Rogue Souls Read online

  A couple days to forget what he’d done? Doubtful. They’d aborted the plans to go back to her house and make sandwiches because Callie couldn’t be around Josh yet. Her brother was still crashing on her couch. He would want to cheer her up, but he still needed so much work from her. He was a recovering addict, who was leaning a lot closer to addict than recovered. He’d been kidnapped by drug lord and mafia boss Ford, and Callie had earned his return. She wasn’t about to let him double back into a pattern that resulted in her big brother dead. It was that thought that brought them to Dott’s. Callie was unnerved by what she’d seen tonight. The flames dancing on her arms? Nothing compared to the cold, fading stare of that teenage boy.

  Trying to deal with her worry for Josh and his care while her brain was still battered from the stark visual from the alley was too much. “Do you have any idea who would have done that?”

  It was plain what “that” she was talking about. Derek stilled his features as if what was happening behind the scenes was so volatile he needed to preemptively cover it. “No. Whoever did that knew those marks would mean something to us, but the precision worries me. We haven’t seen it before, but it sure as shit looked like they were aces at stealing souls.”

  “I haven’t even heard the Charmer whine about small-timers trying to offer soul rental services recently.”

  The dark noise rumbling from Derek’s chest wasn’t his normal grumble. Callie didn’t recognize the sound, but it sharpened her attention.

  “No one has dared a storefront or a newspaper ad since what happened to Tess,” he said.

  “Is that common knowledge?”

  “Those who need to know are aware she crossed him and now she’s gone.”

  Neither the Soul Charmer nor Derek had told Callie what happened to Tess after they’d captured and questioned her. Callie would have liked to pretend that Derek didn’t know, but he probably did. Just another act of his protection. For her. Maybe stepping up for him at the shop earlier hadn’t been a completely terrible idea. Provided getting more involved in this mess didn’t get her killed. Her life was fairly shitty, but it was hers and she’d prefer to keep it.

  “Who would have the balls to do something like this, then?” She hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, but now that they were out, she was curious what Derek’s answer would be. He’d been a part of the Charmer’s soul magic world far longer than she. She needed him to have enough extra insight to calm her worry.

  Instead he said, “Bette.”

  She was saying “what?” as her fingertips went icy. Her right index finger and thumb froze to the waxy paper label wrapped around the brown bottle. Callie hissed, but managed to school her features as Bette set their plates before them and asked if she could get them anything else? Derek quickly replied no on their behalf, and the waitress left. Callie’s fingers returned to normal, but when she pulled them away from the bottle, the paper clung to her.

  “Damn it,” she muttered and began rubbing her fingers together to pill the paper. It fell to the table in a small pile. At least it looked like there was a fidgety kid at the table instead of an adult woman who froze her beer label to her fingers.

  She hadn’t forgotten the question she’d accidentally asked, and she doubted Derek had either. “Any ideas who?”

  Derek groaned, and Callie’s stomach dropped. She hadn’t even had a bite of her sandwich yet.

  “That bad?”

  “Anyone who heard about the burns Tess had, the ones Bianca had, and didn’t flinch is not going to be someone you want to meet.”

  She winced, not because of the fear of who was to come, but at the way he danced around her history. She was the cause of the others’ fear. She was the one who had burned Bianca and Tess when they’d hoarded souls within themselves and turned her palms into incendiary devices. He brain finally processed the last part of what he’d said though. “Someone I want to meet?”

  “We need to distance you from this.”

  “Because you don’t want me using these?” She held her hands up like exhibits A and B.

  “That, too. You don’t need more guilt weighing on you. Or the Charmer forcing you to do darker, nastier shit you can’t forget.” He spoke with that eerie blend of pain and knowledge. If they’d sat on the same side of the booth, she would have hugged him. Instead she extended her arm across the table and opened her palm to him. He took her hand in his.

  “I don’t want him forcing you either.”

  Derek looked over her shoulder, but she waited to continue until he met her gaze again. “We’re in this together,” she said.

