—— CHAPTER SIX ——
Callie’s fingers were no longer glowing. She’d stared at them for the last hour and a half, and zero light had shot out. If she watched them all night, she swore she could convince herself the magic-fingers shtick hadn’t happened.
It might have been easier if her hoodie hadn’t held on to a mix of Derek’s clean masculine scent and the musky spice of the Soul Charmer’s shop. She’d taken the sweatshirt off and shoved it deep in the hamper an hour ago, but the aromas still filled her nose.
She needed to get a grip. Her fingers weren’t going to glow again. It was like a watched pot; it would never boil. She scrubbed her normal hands across her face, but the slight roughness of her palms against her cheeks wasn’t enough to remove the grime of what she’d gotten into that day.
Callie moved into the kitchenette. She scooped some Folgers and put it in the coffee maker. Caffeine could fix anything, right? As the machine did its thing, she gathered a mug from the cabinet. The flock of little chinstrap penguins on the cup made her smile. Her cheeks ached. Letting go of her locked jaw probably had something to do with that.
The aging mug with its chipped handle was a relic of better times with Josh, a souvenir from the Gem City Zoo, and one of the best days of her life. She’d been eleven, and any school field trip should have filled her with excitement, except she’d spent much of the fifth grade hiding the fact that she didn’t have much of an “immediate family.” The other kids’ moms dropped them off at school with kisses on the cheek and lunchboxes filled with snack packs. Her mom had missed every parent-teacher conference for the prior three years.
At the time, Zara, Callie’s mother, had been working three jobs. Later, as an adult, Callie understood. Mostly. Her mom hadn’t been around because she needed to wait tables or stock shelves to make sure there was enough money to cover her bills. It was normal for Callie to go days without seeing her, and the lead-up to that field trip was no different. She’d left the permission form on the kitchen table one night and it was signed the next morning when she got up. Per usual the box regarding volunteers was unchecked.
The other kids’ parents had been nice enough to her. She’d grown accustomed to latching on to a chaperone and pretending no one noticed she didn’t have her own. Only the trip to Gem City Zoo was different. That glorious sunny day, Josh had come through. As they stood in line to board the bus, her sixteen-year-old brother darted up beside her.
“Sorry I’m late, kiddo.” Back then he’d been like a god to her. Their five-year age gap meant so much more when they were little.
“You’re coming with us?” She remembered staring up at him. He’d had a growth spurt the previous month, and was already edging toward six feet tall.
He’d scuffed his knuckles in her hair. “Like I’d miss the chance to go to the zoo with you.”
“Mom know?” she’d asked, scared about the answer.
“Don’t start worrying on me. Your teacher’s cool with it, so we’re good.” Even then, she’d fretted over consequences. Josh hadn’t, but at sixteen he was better about coming through for her.
He had, too. She had the cool older brother who wanted to spend time with her. He’d stayed at her side, and explained how the chimpanzees’ shoulders worked to let them swing. He’d then demonstrated on a lamppost to the delight of her friends, too. For once, she had family others envied. Her chances to relish in the sin of pride had been scarce at that age, and she’d reveled it. Probably best she wasn’t rich. That shit could get out of control.
Josh had bought her the mug, and wouldn’t let her worry about where the money came from. The penguins had been her favorite, and for the last nine years she’d used the penguin mug whenever she was sick. It was the feel-better mug.
It might not have the power to pull her out of the hole she’d dug herself into with the Soul Charmer, though. Josh was worth it, even if he’d hurt her as they’d both gotten older. His mistakes didn’t negate the fact he was the one who looked after her until she was in high school, when their roles began to reverse. Committing a crime on her big brother’s behalf was a new low for her. She’d said it was the farthest she’d ever go, but when she’d made those promises to Josh (and to Ford) she hadn’t realized just how much this would taint her.
She poured the fresh coffee into her cup. The Soul Charmer had a reputation, but magic was still the unspoken new evil in her world. Its prevalence during the last ten years didn’t make it less mysterious. She’d only spent one day as part of the Soul Charmer’s team, but already felt like he had changed her. True, her fingers were no longer glowing, and her skin wasn’t tingling. That didn’t stop her stomach from fluttering. Two weeks of souls and magic had sounded simple. Now she knew better.
