. She might not climb out of the well of shame after that.
He stepped backward. “Nope.”
“The Charmer likes you better. It’ll be easier for you.”
“He likes you just fine.”
“You wouldn’t be fit to collect souls today if he hadn’t worked his mojo on you. Clearly, this means you’re his golden boy—which, ew—but go with it.”
Derek pulled her close and his laugher shook her chest, too, lightening her thoughts. “Fine. I’ll take it, but not because it’s easier for me.”
Tilting her head as far back as she could, Callie met his gaze. “My feminine wiles got to you. Finally.”
“My desire to keep you out of jail trumps your wiles.” The quick squeeze he gave her rear was possessive and flirty. Whatever concoction the Charmer had used on him, he was top-notch Derek today. Much of her leftover regret at going to the Soul Charmer’s shop evaporated with that realization.
“Though, feel free to seduce me at your leisure, doll,” he added.
Derek was determined to collect souls that morning. Wounds be damned. He would have found a way to go even without her blessing, so she had agreed in the name of keeping him whole. She needed to balance out the heals/hurts scale after last night. The Railyard District made Callie cringe, but ostensibly the soul renters there were artists, and were quick to give up their borrowed souls so they could get back to blowing glass and welding metal. Derek had suggested she meet him there for brunch, but she was not going to try vegan omelets, even on someone else’s dime.
Despite the magic and everything that had happened with Tess, the mood was light. Derek’s healing deserved the credit. His chest was still tender, but the wound was already closed. At noon all that was left was a dark magenta streak. No matter her stance on soul magic and the bastards who used it, Callie had to admit it was pretty badass.
The levity from his recovery couldn’t overshadow what was to come hours later. Taking the step from petty thief to legit criminal hadn’t ever been on Callie’s life agenda. It was going to happen, though. Tonight. And she still needed a way to halt Derek’s involvement. His feelings for her were destined to implode when he learned she’d tortured Tess. He let people think he’d kill them, but he didn’t leave scars on his marks. Callie had done real damage. It’d be doubly disastrous if he had guilt from helping her with a police break-in. Joy receded from her body, seeping from her bared feet and burying itself in the thin carpet. She probably needed to vacuum.
Callie shuffled the police documents Ford had provided. She recited the access code to the server room, and then peeked at her cheat sheet. This morning, on her way back from the handoff with Benny, she’d remembered the code correctly for the first time, and now she had the numbers down pat.
Three quick raps at her door echoed in her empty apartment. Why was Derek back so soon?
“You forget something—” Speaking while opening the door turned out to be a rookie move. Her hands began to cool immediately.
“Tell me what you did.” Zara shoved past Callie, clocking her shoulder hard enough a bruise would develop by morning.
“Nice to see you, too.” She didn’t bother rubbing at her stinging shoulder. Zara didn’t deserve the satisfaction, and it wouldn’t ease her pain or warm her hands. She gave her mom enough space to keep the icy sensation in check.
Zara’s fingers were curled into little fists that she slammed on her hips. The move might have frightened ten-year-old Callie, but she’d had a decade to get past her mom’s scare tactics. Zara’s blouse—a peasant top whirled with mish-mashed colors—fluttered as she huffed. As though an angry sigh would explain anything to Callie.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Mom.” Josh wouldn’t have divulged about CPS. No way. Not when he was still on the chopping block, damn near literally.
“I went to get my … relief today, and my masseuse was missing. Tess. I guess you know her, and ran her off with some thug.”
A cartoon anvil could have dropped on Callie’s head right then. She locked her jaw and counted to ten before responding. “You know Tess?” Her words were shaky, but the underlining fury rang clear.
“Yes!” Zara was a petite woman under normal circumstances, but as she threw her hands skyward she morphed into a colossus in the one-bedroom apartment. “She helps relieve my stress, and now I can’t get her help because of you.”
Callie shook her head. Tess hadn’t lied. It’d be damn dangerous for Zara to start telling people about Tess and Bianca’s underhanded dealings or their rocky relationship with the Soul Charmer. “What makes you think I have a thing to do with you not being able to get a massage?”
“Her assistant said to talk to you.” The accusation was empty. So she didn’t know as much as Callie had feared. Zara no longer overwhelmed the room. In fact, from the few inches Callie stood taller than her mother, she spied Zara’s roots beginning to show.