  “I know, doll. I just wish the thing we were working together on could be some mundane shit like assembling furniture.”

  “I don’t think you would need help putting together a bookshelf.”

  He smiled and meant it. “No, not really.”

  She laughed.

  “Do you need a bookshelf?”

  Not now, but someday. If they got out of this. If she got Josh back on his feet. If she could keep working a steady job and save up, then she could start buying books. She could need a bookcase. She’d put her mysteries on one shelf and the romances on another and use vases as bookends.

  But first she had to sober up her brother (for real this time), figure out how to cover the increased expenses of an extended houseguest, and find out who had it out for the Soul Charmer.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Home. The simple concept had eluded Callie for too long. Her mom’s house had been a place to sleep when she was a kid, but not a safe space. Her first few apartments came with roommates, which hadn’t made them any safer. She’d never had much in the way of possessions, but even the small amount she’d left in the ten by ten allocated to her in each of her previous communal digs never looked right against the stark walls.

  She’d lived in Crest Winds Apartments for more than a year and a half. Alone. It was hers. The space was Spartan—partially because all her cash was continually sucked into family shit and partially because she wanted what was hers to be clean and sharp. She couldn’t scrub the stains off her insides. She couldn’t box the blocks of guilt wedged low in her gut and drop them at the curb. She could, though, make a sanctuary without cracked dishes, without dust dotting tables. Her clothes could be neatly put away. She’d spent money on them; they deserved to be treated with care. It was in this tidy, one-bedroom apartment on the second floor, she’d found home. Her past lingered, but she’d found the first place where she could close her eyes and not want to cry or run. A place where she could let the tension in her muscles ease. She knew the locks were shit, but in the twenty-two months she’d lived in Crest Winds, no one had ever tried to bust it. Not even Ford or his goons when they were in peak shakedown mode.

  Apartment 231 was home.

  Or it had been. Before the brother who knew her deepest betrayals—the times she didn’t put family first, the times she’d tried to distance herself from their mother—had taken that from her.

  The door wasn’t ajar or even unlocked when she got home from dinner with Derek, but tension lashed Callie’s back. Her brother Josh was crashed out on the couch. His black hair was growing out and it was squashed against and swirled over the top of a pillow he’d jacked from her bed. She’d given him one for the couch, but it must not have done the trick because the orange pillowcases were only for her bed. His shoes were on the coffee table. His shirt had been flung across the back of the couch. The laundry basket near the coat closet at the front of the living room was empty.

  She latched the door behind her, and then closed her eyes. And waited. Seven seconds later she opened them, but the sight hadn’t changed. Her older brother was still passed out on her sofa. An empty bowl and a fork glared at her

  from the small counter separating her perfunctory kitchen from the aging living room. At least he’d eaten. Callie picked up the dish and utensil and placed them into the sink. She’d wash them tomorrow. Or maybe Josh would. He’d been sleeping so much sinc
e she’d gotten him back from Ford. He claimed he went through the worst of the detox from his meth addiction while the mafia leader’s captive. Callie remembered how high he’d been when she spoken to him on the phone all those days ago. He shouldn’t be at the sleep-nonstop part of recovery. She ignored the medical training she’d received in her hospital days. Maybe things had changed. Maybe she didn’t remember correctly.

  She pulled her phone from her back pocket ready to get an answer on the timeline of withdrawal side effects. Ugh. The internet icon was off. She tried reconnecting, but her next-door neighbor must have changed her password. The neighbor’s sister had visited last week. The jerk probably let her know the “123456” password was not entirely secure and anyone could hijack her connection. Which was exactly what Callie had done. Digging into why Josh was sleeping—at almost midnight—was not worth using any of her data. She’d be at work in a few hours and could look it up on her break. Cedar Retirement Home had legit Wi-Fi and their IT guy gave no fucks what anyone looked at.

  It didn’t matter right now anyway. She had Josh back. He was alive. Ford and his thugs hadn’t done so much as a drive-by of her place—Derek had been checking—since they’d completed their exchange. She’d stolen soul magic research files from the police for Ford in exchange for Josh. She wasn’t about to let a little bit of extra sleep stop her from enjoying having her brother home.

