Rogue Souls Page 7

  Derek turned to leave.

  “Nice? You have the audacity to show up at my home—”

  Derek cut him off, “Oh, and Cameron, your rates have just doubled.”

  He slipped his arm around Callie’s shoulders and walked her out of the ostentatious home, and back to the comfort of her busted ride. Warmth wiggled its way around her waist, and the harsh squeeze of her chest eased. It was nice that a simple, protective gesture could make her breathe again. It hadn’t always been that simple for her. Given the last few weeks, she was due for a simple joy or two.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Derek took the long way back into town. Instead of indulging on the perfectly paved roads leading out of Cameron’s neighborhood, he went for the aged two-lane state highway road. While it, too, was paved, it’d already been graveled in the name of the weather. Tiny rocks plinked against the underside of the car. It reminded Callie of drizzle, only on the wrong side of the car.

  They were back to regular duty for the Soul Charmer. Dusk was creeping in fast, and that meant their time belonged to the shady man who hawked souls. They could no longer ignore the memory of the dying kid outside the back door the other night. Callie wanted to know why he rented souls. This would lead them closer to answering why he was picked. It might also make her feel better. If he was into some really fucked up shit, it could let her pretend this wouldn’t be the kind of trouble she got pulled into regularly apprenticing for the Charmer. It would maybe let her feel a little less gross about her night gig.

  Derek agreed with the plan, but mostly because he thought they’d find leads for where to go next, who to talk to, and maybe discover who that kid would know that would understand anything about how soul magic worked. Other than the Charmer.

  Callie cradled the still-warm flask in her lap, watched bushes and occasional street signs for civilization, and tried to count the soft pings against the car. It was easier than carrying a conversation right now.

  She liked being in the car with Derek. When they’d first started working together for the Soul Charmer, riding on the back of his bike was her only respite from all the stressors in her life. Now, they tried to cultivate that same sanctuary in her car, but it wasn’t working. Probably because the problems they had to solve now were rumbling in both their guts. Callie could taste the bitterness of the moment on the back of her tongue. She spoke anyway and tried to control her tone. “We can’t just talk to his friends. It’ll make us look guilty.”

  “No, it won’t. He rented from the Soul Charmer before. It’d be normal for us to come by to get back the goods.”

  This argument didn’t assuage any of Callie’s fears. Derek wanted to talk to the dead kid’s friends, and that tightened a band of fear stretched around her belly.

  “Right, but if they know he’s dead—”

  “They don’t.” Derek didn’t look at her when he cut her off. He stared at the road like he intended to refill the cracks and potholes with his stare alone simply so he could smash them back into place.

  The tick in his jaw should have kept her from asking, but the boiling worry in her belly couldn’t be contained. “How do they not know? I thought you . . .” Callie struggled to find the right word. One that wouldn’t be a lash to her lover’s back and one that wouldn’t kick her upchuck reflex into gear. One that wouldn’t make this real.

  Derek’s knuckles were white where he gripped the steering wheel. It made the crisscrossed scars on them pop in harsh pink relief. “He needed to be some place that bought us time, but he will be found.”

  The words weren’t for Callie, but she absorbed the fervor behind them. “If he’s found right away it comes back to us, doesn’t it?”

  Derek’s jaw ticked again, but he nodded.

  “It wasn’t in the Railyard, though, right?” Fear seeped into her words. The newscast was too fresh in her mind.

  “What? No.” He opened his mouth to say more but didn’t find his voice. Callie didn’t push. She shouldn’t have even let the idea into her brain. She was so familiar with family fucking it up that she was putting her baggage on him, and it wasn’t fair.

