—— CHAPTER FOUR ——
Callie’s throat tightened, each slow-motion swallow enflaming her panic. Fiery sparks pricked her lungs. Her brain was being goddamn ridiculous, and there wasn’t an easy fix. Her palms hadn’t dried since leaving The Fall. Derek’s presence helped at the time. Now they were alone, on his bike, and Callie was having second thoughts that she was all that much safer in his care. Was trading up to the bigger predator really an improvement? It was easy to forget that Derek worked for the Soul Charmer, and the Soul Charmer’s goons couldn’t be good guys. They were the kind of men who punched people in the face without fear of repercussions. They made threats and people obeyed.
Callie had just seen it up close and personal.
The shit she did for Josh. He’d dug himself in deep this time, and she was side-stepping scorpions to rescue him.
It might have been the oxygen deprivation, but she couldn’t decide if she was terrified or thrilled. As scary as the whole situation was, she couldn’t help admitting that being on the side that didn’t cower, the side of power, provided enough of a rush to open her airways. She didn’t feel safe. Not even a little. But the strength of being linked to Derek (even if technically he was linked to the Charmer) offered to galvanize her insides. If she’d let it.
The price of doing so might be more than she was willing to pay. She was already an indentured servant for two weeks. She was severely lacking in goods to trade. Now she was sitting in a stranger’s apartment with a strange man she’d only met a few hours earlier, and she had no idea what they were doing here, other than waiting for the owner to return. So why was she kind of okay with it?
Derek toed at a black smudge on the floor with his boot.
“How long ‘til he comes back?” she asked. Not soon enough.
“Tough to say.” His eyes stayed glued to the floor.
“That’s not very helpful.”
He looked up at that. A wry smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Why should I be helpful for free?”
“Are you suggesting you’ll only help the Soul Charmer then?” Irritation and humor both tugged at her.
“Not necessarily. I get paid in all sorts of ways.” What the hell does that mean? she thought. It sounded too close to sexual.
She slapped an open palm against the top of the table between them and instantly regretted it. The Formica looked as though the last time it was clean was when it came out of the factory. In 1953. “Gross,” she said to both Derek and the dirt and dust smeared on her hand.
His chuckle melted some of her ire, which was frustrating in its own way. “You’re too easy, you know that?”
She’d expected to still find humor in his eyes when she met his gaze, but there was none. Instead his brows furrowed as though he was attempting to peer into her skull and see the moving cogs. Could he see the cobwebs, too? The bits of tar and dust her brain had gathered from years of taking care of her mom and her brother in the shit part of town? No. Of course not. The Soul Charmer had granted Derek the skills to reclaim untethered souls, not X-ray vision.
“How long until McCabe shows up?”
She noticed for the first time that fine stubble had grown in along his jaw since they’d first met. He rubbed his fingers across it, and Callie’s fingers curled into a fist in asinine and unbidden jealousy. “Not sure when he’ll get here, to be honest. If I knew, we wouldn’t be sitting in his shitty apartment, would we?”
Callie shot him a dirty look.
“But I have it on good authority a girl he wants to sleep with is going to be at the bar around the corner in an hour and this jackass is going to want a shower first. I expect he’ll be here in the next twenty or so.”
“You’re banking on a shower?”
“Even dirtbags know a lady likes it when they smell nice.”
Derek smelled nice. The thought popped into Callie’s head before she could stop it, and she sat up straight, clearing her thoughts. Dwelling on the clean scent of Derek’s skin didn’t change the fact she barely knew him. What the hell was going on with her? “Well, I could probably survive another twenty minutes. Provided I don’t touch anything.”
“Heaven forbid.” He held his hands up in mock horror, and she let herself smile. Just once.
“That’s more like it,” he said, punctuating it with a grunt.
“Can I ask you a question?” They had time to kill. It wouldn’t hurt to try to find out a little something about the guy she’d be spending the new two weeks working with. What’s the worst he could say? No?