If her mother knew, who else might have details about Callie’s involvement in Tess’s capture?
“Mhm, and what else did her assistant say?” Years of playing it cool around her mother paid off.
Zara’s nostrils flared. Funny how calm confidence could make the bullies quake. “She said you knew where Tess was.” Her voice trailed off, her power diminishing.
“You can throw a rock in Gem City and hit a massage therapist. Get a new one.”
Zara took a seat on the couch. Not that she’d been invited to make herself comfortable. Or steal Derek’s spot. Callie clenched her jaw, but parried her blows for what mattered: getting Zara the hell out of her house.
“Tess is so much more.” The ethereal allegiance in Zara’s words was too much.
Callie cut her off. “She’s not good for you.”
“She helps me!”
So that’s where Josh got it. “Lots of people can help you.”
“You’ve never understood. Not everyone is as well-adjusted as you. We can’t just be okay.”
Be. Okay. Was that even a thing? “Are you new? Since when am I living the choice life?”
“Please. You lord your stability over us and then have the audacity to bitch about your bills.”
“I haven’t said shit about bills to you since I was fourteen and you decided the gas bill was less important than a bar night with the girls.” Callie needed to be in a Zen state of mind to pull off this bullshit for Ford tonight, and Zara was not fucking helping.
“Josh told me about how you couldn’t help your own brother out because you owed money.”
“I don’t ‘owe money,’ Mom. I have bills, and, yeah, I don’t have a bunch of cash for him because I’ve already given my savings to him twice. I’m wiped. He’s been using us for years.”
“He’s getting clean. He called me earlier. Said he’s detoxing.”
No, no, no. “Josh called you today?”
“He did, and he asked for my help. He cares about his mama.”
Callie was breaking more laws than she cared to count, working double shifts—first at the home, and then for the Charmer—and to Josh it still wasn’t enough. “What did he ask for?”
“He’ll need a place to stay when he gets out.”
Callie would have provided that, without the added anxiety of some weird reverse Oedipus shit. “And?”
She waved away the question, but still answered under her breath. “A little cash, to get him back on his feet.”
Pretending big favors were little wasn’t about ego with Zara. Guilt filled the bones of every member of the Delgado family. Zara atoned for her self-loathing and shame with her son. In sitcoms the baby was always spoiled, but in Callie’s house it had always been the boy. Josh was where Zara found redemption. There and, apparently, a soul-siphoning masseuse/crazy cult lady.
This conversation was futile, and Callie didn’t have time for it anyway. So she went for the kill strike. “You don’t have cash, Mom.”
“How would you know? You barely visit me.” Zara threw the jabs while getting up from the couch and moving toward the door. She didn’t want to travel this road, either.
“Okay. Whatever. Let me know when you hear from Josh again.”
Zara paused near the door and her shoulders rose as she pulled in a rallying breath. “You find out what happened to Tess, or I’ll—”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll find another way to make this happen. I need the relief a couple times a week, Calliope. I have a life to live, you know.”
It sounded like a threat, but then most conversations with Zara ended that way. “What do you mean?”
“You know.” If she could have underlined her words with a black marker, she would have. Zara was barely the right side of classy to be above using his name, or admitting she knew him.
The Charmer. Of course. “You can say his name, Mom.”
“I only said her name so you’d help. I’m not going to say his name. You shouldn’t either, or the fallout of messing with him is on you.”
She’d been buried under the Delgado family fallout for years. At this point, what was a little more rubble? Soul magic was already in Zara, and the obsession was enough to send her to Callie’s door instead of waiting until the next time the cat got stuck somewhere.
“Go see Father Gonzales.” Callie had to try something.
Zara’s eyes widened. “Excuse me? I see him plenty more than you do.”
“The soul magic doesn’t really fix anything. Work it out with Father Gonzales.”
“Her massages work. They ease the … ” Zara trailed off. When she sniffled a moment later, Callie recognized it was true emotion.
“It ruins you. I can’t explain everything, but you’re chasing highs just like Josh. Don’t fall down that hole, Mom.” She pled like her eight-year-old self would have. That was before Zara slid into total selfishness.
“So you’re saying I’m ruined?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m saying you’re better than letting some hack mess with your soul.”
“I’ll rise up to heaven.” No matter how devout the phrase sounded, the shaky breaths beneath it belied her fear.
“You can do that without Tess.”
