Rogue Souls Read online

  “But you said it went away.” He nudged a jar closer to her end of the room with a gnarled knuckle.

  Callie tracked the jar’s movement with her eyes but resisted the urge to step backward. It was capped and a good four feet away. Now was not the moment to panic. She could do that at home. In the privacy of her shower. Possibly with a beer.

  “Yeah, when his body went cold, my hands went back to normal.” The longer she was around this onerous old man, the more her irritation found its voice.

  He puttered around the storage room so often Callie had begun to think of it as his office. There weren’t bills lying atop his desk though, and the only writing instruments found were the basic, black markers he used to label the jars storing souls. Still, it was his workspace, and in the weeks she’d been visiting the shop—working there, if she had to be honest—it was the only place she’d witnessed him at work. She’d shill souls in the lobby, and he’d hustle with the game of her mom working a three-card Monte scam on tourists. But it was back here, in this room, that he worked the real tricks. It was here he tried to make her control her magic. It was here that he was the most dickish and scary.

  “Perhaps you finally succeeded?”

  He meant blocking the magic from the souls, and they both knew she hadn’t. “Is it not normal for the effects of soul renting to disappear after death?” she asked.

  Lord, if someone had told her months ago she’d be having existential conversations with the Soul Charmer, she would have told them to cut back on the booze.

  He’d dropped the subject suddenly when the crisp call of the bell beckoned him to the store’s front. She appreciated the reprieve, or would have if the asshole hadn’t gotten into her head.

  Could she have saved that kid? Her brain screamed the question louder and louder each second she was alone in the sterile room stacked with shelf upon shelf of souls. Today hadn’t been the first time the Charmer shoved a soul at her to see what she could do. The Charmer had been nudging jars closer and closer the last several days, and Callie hadn’t been able to control her reaction in the least. The Soul Charmer wanted her to “take it,” which had been about as useful instruction as her mother Zara’s “just go” when she’d first put Callie behind the wheel at twelve.

  Her brain was not wired for this magic shit, and now that her sketchy boss had quit spitting questions at her, she had time to think. To marinate in her worries. Even despite the pain and discomfort of being in the Soul Charmer’s den, there weren’t any major consequences. She’d try, fail, and the Charmer would take his magic back. Only that hadn’t happened yet. She hadn’t learned enough to leave on her own, and she hadn’t failed enough for him to punt her out the front door, and now she’d damn near stumbled over a dead body.

  A dead kid, she mentally corrected.

  She’d stood there, feeling the soul magic fade. Probably feeling his soul fade. Fuck if that wasn’t going to be the thought screaming at her every night she couldn’t sleep for the next decade.

  It was with that fresh hell caught in her mind that the Charmer returned. The door from the customer-facing portion of the building was covered in rich velvet, which muffled sound between the spaces but also offered a gentle whoosh when moved quickly. And the Charmer always moved quickly. Callie sucked in a breath and sent a speedy, silent prayer that he wasn’t toting a fresh soul with which to test her. She was burnt out for the day. Pun completely not intended.

  The heavy fall of a boot covered the clapping of the Soul Charmer’s bare feet. A tiny piece of Callie relaxed at the familiar sound of Derek walking into the room. Not a piece she’d show anyone. Not a piece even the Charmer could glimpse. She’d spent decades reinforcing the wall to keep out strangers. Even a magic man couldn’t excavate an opening in mere weeks.

  She turned, and the sight wasn’t what she expected. It was Derek, yes. That part was good. The Charmer was at his side, which was also expected. It was his store after all and they were in this mess because he was a jackass. (Or because of magic. Whatever.) It was that Derek was supposed to be her reprieve. He was going to tell her it was all going to be okay. He’d been acting as a buffer as best he could between her and the Charmer, which was saying something because he refused to hide how awful he thought the whole arrangement was.