He smirked, and she thought he was going to ignore her. Then he said, “Fine. Ask away.”
“Can you do magic, too?”
“No. That’s the Charmer’s deal.”
“You see ads for it all the time … ” She trailed off.
He picked up the thread. Thank God. “Most of that shit is fake. Magic is an apprentice trade.”
He didn’t elaborate, but Callie was good with that. It was okay with her if the details of a soul magic tutorial forever remained unknown to her. Especially if it didn’t have anything to do with Derek.
“Okay, my turn.” He shifted gears so smoothly. He had charisma. She’d give him that. “What’s Callie short for?”
She groaned internally and looked around the apartment for a window she could jump out of. Of all the questions he could have asked … quickly, and as concealed by her breath as possible, she whispered, “Calliope.”
“Calliope?” His belly laugh could have woken the dead. Or at least disturbed the neighbors.
“What’s so goddamn funny? Maybe I should ask for your middle name and start mocking it.”
“Go ahead; it’s Alexander. Next?”
“No, really, why did you alert everyone in a two-mile radius to our presence over my name?” She’d been mocked for it since she was old enough for kids to talk. She’d grown up, embraced the nickname. She would be damned if some biker thug was going to make her feel bad about it now.
“Not laughing at you. Just too appropriate.” He smiled, and even though the initial wave of defensiveness still hadn’t worn off completely, she realized that there wasn’t a hint of maliciousness in his tone. “It’s been business as usual for six solid months. No fuck-ups. No difficult runners. The last couple weeks have been busy. You show up, and now the circus is coming to town.”
“You can hardly blame me for that.” Her shrug hinted at chagrin. Since he hadn’t clued her in as to what they were actually doing, how was she supposed to know what was normal and what wasn’t in the soul retrieval biz?
“True. And I don’t. Not really.” He paused, his gaze flitting to the door. After a moment he shook it off and continued. “Something’s been coming. Charmer’s been loaning more than usual lately.”
“Really? I’d figured business would be pretty steady by now.” Callie had always figured the draw of guilt-free sinning had to be irresistible to a certain percentage of the Gem City population, and the fact that there was always crime and shady shit to do meant there would be perpetual interest in his services. So why would business be any busier than usual?
“It is. It ebbs and flows like any other gig. Gets weird around full moons. You’d think the place was an emergency room the way the lobby packs up with people trying to snag a soul for the night.”
“Are they good about returning the souls they rent? The full moon ones, I mean.”
“Not really. It’s like they’re coeds on spring break, and the high they get from the freedom hooks ‘em fast. They get their soul and then fully let go. I spend full-moon nights trying to keep the line of people that’s gathered outside in order. Then a few days later I’m seeing them again when I’m retrieving.” He said “retrieving” like it was a noble profession. Callie didn’t know anyone who would think that kind of work would be honorable, but she wondered if they were in the dark about the truth. Was she in the dark?
“You like your job?”
He nodded. “People don’t realize what housing someone else’s soul inside you does. There are consequences. It’s fighting with your own soul the whole time. It’s wicked and leaves the host scarred, you know, in here.” He tapped two fingers against his breastbone. “Do it too long and you’ll go crazy.”
“I didn’t know that.” But Callie thought it made sense. Gem City had more sanitariums than hospitals. The officials said they were the seat of the state, but maybe it had more to do with the side effects of having a local Soul Charmer.
“You’re probably not supposed to.” He laughed again, this time maudlin. “Never had a partner before.”
“Maybe you needed one.” What made her say that? Callie didn’t want to be here. Derek obviously liked working alone. She was only here to help her brother and get out. Why then did she have to fight the urge to reach across the table to take his hand? Clearly it’d been too long since she’d had an honest conversation with anyone.
Derek snapped out of whatever deep thoughts had turned his blue eyes to a cold grey. “Charmer doesn’t work in fate, and if he did you’d be getting the raw end of the deal. You’re a time-saver, though. Usually I drag their asses back to him for extraction.”