“Fine. You’re clearly not interested in helping your own mother. I’ll just have to find someone who can.” With that last barb, Zara slammed the door behind her, and Callie hung her head. The sight of the chipped pink polish on her toes blurred as tears welled in her eyes. It’d been years since her mother had made her cry.
How did you get someone clean from the rush of soul rental? There wasn’t an additive you could just remove from the bloodstream. Callie’s tried-and-true method of hiding from her feelings didn’t make her the expert, but Zara would have to deal with her guilt to get free of that need. Callie wasn’t Zara’s biggest fan, but family came first, and there was no way she’d allow the Soul Charmer to rent to her mom.
“You don’t have to do this,” Derek said for the eight hundredth time. He’d parked his motorcycle in the same alley where they’d first met. She’d spent the afternoon worrying over how to keep her mom from the Charmer’s doorstep, and now the sun had set and she was the one slumming it downtown.
Callie rolled her eyes. “We both know I do.”
“Why not just—”
“There’s no ‘just’ anything. Not with this. Ford was clear this was a requirement. He’s right. I’m not having this traced to me.”
“I don’t like it.” His lips pulled tight, and every muscle on his face hardened.
“I’ve never liked the idea of renting a soul, and now that I know so much more my distaste has quadrupled, but guess what? The whole reason I agreed to work for the Charmer was for this soul. So I could do this job and save my brother.” Case closed.
Derek nodded, accepting he would lose this battle. He stowed their helmets on his bike and took her hand, and then led her in the side door of the Soul Charmer’s shop. She stayed in the hallway with a million picture frames while he went ahead to get the Charmer.
The anteroom was smaller than she’d realized. The black ceiling soared above her, but she could touch both walls simultaneously if she stretched her arms airplane style. Focusing on any one frame set her skin crawling. Every feature except for the eyes was blurred in the portraits. They watched her. There wasn’t enough magic in this room to turn her hands painful, but she didn’t feel alone. Hopefully that didn’t have anything to do with the woman she’d left in the building’s basement. Everything the Soul Charmer touched unnerved her, and she was about to let him touch her again. Josh owed her. Big time.
Derek peered in from the workroom and nodded to her.
“Ah, Calliope, dear. Is it already time for this?” There was no way she’d told the Charmer her full name. Her skin continued to crawl, but it had little to do with magic.
“Can we get this over with?”
He beckoned her with a rheumatic finger. “In a rush to get your first taste?”
No, she was exhausted after dealing with every egotistical, jerk-faced person in her life in a single goddamn day. Add in her general fear of shoving another person’s soul into her body, and the fact she was on the verge of stealing from the police, and she wasn’t really in the mood for his insinuating tone. But she needed the damn thing, and she needed it with as little commentary as possible. “Let’s just do this.”
The corners of his mouth pulled downward, cutting deep grooves in his cheeks. “You’re no fun today. You wanted an unsullied soul, yes?”
She nodded. Why was she doing this? Oh right. Family.
“It’s more fun when the soul is less like your own,” he taunted.
The memory of the man in the hospital rushed to the forefront of her mind. “The less of a mess we make of my soul, the better.”
He arched a brow. Was she not supposed to know it would mangle her soul? Had she broken Derek’s trust with that comment? Fuck.
The Charmer began to extend a hand toward her, but Callie stopped him. “Wait. Just whose soul is going into me?”
“You worked two weeks for this. Do you think I’m going to provide subpar wares?”
“No, I just … what kind of person?”
The Charmer’s lips thinned, but he answered her question. “I don’t do this normally, but, fine: mid-forties woman. No kids. Worked for the Church. That’s all I’ll say.”
Callie nodded. It was better than nothing.
The Soul Charmer pressed two fingers against the hollow at Callie’s neck. He better not cut her. When she flinched, he whispered, “Close your eyes and breathe. It won’t hurt.”
She noted he hadn’t said anything about not injuring her, because they would have both recognized that lie.
Despite the magic swirling in the room, none of Callie’s flared. His cold fingers traced down her sternum to stop between her breasts. Derek huffed at her side. She held back her smile. No need to let the Soul Charmer get any more glimpses of their connection.
“Deep breath, girl.”
She ignored the condescending tone and did as she was told, and then the air rushed out of her. He hadn’t hit her, but her ribcage vibrated like she’d taken one hell of a wallop. She staggered back and Derek caught her. “You good, doll?”