  Whatever he’d had to do left a fresh scar, but this one wouldn’t light his knuckles or track down his cheek. This was something deep and gutting on the inside. Callie understood. She kept all her scars walled inside her ribcage where their pangs could kick her, but she didn’t have to share them with anyone else. Private wounds. It shouldn’t have surprised her that Derek bore them, too. They shared this one, which made her wonder more about their relationship. They met because she was forced to work for the Soul Charmer. They bonded because he put her first, and no one outside of family does that. But their shared memories weren’t pretty ones. Sharing scars wasn’t the sign of a healthy relationship. Fuck it, she thought. She wasn’t built for healthy at this time, and Derek had her back. It was probably selfish, but she was going to enjoy being with him. Besides, maybe now was her chance to pay him back for being there for her with Josh. She could be there for him as this new, torturous wound healed.

  She sat up straighter in the worn passenger’s seat. The seatbelt dug into her neck as it tightened with its hair trigger. When it released she pivoted in her seat enough to pull one leg up, and fully face Derek. The angles of his jaw were sharp enough to cut, but Callie didn’t mind. She reached over and ran the back of her fingers down his cheek. “We are going to get justice for him,” she said softly.

  Derek jerked a nod. One quick, harsh motion. The speedometer ticked up another five miles per hour.

  “How often has working for the Charmer allowed us to get justice for someone who deserved it?” She was speaking more to his past than hers. She was, after all, new to the whole soul magic shebang.

  His responding grumble didn’t carry the harshness of his earlier words. Almost an agreement.

  “I think we’d find the person responsible even if the Charmer wasn’t going to throw a tirade of exploding glass and souls.”

  “Don’t tell him that,” Derek rumbled.

  “I have no intentions of telling him jackall, but he can see my soul. So he probably knows.”

  Derek huffed with enough humor to almost be a laugh. His grip on the steering wheel eased.

  “Finding who did this will help me deal with it,” Callie said.

  “Punishing who did it will help, too,” he replied.

  He wasn’t wrong. Callie wished the idea of vengeance didn’t ease the tension in her torso. It did, though. Maybe they did belong with the Soul Charmer.

  She nodded but didn’t voice her agreement. “You think this was just to fuck with the Soul Charmer?”

  “No,” Derek grated the word across the gravel beneath the car. Then, a moment later, added, “It’s about the magic. It’s always about the magic.”

  “If they have the skills, though, can’t they access it?” There were always others trying to set up shop to compete with the Soul Charmer. Callie had helped him stop one of the few powerful ones from stealing the rented souls from the Charmer’s clients. Tess had magic and she hadn’t gotten it from him.

  “He has access to more than any of the others.”

  Callie’s lips parted, but words failed her.

  “Don’t ask me how. I’m not his fucking apprentice.” The words should have sliced, but they came with a real underscore of teasing.

  “I’ll add that to my list of things to ask about. It’ll be right below the ‘How do I keep from bursting into flames whenever I’m near an unprotected soul?’ and ‘When do I get my secret decoder ring?’ ”

  Now they both laughed, and the sound filled the car. It covered the plinking against the undercarriage. It covered the rumble of the engine. It even almost covered the howl of a coyote in the distance.

  The moment of levity focused Callie. They could do this together.

  “Okay, so where are we going?”

  “Kid his age had to hang at Deco’s.”

  Callie knew the place. It was part arcade, part ch
eap pizza spot, and part skate park. Basically, a teenager summer fever dream. Only it was November and that meant it became an after-school hot spot. Callie checked the clock. Only six. It’d still be packed.

  “If there’s time, I will own your ass at Skee-ball.”

  The corner of Derek’s lips quirked up. “Thanks for the warning, doll.”

  Callie hadn’t been to Deco’s since she had been old enough to drive. Lights flashed—red, yellow, blue, pink—in rapid succession inside the trendy Railyard District hangout. The lights doubled against every hard, shiny surface, and blinked brighter through pint glasses and against the slick faces of the cell phones in nearly every kid’s hand. When she’d last been in this arcade, no one shot video of high scores. Or maybe they had. Callie had rarely played the games unless a boyfriend was buying. She hadn’t ever had cash for air hockey or Pac-Man or the car-racing game that she never won. That hadn’t stopped her from coming to Deco’s to socialize. It had been a good way to get gossip, and she hadn’t hated watching friends play games. Interacting with people without the requirement of conversation was Callie’s idea of perfect.

