Lost Souls

by Chelsea Mueller

  “The kind of idiots who didn’t think he had backup.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh. Boss wanted a show of force. This was about eight years back. So there were only three of us. Plus the Charmer.”

  “What happened? What did you do?” She’d told herself not to ask that question, but the absurdity of the situation had sucked her in.

  “No other free-standing shops have lasted since. No one goes up against the Soul Charmer of Gem City and wins. That’s what happened.”

  Wow. It’s not like she was new to being terrified of the Soul Charmer. He’d done a magnificent job of showcasing his callousness and his power. He’d cultivated an aura of prince meets serial killer. Understanding he’d treat every threat as critical, though, changed the game. That something had hit him hard enough to bring everyone in for the first time in eight years? Motherfucking nightmarish.

  Calm breathing was bullshit. The alleyway leading to the Soul Charmer’s emporium came into view. Callie sucked in tiny breaths faster and faster.

  Derek put the car in park, and then wrapped his arms around her. “Doll…Callie…it’s okay. You’re okay.”

  She pulled the flask from her pocket, and held it in front of them. “He’ll know these aren’t real.”

  “They’re real.” Derek was emphatic.

  “But they’re not his. He’ll know. He’ll know and he’ll do something horrible, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

  Derek stroked Callie’s hair. His touch was firmer than necessary, but it helped. “Calm down. It’ll be okay. We’ll get the souls back for him. We’re just buying time.”

  “But what if he already knows?”

  “He’s not God, Callie. Whatever we’re in for, it ain’t because of anything you’ve done. Could be about the shit that went down at your apartment with the soul renter. Could be fresh pressure from the cops. Could be a lot of things.” The hard edges of the words matched the sharp planes of Derek’s cheeks. Color rose from his jaw. Here she was breaking down about the souls and Nate when the cops were after Derek. When he’d killed a man. Did the Charmer know Derek had done it with her safety in mind and not because of his loyalty to him? Probably, but would that be enough to protect them?

  Callie nodded slowly. Her heart rate didn’t slow to a standard resting pace, but at least she wasn’t hyperventilating any longer.

  “We’ve got this,” she said, and wished she had Derek’s power of convincing confidence.

  “He called us to help solve his problems. Just remember that when we go in, and you’ll be fine.”

  Was he reading her mind these days? Was that some couple shit?

  “He always calls us to solve his problems.” The derision in her voice was real, but somehow it helped ground her. She could hold herself together a little longer.

  “So it’ll be routine, doll. In, out, and at Dott’s in time for dinner.”

  If they could be so lucky.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Soul Charmer’s shop had never been bright. The entrance was set back down an alley with limited lighting and even less foot traffic. Callie and Derek approached the building. Sour tendrils of warning coiled around the base of her neck. The front door, slathered in layer after layer of weathered and cracked black paint, stretched in front of her, ominous and overwhelming.

  “We got this,” Derek said. He took her hand and tugged her forward with him.

  It wasn’t fear of the Soul Charmer that made her stagger. Not now. A sharp pain slapped her cheek. Gusts of wicked wind rushed through the corridor and whipped behind her back. A jagged block of coal grated against her belly, the wrongness of the moment coalescing in her mind in tangible pain. Callie dug in her heels.

  “This is wrong.” Fear leeched all tone from her voice.

  She repeated her words. This time Derek stopped, too.

  His scowl hardened the longer he watched her. “Callie.” Her name. A plea.

  The coal she’d sensed in her belly shattered on the pavement. Soot marred the front of her coat. Another magic trick. She was about to apologize for getting caught in another of the Charmer’s traps when Derek clamped his hands onto her hips and yanked her toward him.

  “What the fuck?” Derek stared at the brittle briquettes of black on the ground.

  “You can see them?” This was more than some nighthawk bullshit. The flames on her arms were always visible, but the power protecting doorways and the heavy pressures had always been just for her. Derek had never seen them.

  The bits of coal disintegrated quickly until only smudges remained.