  This wasn’t her “let me fix that” guy. That guy held his chin high and his shoulders square and didn’t care if you saw the deep scars on his knuckles. Hell, he wanted you to see them. He didn’t back down. He didn’t get scared. The man before her, though? He ground the knuckles of his right hand into the leather of his jacket sleeve. The light was bright enough for her to see the dark smudge there, but Callie couldn’t tell if it were dirt or blood. Maybe that was enough to explain the hunch of his shoulders and the way he stared at the knobby feet of the bookcases against the far wall. The metal and brass and the stone tiles beneath them wouldn’t look back. They wouldn’t judge.

  He’d “taken care” of the boy. He’d disposed of a body that didn’t deserve to be dead. He fixed yet another problem he hadn’t caused, and yet the look on his face wasn’t “fuck it, I’m out” frustration. Callie long ago learned when her bullshit tank hit max others needed to clear a path. Derek was better than her. More controlled. He didn’t stick by people simply because he always had. He didn’t come from a family that placed loyalty above all else. So why was he standing in this room with lowlifes like she and the Soul Charmer and wearing a sheet of shame so saturated in self-loathing and disgust that it had to weigh two tons and carry more sins than Callie could amass in a lifetime?

  The urge to go to him hooked a meaty paw under her ribs, gripped her heart, and yanked. She took a staggered step forward. Derek cast a look in her direction—she couldn’t be sure if he was telling her to stop or begging her for help—but the hollow shadows beneath his eyes didn’t ease. It didn’t matter either way. This situation wasn’t under her control. It never was.

  The Soul Charmer’s voice cracked against the stark surfaces surrounding the three of them. “Well?”

  “It’s done.” Derek’s rumbled reply squeezed that paw around her heart.

  The Charmer rolled his beady eyes and began pulling jars from the nearby shelf. He cradled another three in his right arm before he spoke again. “I’ve known you long enough to know you would take care of that taunt.”

  Callie audibly sucked in a breath. The Charmer was slimy, but the teenager they’d found outside was more than a teasing jab. At least he had been to someone. He could have just as easily been her brother Josh a handful of years ago. She could have been the one weeping. The pit of disdain she had for her evening employer welled a little more each day, but today it damn near doubled.

  “What else?” When in work-mode Derek shifted to single-syllable communication as often as possible, but she’d never seen him do so with the Charmer.

  Maybe their boss heard the weariness underneath the words. “Who left him out there? We can’t simply expect this was pure luck. Dead bodies don’t drop on our doorstep unless someone is making a statement.”

  Callie stood five or six feet away from the men but took another shaky step toward them. Derek squared his shoulders toward the Charmer, but Callie saw the quick, soft glance he directed her way. He licked his lips, and then spoke. “I don’t disagree. Kid wasn’t a fluke. Someone cut him. Ripped a soul right out of him. Signs were obvious. But they didn’t leave a note or their blood or anything on the kid. I don’t know anything more than you do at this point.”

  The Charmer released a fresh armload of jars onto the tabletop with a thu-thu-thu-thump. “We need answers. That vile Tess started ideas. Ideas are not good for our business.”

  Callie got him. Ideas led to ambition, which might be great in school, but when it came to cutthroat business anyone getting ideas, thinking they knew how the magic worked, how to win the market when the kingpin could steal Heaven from you? Those ideas wouldn’t bring anything but a bucket of trouble and a bag of regret. Callie da
mn sure planned to stay on his good, non-lethal side and wasn’t about to try to scheme to steal from him. Hell, she couldn’t even keep a contained soul from fucking up her hands.

  “It isn’t Tess—” Derek started to say, but the Charmer cut him off.

  “I know it isn’t her, but you know we have other enemies.” The Charmer cast a dark look at Derek, but continued to them both, “We need to find the source of the problem and shut them down now. Yesterday. Hellfire would be too kind a resolution. I want blood and ash.”

  His rage wasn’t for the teenager who never got a chance. Not for that kid who he’d almost certainly rented souls to and was dead for it. The Charmer cared about what was his simply for the fact it belonged to him. He didn’t notice that his loyal collector was broken after burying or buying a cover story for a kid who’d lost his life on the other side of the far wall. He ignored the grief etching along Derek’s jaw, and the defeat caked to his skin.