  Family first, right?

  Lucky bastard was getting more sleep in a day than she’d had in a week. She ran the sleep math, and she was going to get a solid four hours before she’d have to get up for work. The real work. The reputable, non-magical work that kept the heat on and the water running. If she wanted to renew the lease on this apartment—her home—she’d need to make sure regular checks—even small ones—continued hitting her bank account.

  She needed to stop letting Derek grab the tab at dinner, too. He liked to pay and didn’t act like it was a hardship, but she wasn’t a mooch. She’d seen women—okay, mostly her mom—who went on dates because they were hungry or wore minimal clothing to the bar so they wouldn’t need to pay for drinks. Derek needed to know she wasn’t like that. She wouldn’t take advantage of trust or kindness simply because she could. She wasn’t Zara. She shook herself. Derek kept looking past the dark clouds roiling inside her to see this tiny golden shaft of good, and that’s all he cared about. He’d recognize the rest eventually, but if she could hold her own to keep them equals it might delay the inevitable discarding and heartbreak.

  She just needed to come up with a way to cover Josh’s bills. The food and heat budget went up with a second person staying in the apartment, especially when he was there alone so much.

  Worrying over money never made dollars manifest. Callie washed her face and tried to let the financial stress slide down the drain. It mostly worked. She climbed into bed and tucked the comforter around her bunting style. The cash flow will correct itself, she thought as she closed her eyes.

  Color fading.

  Blood dripping.

  Eyes pleading.

  Callie’s eyes opened in a flash. She slammed her head back against the pillow. Who was she to worry about covering rent when a teenager had lost his life? What were the odds of ever getting a night’s sleep again with that scene burrowed in her brain?

  Leaving for work when the sun was asleep wasn’t something new for Callie. She’d worked the early shift at Cedar Retirement Home for a couple years, and the routine didn’t suck. Since beginning a second, unpaid, and exhausting gig as the apprentice to the Soul Charmer, though, that pre-dawn walk to the car was different. As soon as she stepped into the breezeway outside her apartment, her muscles snapped in bands across her stomach—natural armor tightening and locking in place. She locked up, tucked her elbow tight against her purse, and hotfooted it down the stairs. Ice dug a groove alongside the curb. Her landlord hadn’t salted. Callie stepped over it. At least it isn’t on my hands. Too fucking early for that, she said to herself.

  Her beat-to-shit ride was bathed in a halo of yellow light in the back of the lot. A six-foot cinder-block wall rose solidly from the hard-packed earth in the front of the car with a tall-for-Gem City streetlight towering above it. One of only three such lights in her complex’s lot. Callie reminded herself safety made the extra distance worth the walk, but this morning she was simply too exhausted to accept the illusion of safety as anything other than that.

  Her right calf muscle twitched when he pressed on the gas pedal. Not enough sleep or water or fruit was making her shaky. At least she could be shaky. That poor kid left on the cold ground outside the Soul Charmer’s shop wouldn’t be on edge or sleep deprived again. That memory of his body fading wasn’t going to leave Callie. Derek would assure her that time would help, but Callie wasn’t so new to tragedy as to believe that waiting long enough would make her forget. Scars didn’t have to be on the outside to remain forever.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It didn’t matter how shitty your life had been, there were always standout shit moments. The worst of the worst. Those memories that curled in the corners of your brain waiting for their chance to light up, vivid and real, in quiet moments years later. Callie was counting frozen beef patties to be thawed for the lunch shift. Maybe it was the chill of the walk-in freezer or the menial task, but one of the handful of egregious memories flashed bright and bitter.

  She fingered the crimped seal on the next pack of patties. The pattern puckered beneath her fingertip, and Callie remembered the stitches. Her first stitches. Some people went their whole life never having been sown back together. Callie was patchwork of mended wounds inside and out. Not all her scars were visible. Not even the first five stitches she’d received beneath her left eye.

