“This is good. Anyone brave enough to leave a voicemail is probably also dumb enough to leave details about what they’re buying and where.”
She held her thumb above the screen. “Right. Shall I?”
When Derek agreed, she tapped the voicemail icon and toggled on the speakerphone.
“This is a message from Nate…”
Callie didn’t hear the rest of the recording. The phone slipped from her fingers, and dropped to the carpet. She forgot how her legs worked. Her knees shuddered. Her stomach became stone. High, but packed with gristle, Callie would have known that voice anywhere.
The message was from Nate, but the voicemail was Zara.
CHAPTER NINE
Callie’s knees slammed against the floor. The threadbare carpet did nothing to blunt the fall. Her hands fumbled to grab the phone.
Her fingers were unable to find the right button.
Unable to stop the muffled sound of her mother’s voice.
Unable to replay it.
Unable to do a goddamned thing.
Derek picked up the phone and tapped the pause button. He sucked his bottom lip in until his mouth was a bitten line of focus. Callie slid back over her heels and let her rear find the carpet, too. About right that she’d end up crawling before she could get Zara back. Pride didn’t do a thing when you were already broken.
Tears began to track down her cheeks. Her voice was a ghost. “We need to hear it.” I need to hear it.
Derek scooted close to her. His shoulder bumped hers. The almost-there movement a reminder she wasn’t alone. Most nights that was enough. Tonight wasn’t most nights.
She nodded toward the phone, and he started the message from the beginning.
“I am alive for now.” Zara’s first words were clear, but slow. The syllables were off. Zara hadn’t been much for reading aloud when Callie was a kid, and it was clear her practice hadn’t gotten better.
Zara sucked in an audible breath on the recording. Callie mimicked the action. She could picture her mother pointing at some scrawled word, and hoping for an out. She must not have gotten one, because her mother continued. “He wants his soul back. Did you really take it?” the second question faster, quieter, and laced with fear. A slap of skin against bone rang. Zara hissed. Her next words were stuttered through heaving breaths. “You can do better than that. You have a big supply of souls at the ready. You’ll bring him two extras.”
Zara started to speak, and then paused. The sound was a screech of regret Callie could relate to, but not one she’d ever heard from her mother’s mouth. Callie began crying in earnest. Derek draped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her tight to him, but they both remained fixed on the phone in his hand.
Adam’s phone. Nate’s words. Zara’s voice.
“His soul. Two backups. Bring them to the cathedral corner by 10 p.m. or...” her mother’s voice, shaking and soprano, shuttered.
It was replaced by the sour spit of Nate’s sneering. “Bring them or your mommy dies tonight.”
The recording was over, but neither she nor Derek moved. The last time Zara had been in this room, she’d been loud, she’d been angry, and she’d been vibrant. The woman on that recording was none of those things. Callie could count the number of times she’d seen her mom shed real tears—con job ones didn’t count—and the number of times her mom had been scared was half that. This was worse. She’d never heard this pale, reedy Zara. Her mom wasn’t an upstanding citizen. She had been far from the perfect mother. She didn’t deserve this, though. No one did. Callie tried to swallow the sick slosh of her stomach ripping its way up her throat, but her body no longer had room for anything but guilt and ire. She stumbled to the bathroom and ditched her earlier food.
Once certain she was steady—or as steady as someone who got her mom kidnapped and just heard her threatened could be—she splashed cold water on her face. Derek stood in the bathroom’s doorway. She was thankful he hadn’t pushed in, but the ticking vein in his temple suggested he’d been watching and he was thinking.
“Tell me you have a plan,” she said with the rasp of hot coals doused with water.
Derek’s fingertips turned white against the doorframe. His answer ground out between gnashed teeth until the simple words were bloody. “Give him the fucking souls.”
It sounded too simple. Probably was too simple, but Callie needed a direct line out of this mess. “Okay,” she started to nod slowly, but stopped a half second later. “One problem.”
His brows pinched together in question.
“Flask is empty. I don’t have shit to give him.”
Derek swore under his breath. “We’ll hit the Charmer’s.”
He had to realize how dumb of an idea that was. “You weren’t there earlier today. He accused me of stealing his magic and of working against him. I don’t need to get on the Charmer’s bad side, too. We can’t jack souls from his place.”
Derek scrubbed a hand over his face, pausing to squeeze his forehead for a moment. When his hand fell away the hollows beneath his cheekbones were deeper. She wasn’t the only one pushing her body to do more with less.
“I need to sit,” he finally said.
Derek moved to the couch. Callie stopped at the refrigerator to pull a couple cold beers from inside. She popped the caps, and then came to sit with him.
She handed him a beer. “I’m too freaked out to think.”
He drank down half the bottle in a single pull. She curled against him, and they leaned against the back of the couch and drank their beers. The ceiling fan overhead hummed a steady, slow buzz.
“So we need two souls.”
“Three. Something has to stand in for Nate’s,” Derek said.
Callie tried not to squirm.
He turned to face her more fully. Concern etching across his face. “Right?”
“Actually, I have Nate’s soul here. I snagged it last time I was in the back of the Charmer’s. We were getting so close, and he’s so squirrelly right now. I couldn’t risk him renting it out.”