  Callie saw it all, and fuck if she didn’t want to fix it.

  “We’ll find them,” she said with the confidence of a woman who wielded a badge and a gun, though she had neither.

  The Charmer arced a brow like some B-movie villain, but it didn’t faze her. “Oh, you will?”

  “Callie—” Derek shook his head, but it wouldn’t change her mind.

  She rushed the final steps forward to stand solid at his side. Her emotions were making her reckless, and it wasn’t for family this time. What. The. Hell? The paw at her heart gave another yank, and she quit thinking about why she was offering to get further enmeshed in the Soul Charmer’s bullshit and just did it. “We found Tess for you. We can figure this one out. Give us time.”

  “Time? I’m being robbed and dead children left at my door and you wish for time?”

  Yes. She needed time to bring her emotions in check. Time to think. Time to let Derek not think. Time for him to process. Time to pretend they weren’t part of this seedy, vicious underbelly of Gem City. She didn’t tell him that, though. The Charmer would have no pity for her feelings. She pulled a card from Derek’s playbook, instead: “We need to plan. Smart moves.”

  The Charmer’s huff would have been a gentle agreement from anyone else bearing his grandfather looks. Callie had gotten plenty of sighing and grumbling acquiescence at her day job at Cedar Retirement Home. The Charmer’s age was a moving target—some days he looked to be in his seventies and other nights he aged a couple decades more—but he wasn’t like the elderly men at the Home. He was magic and violence, and his response only made her gut tighten as though readying for a heavy blow.

  “At least you’ve been listening to him, if not me,” the Charmer finally said.

  Callie had never missed a word out of the Soul Charmer’s mouth, but now was not a good time to point it out. “We’ll find out who’s behind this.”

  “You’ll do more than that, but—” the Charmer shooed them with his hands “—that’s a start for tonight. You can go.”

  Callie opened her mouth to make sure he knew she wasn’t doing jackall tonight, but Derek’s hand cupped her upper arm and the warmth and warning it carried kept her from speaking her mind any further.

  “Thanks, boss,” Derek said, the words finite and conversation ending.

  He escorted Callie to the back of the room, and toward the side exit. She used the time to think about how much of an idiot she was. Who volunteered for more work with the Soul Charmer? She already hated her time with him—and not only because it invariably ended with her screams—but she hadn’t ever wanted to be part of this world. She wanted to believe she was better than the drug addicts and criminals who were at home among the soul renters. She needed to believe she deserved a life without threats and pain. Only that nasty black pit buried in her belly reminded her none of that was true.

  That truth tingled through her skull as Derek popped open the back door again. Callie held her breath until she was certain the alley didn’t conceal any more trouble. No bodies, no weapons, no magic. Just a flickering yellow street lamp, crumbling adobe on the wall of the adjacent building, and a hulking Dumpster that had been emptied earlier in the day. Derek’s fingers found hers and he held her hand as they walked through the alley. Callie sidestepped a beer can, and Derek stretched his arm toward her so he wouldn’t have to break the connection.

  For once, Callie didn’t know if he held on to soothe her or himself.

  Since when had she become the comforting one outside the Soul Charmer’s shop?

  Oh, fuck, Derek was one of her people now. Like family. An honorary Delgado.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Callie and Derek had stood next to his motorcycle for a solid five minutes before deciding to head to Dott’s. It was their favorite greasy spoon. They weren’t alone in loving it. The popular diner was busy for late on a Thursday. But they had pie and beer ready to serve, and the combo would make a perfect midnight snack for Callie. Provided she had money, which she did now. At least until she paid the electric bill next week. Then she’d be redlining it again.

  They sat in their usual back-corner booth. When was the last time she had a “usual” anything with anyone? Until a month ago, Callie’s “usual” was making a PB&J, reading half a paperback, calling family to touch base, and then crashing out. The only parts of her routine that remained intact were sleeping and checking in on Josh and Zara. She had four days to finish the latest mystery book she’d checked out from Gem City Library, but she doubted she’d have time to get through the last hundred pages. Not with a recovering addict on her couch and a murderer leaving gifts at the Charmer’s back door.