She needed to fight to stay the same Callie. She might not want to know this world, but she was a part of it now. She wrapped her hands around the hot mug, appreciating its warmth. She needed to put Derek in his place tomorrow. An ally would sure as shit help her get through the job, but he’d failed pretty miserably there at the shop, and he needed to know that. She sipped the coffee. She’d find strength to do it all, for Josh. Stubbornness had gotten her this far in life. If she could keep the steel in her spine from melting every time she was near soul magic, she might have a chance.
Callie muddled through the breakfast shift at the retirement home the next morning, dishing up the eggs, toast, and occasional slice of bacon at a pace more akin to the home’s residents than her usual speed. If any of the clients complained, it didn’t make it to her ears, though she wasn’t exactly giving them much attention. A collective two and a half hours sleep the previous night wasn’t enough, especially when it came in twenty-minute intervals.
She grabbed the list for the special diets and began filling the trays accordingly.
“You’re slamming those things in the rack with some force,” Louisa said, not missing a beat as she diced a handful of green onions.
Callie glanced at the rolling metal rack. It had scooted back a couple inches from when she’d started loading it, but all the food was still secured under the lids. “Sorry for my bad mood.” She meant it to be a genuine apology.
“Do I need to slip a couple fingers into your coffee?” Louisa’s tone was light, but Callie knew the woman was dead serious; she stashed a couple bottles—tequila and whiskey—in the drawer beneath the aluminum foil.
Callie surprised herself with a genuine laugh. At least someone was looking out for her. “Nah, Lou, I got more problems than a shot of your shitty tequila can fix.”
“You underestimate just how much tequila can fix.”
“It’s been a rough one.” Callie bit back the details. As soon as Josh had been taken, she’d needed to pluck her heart from her sleeve and stash it deep. Bottling her feelings was second nature to her. “Too bad they don’t make something strong enough to make you forget how sucky your life’s gotten.”
Louisa put down the knife, clearly not kidding around anymore. “They do. It’s called meth, and you and I both know it ain’t worth it.”
“Yeah,” Callie whispered. Lou’s son was addicted to the bathtub drug. He’d stolen from her, but hadn’t liquidated her savings. Callie hoped her experiences with Josh could keep Louisa from making those same mistakes, but deep down, she knew they wouldn’t. She and Lou were the same. Family came first, even if that family abused your love.
Lou grabbed a fresh batch of green onions. “You want to talk about it?”
Yes. “Not now, but thanks.”
Lou’s voice lowered when she spoke again. “Some of the ladies from my church have tried that soul borrowing thing. Bette said it eased her guilt. Father Domingo told me the church wouldn’t look down on anyone who used it to ease past transgressions. I know you wouldn’t be using it to cheat on anyone, so it’s safe to try it, I suppose. Don’t know what you’re caught up in, but maybe it could help.”
Callie stiffened. She couldn’t escape her thoughts of the Soul Charmer. Last week the comment would barely have scratched the surface. Now it dug under her skin. Seven days ago, soul magic was merely an easy escape whispered among sinners or advertised next to strip joints in the final pages of Gem City Weekly. How quickly perceptions could shift. “Nah,” she eked out, for Louisa’s benefit.
Her boss nodded, and turned back to her vegetable prep. They worked quietly for several minutes. Callie prepared meal trays and Louisa chopped everything she needed for her chicken tortilla soup. It was nice to focus on the mundane. Food was security, and today, more than usual, Callie clung to it like her favorite blankie.
It couldn’t last; it never did. “Trays are done,” Callie eventually called over her shoulder as she wheeled the cart near the kitchen’s side door and locked it in place.
“Thanks, but can you go ahead and take them on down to the ward?” Louisa was asking a big favor, and yet she couldn’t have been more casual about it. Either that, or she was full of bullshit. “Jo’s out sick today,” she tacked on after seeing Callie’s death glare.
“Fine,” she muttered, as she unlocked the wheels and started rolling the metal cart out of the kitchen.
The unyielding astringent scent of the Home grew stronger with every step she took toward the psych ward. Not that anyone at Cedar Retirement ever called it such. No one needed to be reminded that getting old could make you crazy. There were plenty of things out there that caused mental health issues, but the reminder that time was one of them was simply too unnerving for the staff.