  Callie’s mother hadn’t been home in eight days. She had a line on a married business guy who wanted to escape, and Zara wasn’t about to miss her chance to cash in. It hadn’t been the first time her mom had disappeared chasing a “sure thing” or losing track of time at the casino. However, the teachers at school were making note of Callie arriving for a free breakfast. It wasn’t that she wasn’t already on the list, but the more people watched you, the more they saw. That fact hadn’t changed in Callie’s twenty-four years. Nothing good had ever come of being watched. Not for Callie. So she’d skipped her last class—seventh grade geography—that day and walked the alleyways behind the shops on the Plaza. She’d seen Saint Catalina’s statue as she crossed streets and pretended not to feel the holy glare burning into her back. Callie had spied an open door and ducked in. The retail shops consistently had their employee spaces at the back, and the shoddy electrical work in historic buildings forced their refrigerators and microwaves against the back wall. The space Callie snuck into was empty aside from the humming appliances. She snatched a twenty-ounce soda and a baggie of carrots and shoved them in her backpack. Josh had taught her the trick last summer. Flexing it solo made her bolder, braver. She ducked back out of the building and continued down the alley looking for another opportunity. Hopefully one with an entrée or two.

  She’d continued the process until her bag had three sandwiches, the carrots, three sodas, and a sealed bag of chocolate covered pretzels. She should have quit while she was ahead, but her twelve-year-old mind really wanted some chicken and thought she’d snag some soon. Her luck had run out, though. Her last stop was the back of a rowdy bar. She’d made the mistake of assuming everyone would be busy in the front at a place like that. It was the kind of shithole that served minors and never cleaned its floors or bathrooms. It was also, Callie learned, the kind of place where stealing was really fucking off limits.

  When the two guys—barely adults—caught her pilfering from their stash, they weren’t above kicking some tween ass. They’d broken her orbital socket, and she’d passed out from the beating. They’d left her in the alley like one of the bums who spent the evening scouring the dumpsters for leftovers.

  Josh had found her. Rescued her.

  He cleaned
her face as best he could with his shirt and took her to St. Mary’s hospital. The assholes who clobbered her hadn’t taken her bag. So she and Josh still had food, and even then Callie’s gut had twisted with how happy that made her. She wanted something real in her stomach. The nurse in the emergency room had given her a sports drink and a bag of chips, but that wouldn’t sustain her into the weekend. Her stealing had gotten her another day. The cost hurt more than her hunger pangs had.

  The difference between that day and all the other ones when she’d needed stitches or went hungry or feared she wouldn’t rise to Heaven or felt alone and like a degenerate? The reason that memory took hold of her in the quiet moments? She learned two important things that day. One, that she was poor. Good and truly. Broke-ass poor. The kind of poor that made your insides hurt and your mouth dry. And, two, that no matter your reasons crime was crime and once you crossed that line it was hard to get anyone to see you as anything other than a criminal.

  “Callie! Can you grab me an extra box of eggs while you’re in there?” Louisa called from the other room. Her voice yanked Callie back into the present.

  Callie hollered back an affirmative and tried not to let the memories of aching for food rumble too hard against her sternum as she hefted a third box of beef patties on to her stack. She was surrounded by food every morning at work. She touched it, helped cook it, and often ate the leftovers. Day-job leftovers were a whole lot better than the back-alley scraps she’d scrounged all those years ago. It was part of the reason she liked this place. Working in a kitchen was a guarantee of one solid meal a day. Sometimes two. She made enough to keep a loaf of bread, some processed cheese, and cereal in her cupboards, generally, but one doesn’t forget what it was like to be without food. She doubted there’d be a time when she believed food would always be on the table.

  She brought the stack of pre-packaged beef out of the freezer and set each box on the stainless-steel prep counter in the corner near the far door. Louisa was stirring a batter and humming. The tune was off-key, which was the norm for her boss. Callie pulled a fresh box of eggs from the refrigerator and brought them to the short woman.