“Not sure,” she muttered, low enough for his ears only. The experience of soul renting had been touted as euphoric; a coworker once said it was better than the relief of every religious confession combined.
“Is that it?” she asked the Charmer.
“Is that it?” He beamed, as though such a question tickled his scaly heart. “Don’t you feel her mingling with you?”
Callie searched her mind. Should there be another voice? Was she supposed to feel like a different person? Did she suddenly want to tell Josh to save his own damn self? Nope, nope, and nope. “Should I?”
Nothing had unnerved Callie more than hearing an elderly creep like the Soul Charmer giggle. “Perhaps not.”
“It worked, though, right, boss?” Derek asked the question Callie was too scared to pose.
He stared at her chest. The perv. “Oh, the second soul is in there. It’s less bright than her own, but it’s still quite visible.”
“Mine’s brighter?” Even after what she did to Tess?
The Charmer grinned, clearly on to the direction of Callie’s thoughts. “Yes, it’s still quite pure,” was all he said, though.
Her mother had barged into her apartment in search of this high. Joey had gone and gotten another one even after being threatened. People blew paycheck after paycheck on this. Callie didn’t get it. She’d witnessed the high in others. She’s glimpsed the glassy-eyed indulgence. All Callie got was a heavy ick factor at the idea that there was a bonus soul inside her and she’d let the Charmer put it there.
Callie cast a skeptical look toward Derek. “And people get hooked on this?”
He shrugged.
“My magic does change things, but I expect you’ll still rather enjoy the benefits of the soul. Bring it back when you’re done,” the Charmer said, effectively dismissing them.
Business with him had never been this easy. He had to have some plan in play, but Callie’s mind had been run too ragged to recognize it.
She didn’t have time to spare either; she was due at the police station within the hour.
“We need to check your wound.” Callie rushed Derek into her apartment.
“I can handle a little soreness. We shouldn’t be risking you being late over a damn healed injury.”
She waited for him to meet her gaze, and then rolled her eyes. “Healed injury? You were stabbed. Yesterday.”
He stripped his shirt over his head. “Fine.”
After he’d sat on the edge of her bed, Callie ran her palm across the angry red mark on his upper chest. It was raised, like scar tissue, but the healing process had been so fast that the whole thing didn’t make a lot of sense. The area around the healed gouge was still warm, though. “You’re still running a fever.”
He gave her a look that said he’d bust out a thermometer to prove her wrong. “A fever isn’t going to stop me from getting you to that job.”
Did he know what she was trying to do? No, he couldn’t know. The Charmer hadn’t been alone with him long enough to tell him about Callie’s scalding meeting with the queen of soul massage. In fact, the entire time they were there, the Charmer hadn’t cracked a single joke about her being beneath their feet. Which in hindsight seemed a bit weird….
“You need to stay here. Ford didn’t want you involved anyway, and I don’t want to risk you getting hurt a second time on my account.” It was the truth, foreign and real coming from her lips.
He launched to his feet, but wobbled when he got there. “I choose what I risk and for whom.”
Her heart squeezed twice, once because he clearly cared about her, and second because of how guilty she felt about it. The Charmer might say her soul was still pure, but she couldn’t take it if he were wrong. If Derek saw how fucked up she really was. She had to do this alone. Burning bridges now kept him safer long term. She swallowed back her fear and accepted that he meant something to her, and that she was doing this for his own good. “Will you at least take something for the fever? Just a Tylenol or something?”
“To make you happy. Yeah.”
The Vicodin she handed him was too big to pass for a pain reliever, but he didn’t even glance at it before tossing the pill into his mouth and swallowing. “Better?”
Her hollow voice shook. “Yeah.”
Callie adjusted Derek on her bed a few minutes later. That shit worked fast. He was still conscious enough to talk, but not to do much else.
“Why?” he eked out, having figured out that she’d tricked him. She was such an asshole.
“You’re too good to be involved with all my crazy.”
She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. If you stay, you can be mad at me then.”
Callie didn’t wait for his mumbled response. She didn’t expect him to still be at her apartment when she returned. Drugging the dude you cared about tended to be a relationship killer. But better that he severed ties with her than get pulled in deeper with Ford.
Enough people she cared about were already under the gangster’s thumb. She wouldn’t pull Derek under just so she could escape.