Callie neared the first set of locked double doors, and fished in her pocket for her access card. Ninety percent of the residents in the ward were dementia patients. They were the reason Callie didn’t want to visit. She could handle sick. She could cope with old. She could not, however, swing sweet people whom you couldn’t trust. That was the ward. She wanted to be a better person, but the wing behind the locked doors gutted her. She’d been stabbed with a pen the first time she’d visited.
She’d been in the process of setting a tray out for a kind lady, commenting on the beautiful floral arrangement on a side table. The irises at the center were Callie’s favorites. The woman, Sara, said her son had brought them, and invited Callie to take a closer look. She’d obliged. The head nurse later told her the lighting change in the room had set Sara off. The woman had become convinced Callie was her long-dead husband’s mistress who had arrived to steal her flowers. That kind elderly woman had then jammed a ballpoint into Callie’s thigh. A couple centimeters to the right and she could have nicked the tendon.
Trusting people was a luxury. The ward illustrated that beautifully.
“Excuse me. Can you let me in there?” A woman with a thick braid draped over her shoulder and piercing blue eyes stopped Callie outside the ward’s entrance.
Occasionally family members—the ones shitty about visiting—asked for directions. Callie could put on a customer service smile when required. “Who are you visiting? I can point you in the right direction.”
“I’m not visiting. I’m here to treat the residents.” Saccharine sincerity bubbled over the confidence in each word. The lady was laying it on thick, and Callie didn’t quite buy it.
The woman might actually need to be secured in the ward herself, despite being a couple decades younger than most residents. It wasn’t the weirdest thing to have ever happened at the Home, and it didn’t hurt to be a little extra careful. “Oh, I see. Can I see your employee badge?”
“Oh, honey, I don’t work here. Not like that, anyway.” With a sweet smile plastered on her face, the woman wiggled her fingers at Callie. “Massage.”
The flowing skirt and spacey countenance she wore matched the profile of those who visited for therapeutic massage. Except for one element. “Okay. Where’s your table?”
“With the elderly, it’s simpler to ease them in their own beds,” the woman replied.
“Oh. The others always bring tables.”
“I focus on energy and overall well-being more than deep kneading.” Her voice had a lulling quality. It was probably helpful in her profession.
“Like chakra alignment?” Callie remembered her cousin Jackie saying that crystals had reinvigorated her. The business cards Jackie had shown her called the woman she was seeing a healing specialist, for what it was worth.
“Something along those lines.” The woman paused to offer an overly sweet smile again, the kind strangers flashed before coming in for a hug. Callie resisted the urge to step backward, and the woman kept her distance. “I ease their souls so they can improve the world.”
For as long as Callie could remember, a strong undercurrent of the mystical had run beneath the smothering omnipresence of the church’s religious authority in Gem City. In fact, most of the state was open to both healing crystals and Cortean Catholicism. You had to travel fairly far over state lines to find skeptics. That temptation to escape to the land of non-believers had been palpable when she was a teenager who had no interest in church confessions or having her aura read. Before she knew soul magic existed.
The woman was too woo-woo for Callie. She didn’t care much about energy and chakras and hunks of rock hidden under beds. One could find a massage spa or three in every Gem City neighborhood, and the therapists were good about visiting Cedar Retirement for real work. Still, Callie hadn’t seen this woman before. “Right, well, I can’t let you into the locked wards. Visit the front desk and someone can escort you to the patients you’re cleared to help today.” She pointed toward the hallway leading to the information desk.
The woman keened her head to the right and smiled. “You could use a massage.” It wasn’t a question.
Her fake laugh didn’t fool the massage lady.
“I could balance your energy. It would only take a moment.” She took a step toward Callie.
She stepped back to maintain the distance between them. “No time. Sorry. People are waiting on lunch. I’ll see you around.” Her stomach twisted.
“Thanks.” The other woman’s gentle smile didn’t falter, but relief washed over Callie as she departed.
Callie buzzed herself and the large rack of meals through both sets of doors, but stopped immediately inside the ward. It wasn’t the beeps of medical machines or the soft voices that made her uneasy. Those were normal. It wasn’t the too-white walls, either.
Her fingers were frozen. Not. Normal.