  “Fuck yes I saw them.” He turned his attention back to Callie. His hands tightening on her hips. “Are you all right?”

  She could tell he wanted to give her a once over, but when it came to magic they were both at a loss.

  “No damage done.” Probably.

  “Has that happened before?” Worry sharpened his question.

  “That? No, but…”

  His hands eased until they were more comfort than confinement at her waist. “You got an idea, doll, I want to hear it.”

  It was a guess. “It felt like a warning.”

  “What kind of warning?”

  A bad fucking one. Not that she could tell Derek that. Not after she’d broken down in the car and dumped so much of her baggage in his hands. “The kind that says we should watch our steps. We need to find out what’s happening.” At least that wasn’t a lie.

  Derek nodded once, the movement final. “Right. I go in first. Anything goes wrong, you’re going to fucking run, right?”

  And leave him? Not likely. She pushed up onto her toes and lightly pressed her lips to his cheek. The scruff tickled, and reminded her there was more to the future than simply magic and murder. “No heroes over here.”

  He didn’t push about bypassing the agreement. Instead he stepped toward the front door. He licked his lips quickly, unnecessarily. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Mildew and patchouli assaulted Callie’s nose. She coughed and sputtered, but stepped fully into the Soul Charmer’s client space.

  “Who the—oh hey.” A tall, broad woman greeted them. The black pistol in her hand was tilted toward the floor, but Callie wondered how quickly the woman could raise it. How quickly could the threat become a promise? Callie struggled to swallow, but held steady.

  “Savannah.” Derek’s tone wasn’t soft.

  “Hey. You Callie?” Savannah asked.

  A nod and an awkward, fake smile later, introductions were over, and the three of them were alone.

  “Where’s the Charmer?” Derek asked.

  “That’s the question, man,” Savannah said. “Beck and Miguel are in back.”

  Callie wasn’t about to trust this new woman to hand her information now anyway. Too much was on the line. Soot still clung to her clothing. Even the Charmer wouldn’t want her talking magic with his other employees. Derek must have agreed, because he took Callie’s hand again and moved toward the back.

  The nighthawk mark began to simmer as she stepped close to the gateway to the back office. She started pushing her magic forward and out, following Derek through the doorway without a misstep.

  It was in the back room where it all started to go wrong.

  Her foot caught on something low and blunt jutting from the edge of the doorway. Callie still held her magic out in front of her. She whipped her hands up to block her fall, and the magic offered a pillow for her face. Her knees and shins, though? They smacked hard against the tile. The crack reverberated in the tiled room. She pushed herself up from the floor. Blood smeared beneath her. A slice of smoky grey glass was wedged into her palm. She plucked it, thankful the puncture wasn’t deep. She pulled a wad of gauze from her coat pocket, one of the few pieces she hadn’t used on Zara, and pressed it against her hand. Her right hand was bloody, too, though. She skimmed her thumb over the pad of the palm, but there were no cuts. Just blood.

  “Callie.” Derek had clearly said h
er name more than once. He stood a couple steps ahead of her in a pool of dark red liquid.

  She got her feet beneath her, every intention focused on running to him. He held up a single hand. The faded pink ridge of an old scar rose beneath the flashes of light from a flickering fluorescent bulb.

  “Pretty sure you need to stay back, doll.” The words were casual, the tightening of his lips was not.

  She remained near the door, but scraped her gaze over every inch of him: the splatters of red readying to disappear against the black of his boots, the edges of his phone creating an extra crease from within his jeans’ pocket, the forced stretch of his fingers locking them into rigor mortis level stiffness, and his jaw clenched tight beneath skin two tones too pale. He wasn’t bleeding. Her brain urged her to rush him, to touch, to confirm, to protect, but she had to trust him. If he said she needed to stay back, she did.

  She swallowed the fear clawing into her mouth. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  His mirthless laugh did nothing for her worry. “None of this is okay, doll, but I’m positive you need to stay back from that.” Derek pointed to the far wall. She hadn’t even considered looking at anything else here. The blood on the floor, her boyfriend adrift in it, the glass in her palm.