Her reply was cut off by the sound a key sliding home in the front door’s lock. Derek quickly shot her a “More, later” look and moved toward the door.
It was time to retrieve a soul. Her first one. Callie crossed her fingers that McCabe would be reasonable, that everything would go smoothly, that no one would get hurt. Deep down, though, she knew the odds weren’t in her favor.
Callie had already watched Derek flaunt his size and power once earlier. When he’d come to her aid at The Fall, it was the kind of thing you’d want your boyfriend to do for you, but would never admit aloud. Not that she found him lover material.
As McCabe’s key clicked in the lock, Derek pressed himself against the wall next to the door. Derek hadn’t suggested she move, so Callie remained seated at the kitchen table. She burrowed her hands into the pocket of her hoodie, finding the flask and pressing a clammy palm against the cool stone exterior.
McCabe leaned into his apartment. His head crossed the threshold before his feet. The smack of Derek’s hand connecting with the nape of McCabe’s neck made Callie flinch. Derek had ditched his jacket earlier, allowing him to move more freely. Not that it mattered much. While muscles popped and cut along his stretched arm as he guided McCabe forward, the rest of his body remained at ease. He swept a foot to the right and ghosted the man to the ground, pinning him there with only his hand and a knee.
Their target sputtered profanities and professed innocence in equal measure. Derek spoke over him, to Callie, as though the man pinned to the floor didn’t exist. “You waiting for a formal invitation?”
Her head spun. He’d been way too casual about throwing a man to the ground. She took a steadying breath. “Aren’t you going to give him a chance to return it?”
“He’s had plenty of chances to do that already. We don’t sell souls. Just rent them.” That callous tone, the same one he’d leveraged back at the bar, was in his voice again.
“Who’s she?” McCabe spat the question. Derek pressed the writhing man further into the floor.
Callie gritted her teeth. It was true; she didn’t know the history here. McCabe’s frame was lean—completely dwarfed by Derek, but then so was she—and track marks pocked his skinny arms. Junkies weren’t the most reliable. Josh taught her that.
It didn’t matter. Harvesting souls from meth heads while her terrifying biker acquaintance brought the muscle was now her night gig. And to think her mother worried she’d become a stripper.
Callie slid her hands out of her hoodie. She gripped the flask in her right hand. Her thumb skimmed up and down on the onyx inlay. She was ninety-eight percent sure her hand was tingling, but it could have been the lingering effects of mental whiplash from seeing Derek go from laidback to Rambo in the blink of an eye. He held McCabe so effortlessly. As if he did this kind of thing every day. Fuck. He probably did do this kind of thing every day.
She stood and stepped closer. “So I just touch this to the front of him, right?” She didn’t recognize her reedy voice. She’d been through so much and this was what tripped her up? She ordered herself to get a grip.
“Yeah. Get over here, and I’ll flip him.” Derek’s arm was flexed, but she didn’t see strain in the rest of his body. The edge in his voice steeled her stomach. If he could fake it, she could harden up, too—at least on the outside.
Callie was still standing two feet away from McCabe. She shuffled forward until the rubber tips of her shoes almost touched his elbow. The man’s skin was ashen. Derek grimaced.
“McCabe, no chance you want to make this a little easier for us?” Derek asked the prostrate man.
“Fuck, man! That’s what I’ve been saying. Just let me explain—”
“No,” Derek cut him off. “We aren’t here for stories and excuses. You’re going to keep your goddamn hands to yourself when I roll you.”
McCabe stopped thrashing and the muscles in Derek’s forearm visibly relaxed. Callie had no doubt he was still in control. “Right. Yeah. Whatever you say, man.”
Derek continued as though McCabe hadn’t spoken. “And if you so much as graze her, I’m breaking something of yours. We clear?”
“Y-y-yes.”