This was no case of shitty circulation, or someone screwing with the thermostat. She tried to let go of the cart, but her fingers barely moved. Her dark blue nail polish was chipped and peeling, but the fact her skin was beginning to take on a similar hue was more concerning. She pried a hand from the cart and lifted it closer to inspect. Her skin was turning a cool grey color. Great. She was locked in a facility with the dying, while her skin took on its own ghastly shade. That had to be a bad sign. About right for this week. Brother abducted. Shanghaied into the service of the mafia, and then blackmailed into working for the goddamn Soul Charmer. And now her fingers were turning necrotic and would probably fall off any second. Could she bail on the deal with Ford if she didn’t have fingers? There was a fucked-up silver lining.
“Girl!” The shout shook Callie from her spiraling stress. She looked to find one of the residents, face red as he hollered to get her attention. Maybe he’d been at it awhile. How long had he been right next to her?
“Yes?” She did her best to bite back the nasty instinct clawing at her throat.
“You gonna stand there all day?” As he finished speaking, an orderly rushed up and corralled him.
“Sorry about Mr. Beck. He’s been in a mood lately,” the orderly said.
As the moody Mr. Beck moved away, Callie’s fingers began to regain their dexterity, and the color lost the undead sheen. What the hell had that been all about? “Sure, thanks,” she muttered, trying to hold it together.
The orderly gave her a genuine smile, and went back to his duties. Callie did the same. She tried to stay focused on getting to the end of the hallway, on finishing the task she’d come here to do. The local news was playing on a television mounted in the far corner. She’d start at the end, and work her way back to the way she came in, toward the door and her escape.
She took a deep breath, and started down the corridor, barely taking more than a few steps before her hands went AWOL, turning frigidly cold again. Callie’s head was spinning. She told herself to keep moving. Another few steps, and the cold almost immediately thawed, and her hands returned to a normal temperature. A few more steps and they were back to freezing again.
The sensory overload was overwhelming, almost too much to handle. She didn’t know what was setting her off, but the sooner she got out of the ward, the better.
She passed the small lounge area on the right. Usually family members joined the patients to play cards here. No one was visiting now. She glanced at the TV blaring from its corner mount in the nook, and damn near skidded to a stop when she saw Ford on the screen. He was playing up his teenage looks in a blue and white button-up shirt, even though he was nearly thirty. His blue eyes glinted as camera flashes lit the scene. He was speaking with a reporter. The ticker below read MOB BOSS’S SON IMPLICATED IN NARCOTICS RING. The time stamp said the clip was from the day before, but Callie could feel Ford in the room with her. He flaunted that genial, nice-guy charm as he spoke past the reporter and directly into the camera. “My father made mistakes. No one denies that. His Alzheimer’s puts him at no risk to anyone, though. I’m just trying to keep Ford Aluminum—the business he bled to build—up and running while taking care of my family.”
A shiver spiked down Callie’s spine. Great. Clenching the tray did little to alleviate her anxiety. She spared another look at the screen. The camera had refocused on the reporter, but in the background, fidgeting with her overly long braid, was the massage therapist Callie had met in the hallway moments ago. She was positive it was her. Did the masseuse know Ford? Did she work for him?
The blood drained from her face as realization dawned on her. Had she been sent to check up on Callie?
This world was officially too fucking small.
Mundane work would have to be her savior. She would simply have to focus on completing one task at a time instead of letting her mind wander. She brought the first tray in. Her hands didn’t freeze. Normal hands. The resident was sleeping, so that probably helped. She ducked in and out of room after room, avoiding eye contact and moving as fast as possible without sending food flying to the floor. In three of the rooms, though, she had difficulty letting go of the tray. Her icicle fingers flipped on and off faster than the residents skipped through the game show channels. Was she having some kind of a weird allergic reaction to some of the patients? Delivering food had never been so difficult before.
She’d been right last night. The Soul Charmer had done something to her. Derek might be quiet, and bigger than a Mack truck, but she was going to make him talk tonight. Or she’d let her icy fingers break his beloved motorcycle, piece by piece, until he did.
Hard gusts of wind shoved Callie toward her apartment building. After the frigid hands issue earlier, she was kicking herself exceptionally hard for foregoing her winter coat that morning. She tugged her sweater closer and charged up the stairs, only to be blocked from entering by Derek’s hulking form.