  Oh.

  Oh, fuck.

  The far wall held all the storage for the Charmer’s souls. At least within this shop. Two of the bookcases-turned-soul-cases had black steel shutters locked over the front of them. Callie hadn’t seen them before, or even known there was a locking mechanism for the soul cases. There were handles at the bottom of the heavy duty and rugged material. But it wasn’t those barricades that had her cursing. It was the third section. It wasn’t blocked off, and it was nearly barren. Slivers of obsidian littered the fourth shelf. A silver metal lid sat lonely on the third. The other nine shelves? Empty.

  The Charmer was meticulous about the storage process. Every soul had a place. Every one was marked, measured, and secured. This shelf hadn’t contained the purest souls. It hadn’t held the recent returns, either. The Soul Charmer liked to have the recently used souls sequestered. Said they needed a moment before going back into a host. Callie had thought this was about the Charmer controlling the supply, but after seeing the well she thought this might be an actual rule. Not that he’d fucking told her. None of that mattered now. The souls that were missing were the most rented, the ones burdened with the most sin. Those souls had seen some shit.

  The Soul Charmer was a shitty mentor, but some truths were too important to hide from her. When they’d been alone, he’d told her about the filthy souls and made her promise to never repeat it.

  She’d reached out to grab one of the souls from the tainted shelf. He’d slapped her hand before she could touch it. “Not that one.”

  “Why not? You said you wanted anything under 900. This is labeled 775.”

  “You must always read the whole label.” His tone had been cutting.

  Callie had held back a curse. “I thought I had. What did I miss?”

  “It used to be a 775.” He retrieved the jar, and rotated it. Down the right side of the label were other numbers and dates. “It’s now a 104.”

  “I didn’t know you had souls that low.” Callie read the checkout log on the side of the jar. “Has this soul really been rented thirty times?”

  “Twenty seven.”

  She hadn’t known what to say to that.

  “After ten, most souls are no longer capable to producing a good match. Most of these rentals were to the same person. You don’t make that call. All you need to remember is that any soul we rent out more than ten times goes here. They can only be placed with the right host, which means you don’t pick them out for my customers.”

  The command in his voice caught her in the chest, but not hard enough to stop her from trying to squeeze more information out of him. “What happens if one of these souls is put in the wrong host?”

  Most of the time the Soul Charmer’s talk about matching souls was about getting the most cash out of the customer. This was different. His conviction was real. His eyes had narrowed until only black slits peeked back at her. He’d clacked the bulky gold and emerald ring on his index finger against the jar. “Some souls have been through too much. Rising to Heaven isn’t in their future, but the weight of sin can do more than keep one from celestial paradise.”

  Callie understood sin. She understood right and wrong, and consequences that haunted a person. These were the rented souls, though. They were supposed to be the Cortean Get Out of Hell Free Card. This didn’t sound like an escape at all.

  The Soul Charmer hadn’t been done. “When it becomes more sin than soul, the rental may try to take over.”

  “Take over?” She knew this shit was shady.

  “Not always the way you mean, Calliope. Yes, it could override the host, but more likely it would take over to ruin him. Suicide, car crash, murder. It’d get the host caught or killed to find an escape. Sin can drag a soul down just as the lack of it can raise one up.”

  Callie tried to shake the memory. At the time, she’d cracked jokes about the Soul Charmer’s theological past. That had been before he’d taken her to the soul well. That was before she knew some souls were here as part of purgatory. Before she knew a mismatch could lead to murder. Now she looked at the empty shelf and only saw dozens of missing souls that were done being used.

  Sin can drag a soul down just as the lack of it can raise one up.

  “Someone had to have taken them,” she whispered. Those souls were dangers to nearly anyone who rented them. Those souls were ready to move on and face consequences.

  “That’s Problem B,” Derek said.

  “What’s Problem A?”