“What was that?”
“Yes.” His answer was firmer this time.
Derek inclined his head toward Callie. “Ready? One, two, three.” On the third count, Derek moved to McCabe’s side while wrenching the man’s shoulder to flip him onto his back. Once McCabe’s shoulder blades knocked against the worn floor, Derek snapped forward to press his forearm across McCabe’s cheek and neck. It forced the man to look away from her, but she still caught a glimpse of the dark halos framing his sunken eyes. There were decent odds Callie would be heaving shortly, as soon as feeling returned to her body, that is. At least McCabe wouldn’t see her. She let out a little sigh of relief. This ghastly man probably wouldn’t remember her after they left. He’d remember Derek though. There was security in pretending she wasn’t really a part of this moment.
Callie’s fingers turned ghastly against the black flask. She swallowed her nerves and it felt like the sound of it filled the apartment. This is crazy, she thought.
“Hey.” Derek’s voice had lost its earlier nastiness. “Just press the opening to his sternum, and we’re done.”
Uncertainty tainted his words. Or maybe she was projecting.
She nodded twice, and then flipped open the lid on the flask. Her breath hitched when the small metal cap clinked against the side. Callie pressed the opening against McCabe’s chest as lightly as she could—the metal grazing his black tee shirt.
Nothing happened, as far as she could tell. Wasn’t something supposed to? The Soul Charmer had acted like any idiot could do this, but how was she supposed to know when it worked? Perhaps she was a special kind of idiot. God. She should have asked more questions.
She pressed the flask a little firmer. If she could get this done without knocking the wind out of McCabe, it would be a win.
Still nothing.
“Derek?” She whispered his name, unconcerned she was practically pleading. She just wanted it to be over as soon as possible. The whole situation was giving her the creeps.
“It should be warm.” His hushed tone matched hers.
Callie’s hands tightened on the flask. “It’s not.”
“Fuck.” And with one simple word, Derek shattered her hopes of a quick, simple first night on the job.
He nudged Callie with an elbow. She rocked back onto her haunches, putting the flask in her lap. She eased her grip, and warmth spread into her hands, fingertips first.
Derek eased his forearm from the other man’s face. The junkie’s smushed cheek righted itself with the elasticity of pudding. A violent storm roiled in Callie’s stomach. She might not wait until they left the apartment to puke.
“What did you do?” Derek’s metered words were for McCabe.
“I told you that I needed to explain.” Rubbing it in wasn’t going to do any good, Callie thought as she watched.
Derek didn’t bother repeating his question. Instead he took McCabe’s hand and twisted. The man yelped in obvious pain.
“She took it,” McCabe yelled. “I wanted to keep it. The fucking feeling, man, but she took it.”
Derek arched an eyebrow, but didn’t push further on the hand he held.
“She’s the one on those flyers down in Forrest. She wears those scarves. She came yesterday,” McCabe said, the words tumbling from his lips.
Callie couldn’t keep up. She’d seen the flyers, though. “The chakra massage lady?”
“Yeah.” McCabe’s deadened eyes darted in Callie’s direction. Damn it.
Derek finally released McCabe’s hand. “The soul didn’t belong to you. Why did you give it to her?”
McCabe scrambled backward a few feet, to a seated position on the floor. “Have you seen her? She’s, you know, distracting.”
“A woman gives you a hard-on, and you give over a soul that doesn’t belong to you?”
“She’s going to save the world, man.” McCabe believed everything he read, apparently.
Derek rolled his eyes as he lifted himself up from the floor. “She’s out for herself, McCabe. Like everyone else.”
Then he turned and held out a hand to Callie. “Ready to leave, doll?”
Confusion clouded her mind and it was as though stomach acid had torn through most of her stomach lining.
McCabe sputtered, “We good?” but Derek ignored him. Callie did, too.
She’d hit her emotional stress limit for the day, and answered Derek definitively: “Hell yes.”