His heavy shoulder pressed against her door. No disguising he’d been waiting. Of course he has, her mind growled. She’d spent half her day practicing the way she’d rail on him, and how she’d storm up to him outside the Soul Charmer’s store. She would have moved with lethal grace, like she knew what the hell she was doing. She would have kicked his stupid bike if he grunted at her. She had been preparing to become someone he wouldn’t deny answers to.
And he’d ruined it with his impromptu visit. Heat rushed to Callie’s face. She was still angry about yesterday, and Lord knew she wanted immediate answers about her fingers going into lockdown mode in the psych ward, but right now, teetering halfway up the stairs to her apartment, her ire was singular. She was livid he’d stolen her control. Now she was cold, off balance, and—with an audible gurgle from her stomach to remind her—hungry. He was probably going to want her to make him a sandwich, too. Well, she was out of turkey for jackasses.
“You’re early.” His low rumble was too husky for anything other than straight from bed. Lucky bastard.
“Actually, you’re the one who’s early.” Callie resumed walking to her apartment. “We aren’t supposed to meet for another couple hours.”
He shrugged, but didn’t call out that she specifically hadn’t made plans.
Control was slipping through her fingers, and that was not acceptable. “Look. Jobs have start times and end times. And some of us have more than one job.”
He didn’t reply, nor did he move when she arrived at her door.
She sighed. First Ford sent someone to covertly check on her. Now Derek had demolished her chance at even a momentary respite before whatever soul magic bullshit he had on the agenda for that night. “I can’t open the door with you draping yourself on it.”
“You inviting me in?”
“No.”
He pushed himself off the door. Callie half expected a dent to mark the center. An unsigned Derek was Here. “Thought you’d want to talk, that’s all.”
She did want to talk, but this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. “You’re going to answer my questions?” Her disbelief was blatant, but what was the point of hiding it now? Kind of hard to act aloof and badass when she’d stumbled at the sight of him moments earlier.
His tone softened. “That was the idea. Yeah.”
She unlocked the door.
Derek loomed behind her.
She dropped her purse between her feet. He gave it a curious gaze when the bag made a soft thunk. His mind probably conjured images of weaponry. Good. He didn’t need to know she’d stuffed a paperback romance novel in there for her lunchtime read. She edged her apartment door open six inches, just enough to reach around the corner to the coat hook. She snatched her grey wool coat, closed the door, and then slipped her arms inside.
“We can talk. Just not here.”
Derek glanced at the closed door. His jaw flexed and Callie could tell he’d hoped to poke around her pad. No such luck. He watched her as she began buttoning up. “Where should we go, then?” He threw a silky tone over the words, like he wanted her to think of hotel rooms and not flop houses. How nice. She was a master when it came to bullshit, though. She’d reclaimed control, and somebody wasn’t too pleased.
“Dott’s.” She named her favorite greasy spoon. The food was cheap, good, and they slathered pretty much everything in butter, including the burgers.
Tension ebbed from his face. Callie’s muscles ached for him, constantly clenching and releasing. She could see trust wouldn’t come easily with him, but she recognized a little too much of herself when he lowered the internal weapons. He wanted to trust her. She shouldn’t have liked it or cared, but she did. On both counts. “Good choice.”
“Glad you think so, because you’re buying.” She picked her purse up from the floor, and started down the stairs. Derek’s thunderous steps followed closely behind.
He insisted on taking the motorcycle to the diner. Callie didn’t bother telling him it was only a five-minute walk. He probably didn’t want to leave his bike unattended outside her apartment building, and admittedly, it wasn’t like her complex was going to be getting any of those renters’ top picks awards or a safety seal from the city.
They commandeered a large booth at the back of the restaurant, adjacent to the Dia de los Muertos altar the diner had already begun to fill with candles and ceramic butterflies. The din of the place was more than enough to conceal their conversation, but Derek wanted the extra security. Callie hadn’t argued there, either. “Pick your battles” was her motto today.
Once his coffee and her Coke arrived, and they’d both placed orders for suitably unhealthy meals, it was time to talk. Derek leaned back against the cherry vinyl upholstery and rested his hands on the table. Nothing-to-hide posture didn’t sell Callie these days. Her brother had once turned out his pockets to prove he wasn’t carrying meth on him. Turned out he’d hidden it in his shoe. His fucking shoe. Derek wasn’t her brother, but simply not being a junkie didn’t mean he was Mr. Truthful.
“Where do you want to start?” he asked.