  “Some of those pieces are broken shards, right? If you come closer, we might be in a situation.”

  A short, staccato laugh popped from her chest and disappeared just as fast. “I hadn’t even thought of that.” She did now, though. She pushed with her magic. Nothing rumbled near her. She took a tentative step toward Derek. Still no flames. She edged closer to him and around the blood. No souls shimmered in the room.

  “We’re alone.”

  “No, Beck, Miguel, and the Charmer are supposed to be here.”

  She’d meant the souls, but saying so aloud now would be awkward. “Where are they? Where is he?”

  Derek glanced from the scattered papers on the desk to the back hallway. “Whoever did this, I pity them.”

  The last time she’d been in the basement of the Soul Charmer’s emporium, she’d tortured a woman. She’d forced Tess to give answers. A room set up for interrogations was beneath their feet, and she had no desire to go there again.

  “They have to be downstairs.” Defeat tasted bitter.

  The rear door of the office led to a small hallway. While it was normally Callie’s path out of the building, it was also the only way to get to the basement. Derek opened the door, and swore.

  “What?” Callie pressed against his back, but his bulky frame filled the doorway. “What’s wrong?”

  “More glass,” he muttered.

  That couldn’t be enough to unnerve him. She nudged him until he acquiesced, finally taking a step to the side so she could see. The picture frames were shattered. Every single one. None were stolen, but fractals in the remaining edges of the panes suggested a small hammer had been taken to every one.

  Derek crunched his way over to the second door, the basement door. “We’ll clean it up later.”

  Callie started to agree. The Charmer was probably seething that she and Derek weren’t there to listen to his tirade yet, but something about the narrow space stopped her. It wasn’t the thick magic in the air. She wasn’t pushing her ability out. The standard warding of the room no longer pressed against her eardrums. The magic wasn’t the only thing missing.

  “Where did they go?” she whispered.

  Derek’s hand held steady on the doorknob, but his eyes darkened and followed her. “
He’s probably got them downstairs.”

  “Not whoever did that. The pictures. All the pictures are gone.” Each frame was bare. The glass on the floor made sense, but the images were gone as well.

  Derek let go of the door and stepped closer to Callie. His arm slid around her waist. His hand on her hip grounded her. She could do this.

  “Souls and pictures? Did these guys even look at the till?” Derek left off the assholes, but Callie heard it.

  “The glass isn’t gone enough for them to take the photos. They should be here.” This wasn’t right. It didn’t make sense. Benton’s picture had been on this wall, and now he was gone. His picture. Maybe the soul he rented. Darkness skittered in her periphery, but when she turned there was only broken glass and dust bunnies.

  “Fucking weird, doll, but we need to get downstairs.”

  A hard crack and a painful moan reached from beyond the basement door.

  “You’re right. Sorry. Savannah’s got the upstairs covered.” She even managed not to be bothered by trusting a woman she didn’t know. That was probably a lingering effect of sleep deprivation.

  The rickety stairs might have unnerved Callie at another time, but not now. Regret sank its fingers into her belly, and with each swaying step down into the basement it twisted and curled. Her own fingers itched with the memory of flames and burning flesh. Remorse rolled her insides. Callie bit back a groan.

  Another whack and clatter stretched from beyond the short hallway. Beck had led her down this hallway last time. To the lone room at the end. She’d found Tess—who had been stealing souls from the Charmer and siphoning bits of souls from unsuspecting chakra massage clients—bound to a metal chair. Callie wanted to believe magic had overrode her moral code that day. Tess had been packed with borrowed souls, and the flames had come easy and fast. The truth was Callie had done what she’d needed to. Protecting Derek, getting the Charmer off her back, those had been her priorities. She needed to be a better person, but walking across the dusty, cracked concrete floor of the cellar that was a regular player in her nightmares, she doubted today was that day.

  “At least there isn’t blood here.” Derek’s voice was low, but none too quiet. He wasn’t concerned about what the Charmer was doing inside the interrogation room.