  Men and women mingled on the far right of the room. The bar had happy hour pricing, and the button-downs looked at home amid the heavy beats and bright lights. Probably pre-gaming for a Saturday night at a club. Callie hated that shit, but the kind of people who ordered tapas at an arcade—like the plate of sopapillas she saw a waitress hurry to a nearby high-top—were totally the kind who wore painful shoes to dance in the dark and drop triple digits on booze. Two bucks for a PBR would have cut it for Callie right now, and she didn’t even need a disco ball to refract the lights of children playing games.

  Deco’s used to be a rabbit warren of connected rooms, but in the last few years the management had knocked down most of the walls to connect the space. They’d built out a bar, added more pool tables, and made the place into a quirky destination for adults. She blamed them for the soul magic sifting in the air. The energy of the place pricked at her skin, pinching and pulling. No one nearby was pushing the temperature down on her, but her fingers twitched as though they knew she was going to be locked up and icy in moments. Callie hadn’t quite experienced this before. She avoided busy places other than the grocery store, and there everyone was in such a hurry to get milk/bread/Pop-Tarts and get home to families that would devour the goods, the static second soul energy hadn’t had time to coalesce like this. Arcades and bars might be breeding grounds for germs, but apparently, they were great magic holding cells, too.

  Derek elbowed her. “They look about his age, yeah?”

  The group he’d spotted were old enough to have driver’s licenses, but still clearly underage. The three boys and two girls huddled around a tall arcade game promising one fake shotgun to quell a zombie apocalypse. All five had hair coifed to look like they didn’t care, but probably took an hour to do. Callie swiped a hand through her own. It was edging into rib-length territory. She needed to cut it soon.

  “What are we supposed to say to them?” She would have whispered, but the whizzes and whistles whipping through the room from the array of electronics muted her voice regardless.

  “Ask ’em if they know Cullen.” A flash of pink strobe cut across Derek’s jaw, slithering between the dark prickle of stubble. He didn’t flinch, but he held his breath like he was readying to take a punch.

  “How do you know his name?” She tried to keep the accusation from her tone, but her gut boiled with betrayal. He said he didn’t know the kid.

  “It was in his wallet. Cullen Stevens. Seventeen.” His voice was even and easy to hear over the noise. At least one of them was solid.

  Callie hissed in a breath. Now her stomach ached for a different reason. Several reasons. Why did she always expect the worst, and why didn’t she trust him because he’d earned that from her? Oh, right. She grew up in fucking Gem City.

  “I’m glad we know his name,” she said and meant it. He had a family and a life, and while they had to find out answers for the Soul Charmer, they could also do right by Cullen. That made her feel like less of a shitty person. Some days, that really mattered. “So that means we know where he lives. We could go there and—”

  “Lived,” he corrected. His voice dropped low enough to scrape their ankles. He was reminding himself of their goal. It worked for her, too. That past tense should have shook her again. Should have brought back the vision of the color fading from the kid’s—Cullen’s—cheeks. Instead it filtered her resolve until it was even and steady.

  She opened her mouth intent to find out why they were taking the long route to answers, when it hit her, “His parents aren’t going to know about soul renting.”

  Derek nodded.

  “Unless they just want to make sure he’d rise to Heaven.” That truth about Gem City always bubbled beneath the surface. Almost everyone in town was a practicing Cortean Catholic, which made them big on purity and guilt. Keeping one’s soul light enough to make it to the celestial gates was paramount. It wasn’t a shock soul renting was big business, but the fact the Church averted their eyes like they were trying to hit quarterly sales numbers continually kicked Callie’s squick sensor into high gear. She thought of her own mother then—something she’d been avoiding lately. If soul magic had been an option when Callie had been busted shoplifting food when she was eleven, Callie didn’t doubt Zara would have suggested she start using another’s soul to get the job done. Anything to pretend they were good people. Then again, that would have meant Zara had to notice that her kids didn’t have anything worthwhile to eat.