  “Bette’s coming back,” Derek warned her. They’d come here often enough to have a regular waitress, too.

  Callie had cradled the chilly beer bottle in her hands, but now pulled them away. Just in time. Bette approached, and Callie’s fingers began to stiffen and shift to a subtle blue hue. She shoved her hands beneath the table and onto her lap. Their waitress was in her mid-40s, always got their orders right, and was a soul user. She wasn’t renting now, but each time she returned a rented soul a snippet of her own disappeared. Callie hated that she could feel the change in Bette but hated more that the woman had no idea how her dabbling with the Charmer had changed her. At least Bette didn’t have a bonus soul right now, but Callie still wasn’t particularly comfortable around her.

  The library book she’d been reading had a main character who could touch an object and know its history. Callie’s hands could burn people, they could get coated in ice, but they could not answer questions about whodunit. Naturally. That would have been useful.

  “You two want your usuals?” Bette asked with the sweet tone she probably used around her four-year-old.

  That motherly tone helped Callie ignore the way her fingers had locked beneath the table. She nodded, and Derek answered for them both, “Yep.”

  Once the waitress left to put in their orders for a cheeseburger and a patty melt, color began to return to Callie’s fingers and they thawed. Derek was watching her closely. Deep grooves had set up shop between his eyebrows.

  “Do I want to know?” she asked, still rubbing her hands together to shake the echo of a chill.

  “You just got in deeper with him.” He meant the Soul Charmer.

  “Not any deeper than I already was.” She shrugged. “Apprentice, remember?”

  “Don’t remind me about that deal. It was bad enough, but you didn’t need to offer to get involved with whatever shit fell at his door.”

  “Did you also not need to spend your night disposing . . .” she looked around the diner and then opted to incline her head in his direction instead of announcing their crimes in public. They didn’t kill that kid, but Callie was pretty sure moving a dead body and disturbing a crime scene were pretty damn illegal.

  “That’s part of my job.”

  “Are you going to tell me what the whole ‘we have enemies’ business was about?”

  Derek remained silent. That non-verbal ‘no’ s
tung.

  “What else is he trying to make you do?”

  “Normal shit, Callie. I’m keeping tabs on the competition for him. Nothing to worry about.” Exhaustion lanced his words, and Callie’s unease doubled.

  “What competition is left? Tess is gone—”

  It might have been mentioning the woman who’d tried to take over the Charmer’s business or reminding him of how the Charmer had turned Callie into his own weapon or the memory of singed skin, but Derek cut her off with a ferocity she’d not seen. “Don’t change the subject. Tonight was pure shit. You need less awful in your life, and now you volunteered to help find out who did that.”

  That. A murdered teenager.

  “He was going to make us do it anyway.” Wasn’t he? He’d made them find Tess, he’d blackmailed Callie into interrogating Tess, he’d used her connection to Derek against her, he’d refused to take his magic back before. She’d had to demand to be his apprentice to shift the power dynamics.

  “At least this way we control the terms with him,” she added.

  “He’s always in control,” Derek said under his breath. For not the first time, Callie wanted to know how the Soul Charmer had earned the loyalty of a man like Derek. The dark slashes cutting beneath his eyes and the hunch of his shoulders held the questions at bay for now.

  “Are you okay?”

  Derek let out a derisive laugh—brief and cutting. So that was a no.

  Maybe her worry was showing, because after a moment he said, “I’ll be okay.”

  The song of the martyr.

  “It’s okay if you aren’t,” she said quietly. Her mother had often lashed out when Callie offered emotional help. Feelings weren’t what Zara had wanted help with. Picking pocketbooks from purses, distracting the utility guy, funneling cash to Josh—those were real ways to help.

  Derek wasn’t like her family. He pulled a long swig from his beer, and then nodded slowly. Booze and empathy steadied him. “I know. Tonight was fucked. It’ll be a couple days until I get over it.”