Starting at the beginning would have been smart. Dominoes falling in a line, and all would be clear if she followed that path. Being smart would have been a whole lot easier if her fingers hadn’t locked up and turned straight-up Icelandic this morning. “I want to know what the fuck that asshole did to me.”
Derek arched a brow. The sugar skulls in the painting above his head may have given her the side-eye, too. Perhaps she could have been a little less accusatory.
“My hands.” She lifted them, palms toward him.
His grunt said he understood. Derek closed his eyes as he hauled in a deep breath. With every Zen move he made, the volcanic rage simmering inside her edged one notch closer to exploding. She was about to slam her hands against the table when he finally spoke. “He made it so you can sense when a person has too much or too little of a soul.”
She was not goddamn Goldilocks. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“You’re able to sense soul magic.” At her exasperated look, he held up a hand and took a hearty swig from his coffee mug. “You know people rent souls, right?”
“Yes.”
“Those souls have to come from somewhere. So from time to time, people barter theirs out in exchange for money or other goods.”
“Sure,” her tone soured. She remembered the Charmer’s original offer. No clerics winked and nodded in tacit approval at that part of business, as far as she knew. “The Charmer’s souls have to come from more places than just people who want to hawk them, though, right?”
Derek’s nostrils flared, but he replied, “I can’t tell you where he gets the other souls from, and he sure as shit ain’t going to tell you.”
“What can you tell me then?”
He ignored the acid sprinkled atop her words. “Well, now you have the ability to sense those who have been a part of soul magic. Two souls were never meant to inhabit a single body. If someone’s renting a soul, the two will fight against each other. They both want a home, and they both want dominance over the other. It’s why we have so many crazies here. The longer you keep the borrowed soul in you, the more damaged yours becomes. Anyway, when your hands get hot, it means you’re close to someone carrying multiple souls.”
“Hot?” She remembered the burning sensation back at the Charmer’s shop when he’d grabbed her hand and held it to the jar of souls. So she’d been sensing those extra souls? That still didn’t explain her morning in the ward. “Okay, except this morning, when I went into a few of the patients’ rooms, my fingers locked and froze at work. I know these people couldn’t be harboring bonus souls. They’re in a secured facility, and no one is letting the Soul Charmer into that ward.”
He winced. That couldn’t be a good sign. “That’s the other side of the spectrum. Remember I said too little? People who have used soul magic and have a less-than-whole soul will make your hands cold. It’s the most common reaction, and the strongest, which is why you can feel it from farther away.”
“Less-than-whole?”
“Shit. I don’t suppose you’d forget I said that?”
His wince worked on her. Callie replied, “Explain it, and then maybe I can promise not to share.”
His grunt of appeasement pleased her. “Souls like to fuse to the same spot, right?”
She nodded, despite not knowing what he meant.
“They also, kind of, fuse to each other. So when we extract a borrowed soul from someone after they’re finished with it, a little bit—really, it doesn’t make a difference to the person we’re taking it from, they’d never know—of their own soul, the one they were trying to keep pure, comes with it.”
“He takes part of people’s souls? Takes souls that haven’t been pawned or whatever?”
He wasn’t meeting her gaze. “It’s not the same. They still have a soul. It just has a little more character.”
Callie’s thoughts collided like synchronized swimmers with no rhythm. People were giving away slivers of themselves to the Soul Charmer and had no idea. He’d have part of her forever. Fuck if she knew what he did with these bonus bits of soul. Fear and distrust of soul magic was legit, even if people didn’t understand the real reason it was sketchy. Local priests quietly embraced soul renting—for them, upping the tally of heaven-bound souls was clearly the greater priority—but they must not have known about this. Could mangled souls even rise to heaven? Callie had never wanted to have another person’s soul in her body, but she’d agreed to do it for Josh. He had no idea how much saving him would cost her. It was no longer simply working for the bad guys. It wasn’t only committing a crime, which, admittedly, was bad enough. She would have to let the Charmer own a tiny piece of her.
“Close your mouth, Callie. People are starting to stare.”
Her teeth clacked together and she pressed her fingers against her lips. They kept her fears from bubbling out. The metallic tang of blood hit her tongue. She parted her teeth, freeing the inside of her cheek. Licking the wound wouldn’t make it better.