  Derek curled his hand around hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. She offered him a half-hearted smile in return. Not every parent was Zara. Hell, most of them gave a serious damn about their kids.

  The stepped in behind the kids, who didn’t cast a single glance in their direction. At least one didn’t have to be stealthy if they were doing business in an arcade. Callie waited for the icy sensation to coat her, for someone in this group to be using soul magic. Cullen had. He couldn’t be the only teenager who dabbled in cheat codes for getting into Heaven.

  “Don’t forget the one shambling behind that box on the right,” Derek warned as a way of greeting to the gamer and his friends. He pointed at the green and grey zombie near the corner of the screen, not that anyone was looking.

  The guy manning the shotgun blasted the shambling one, but he must have realized that advice wasn’t from one of his friends. He missed the next three zombies and earned a GAME OVER screen because he was craning his head back and up to see Derek.

  It might have been Derek’s size or the well-worn biker jacket doubling it or his glacial stare—maybe all three—but the gamer guy looked about to shit his pants.

  One of the girls at his side shouldered closer. She put her back to her friends and kicked her shoulders back like she was not only ready for a fight, but also knew how to end one. “Aren’t you a little old to be playing video games?” she brought the right amount of sass to make Callie like her.

  Derek may have disagreed. “I’d annihilate that game, but I’ve got a day job.” Each word was even and solid and disinterested.

  Did he have to talk to teenagers often? How many rented from the Soul Charmer? She shook the ick of her current employer from her brain. Getting squeamish now wasn’t going to change a damn thing.

  “He looks like he beats people up for a living, Lizzie. Chill it,” the tallest boy in the group said. He wore a faded black tee shirt for a band Callie had never heard of.

  Callie got the impression these kids thought it was cool that Derek might know how to fight, but she didn’t want to have to clean up any messes, explain blood and bruises to parents, or get anyone booted from Deco’s.

  “We just keep things moving for the Soul Charmer,” Callie said making sure the creepy old man’s name carried every bit of grit and gravity it warranted.

  Five sets of eyes widened, and Player No. 1 dropped the plastic gun. They recognized t
he Charmer’s name, but did they know Cullen knew him? Hell, did they even know Cullen, or were they traumatizing them for nothing?

  The plastic shotgun clanked against the front of the machine. Just loud enough to be heard over the points tally from the nearby air hockey table.

  “Wha-wha-what do you want with us?” the tall guy asked.

  Derek’s smile was a harsh slash of compressed lips that was more grimace than expression of joy. Definitely not friendly, but he was shit at fake smiles. “Information,” he said. He didn’t bother trying to soften his rasp or chip away the hard edges of the word.

  One of the girls darted forward, checking her shoulder into Callie hard. It might have looked like she was scared, but Callie had been poor and desperate before. The lightness in her front pocket was immediate. She would have recognized the lift from that alone, but the immediate emptiness after losing contact with the warm thrum of her flask set her into action. Her arm shot forward and she looped it through the girl’s upper arm, cupping her biceps and holding tight.

  Callie preferred to keep her voice low and her body hidden. She did her damnedest to keep her head down, because attention lead to a whole kind of mess she didn’t want. She didn’t need to be scrutinized or questioned or have someone wonder and worry about her. All of that, though? Out the window when it came to someone stealing the Soul Charmer’s property from her. Her arms had been burned from soul magic. She was not going to even contemplate what kind of hell would befall her if she lost that fucking flask.

  Callie let every bit of kindness slip from her face. It pooled on the tile floor, ready to drop anyone who tried to run.

  “We are the wrong people to steal from.” The words grated from the back of Callie’s throat like she had swallowed rocks and was ready to spit the buckshot.