“What happens to the souls people rent? Do they never move on to heaven, hell, wherever?” she asked, trying to focus on the souls instead of what was happening to her.
“The magic eventually destroys them. The Charmer says they don’t move on to anywhere, but I don’t know if that’s the truth.”
Callie nodded. The Charmer was certainly the secretive type. Why would anyone give up their soul then? “How can someone live without a soul?” she asked, thinking back to years and years of Cortean Catholic classes. The importance of pure souls, so one could rise to heaven was paramount. No soul, no heaven. Could renting souls keep you out of heaven? Callie didn’t know how to feel about that possibility, but she already had enough worries on her plate without celestial concerns.
“They don’t live well. Technically, they have a tiny piece left. Enough to spark life, but that’s it.”
“Why would someone do that?” She hadn’t given the Charmer’s proposition for hers a second’s thought, but others clearly had. “How much is a soul worth, exactly?”
He scrubbed his palm against his chin before answering, “What it’s worth depends on the soul, and only the Charmer can say there. It’s always at least a couple grand.”
Two thousand dollars would make a difference in more than her bank account, but not that big of one. “Doesn’t seem worth it.”
He shrugged. “I don’t pretend to know their lives, but yeah, it’s usually a shitty situation. People can live without them, though. Whether they sell it outright or they keep their rented souls too long and the process mangles their soul, or—” he took another big swig of coffee before finishing “—it’s stolen.”
She sputtered and coughed as the fact caught in her throat. “Whoa. We’ll get back to my fucked up fingers in a second—so don’t think I’m forgetting. People can jack another person’s soul?”
“Not normal people.”
“The Soul Charmer?”
“He can, but he doesn’t.”
She didn’t believe that. Her memories from last night sparked with new meaning. She remembered the woman McCabe had mentioned. “He’s not the only one who does soul magic, is he?”
“No.”
“And he just turned me into his own personal soul magic detector? Are you going to take me out to the beach to hunt for treasure, too?” Caustic words weren’t enough to cauterize the knowledge that she was being used.
Derek flinched, her words like a proverbial slap to the face. Too fucking bad. “He did make it so you could sense these things.” At least he wasn’t lying to her.
“He said I’d already prepared myself for this, even if I didn’t know it. What did he mean?” She’d practically choked at the memory of the Charmer’s delight, and leveled a glare that dared Derek to deny her an answer.
“You’re not going to like it.”
“It involves the Soul Charmer forcing magic into me. No, I’m not going to fucking like it, but I didn’t ask you that.”
He let out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. To take in magic, you have to be morally agnostic.”
“That doesn’t sound offensive, so there must be more.”
He glanced away. “You have a pure soul, but you don’t actually have anything against sinning.”
“And?” Father Gonzales would be aghast, but it wasn’t news to Callie. She attended church because it was socially and culturally necessary. Shops didn’t open until noon on Sundays. Prayer cards were available at every restaurant. There were more churches per capita than there were grocery stores. Gem City was Cortean Catholic through and through. Whatever was necessary to survive, Callie did. If God had a problem with her stealing in order to keep her and her brother fed, then he’d take it up with her after she bit it.
“Most people wouldn’t like others knowing sin means nothing to them.” The tremble in his voice was too personal. The sooner he let go of that shame, the happier he’d be, but it wasn’t Callie’s place to instruct him.
Also, she had more pressing concerns. “Why didn’t he do this to you?”
“He can’t.”
“Bullshit. He’s a scary mystical whatever, and you and me have more in common than you’re going to admit.”
“No, honestly, Callie.” He shook his head. “He’s real picky about who can do what. Says he can read it on the soul. And I don’t know if I’m fucked up so he can’t do it to me, or if you are so he can. I just know he’s never done it to me, and I’m actually sorry he did it to you, and I don’t have every answer.”
“That was a lot of words for you all at once.” Did she say that out loud?
His deep, rumbling laugh suggested, yes, she had. “Don’t get used to it.”
“Maybe my skills are detecting people screwed by soul magic, and getting you to talk.” She was rambling, but if she didn’t laugh, she was going to cry.
She was saved by the arrival of their waitress with two loaded plates. Callie wasn’t done questioning Derek, especially if he was willing to keep giving her honest answers. But first she was going to ignore her shitty day by sinking her teeth into the fiercest patty melt in the whole state.