The worry lines faded from her boyfriend’s forehead. “Smart. Where is it?”
“Hall closet.” She nodded toward the narrow, shitty, MDF door.
“So we need two souls in—” he peeked at his watch “—four hours or less.”
“We need to wring everything we can out of the phone. You said you thought we could make some calls? If Nate knows we have it, we don’t have much time.”
Derek cut his hand through the air. “He wouldn’t have tipped his hand with the voicemail if he hadn’t already taken care of that.”
“You think he’s that smart?” Callie had met Nate enough times to know the guy was a slimy, straight-forward kind of sleaze. He wanted in on soul magic. He’d been reading up on old religious texts not long before she’d yanked out his soul. He carried that shit around with him. No shame. He made plain plays for women and drugs and power. No stealth. He demanded his soul back and then fucking disappeared. No smarts.
Derek shook his head. “He ain’t dumb. If he really has taken Ford’s guys on as his own, someone else would have done that. Maybe even Adam.”
Callie finished her beer. She set the empty on the coffee table. “I’ve got three other markers to hit for souls today.”
“Not counting Johnny Rocks?” Derek put his empty beer next to hers.
“Kind of pointless now.” Callie couldn’t hold back the defeat. She’d finally heard from Nate, but it hadn’t been on the right terms. Hadn’t been on terms at all. It wasn’t that Callie was unfamiliar with being beholden to the whims of assholes, it was that the consequences now were bigger than her. It’s one thing to fuck up your own life. It’s another when it screws with family.
Derek didn’t miss a beat. She wasn’t alone. “Who are we after?”
“One in the Railyard, one near the plaza, and one more pickup in The Greens.”
Derek groaned, and Callie smiled in turn. “I wish I could have swapped that one out with B
eck, too, but it’ll be easy.”
The Greens was a neighborhood backing up to a golf course. It had gated entrances, full-time security guards, and grass in the desert. It was fucking obnoxious. The people who lived there never returned their rentals, as if part of the cost was her hauling her ass out to their homes. Soul renting was pitched as sidestepping sin, but it shouldn’t be so damn convenient.
“We’ll start out there.” If she didn’t know him better, she’d have thought Derek was whining about it. Instead she knew he was running scenarios. The quiet ones had a lot going on inside. Callie should have known that the day she met him.
“If we work our way in,” Callie said following his logic, “we’ll have the plaza pickup as a last-ditch option if Sharon or Casey aren’t home.”
They shrugged back on their coats. Callie tucked her flask into her side pocket, and then pulled the jar containing Nate’s soul from the closet hiding spot. She didn’t know if it was having a plan or drinking a beer in a handful of minutes, but the sharp bite of her nerves had dulled.
Now all she had to do was collect some souls and save her mom.
Sharon Wilson’s house had enough rooms to sleep everyone in Callie’s apartment complex, but a lone SUV sat in the winding driveway. A plump, petite woman with white hair opened the door. Callie stumbled back a half step as icy shards prickled beneath her skin. This woman wasn’t Sharon, but she sure as shit was a soul user. A long-time user based on the powerful reaction Callie had. Derek angled himself between her and the woman at the door. Callie used the reprieve to get her hand on the flask. The device purred against her palm and pulled some of the cold from her arms.
The woman turned to lead them into the home.
Derek leaned close to Callie’s ear and whispered, “You solid?”
She tried not to bristle. There was no judgment, just worry. “Wasn’t expecting that.”
He arced a brow.
“Heavy user.”
The rough scrape of an “oh” comforted her.
They passed four ornate and never-touched rooms before a well-dressed woman in navy blue stepped into the hallway. Her auburn hair was in a perfect twist. The chill skating across Callie’s skin met the heated rush of magic. Her fingertips tingled with an urge for action.
“Now is not a great time,” Sharon cooed with the confidence of someone who is used to being obeyed.
Derek’s stony visage exuded more fuck you than usual. “We’re here already.”
“We were just sitting down to dinner. If you could return in a couple hours, I’d be happy to return the item.” Sharon’s conspiratorial whisper dug into Callie’s skin in a way the magic didn’t.
“You’re already late on returning. I’ll take it now,” Callie said. She let vehemence simmer plainly. She might be angry and scared because of Nate, but she had no shame at leveraging it with this woman who thought her life, her time was more important than everyone else’s.
Sharon gave Callie more attention then. The temptation to call the magic to her hands, to see if she could force some flames, rallied in her chest. That fire was for someone else, and she was really trying to be less of an asshole.
“I said—”
Callie pulled the flask from her pocket, popped the cap, and powered it against Sharon’s chest in a fluid movement. The woman gaped and squealed. Callie knew the act wasn’t hurting her. The soul leaped into the container. Frost began to nudge its way back over her palms. Callie tightened her grip on the flask.
“The Soul Charmer appreciates your patronage.” The saccharine response her own middle finger to Sharon, this house, her boss, her magic, and her goddamn situation.
One soul down, one to go.
CHAPTER TEN
Derek’s car idled quietly on El Paseo. He and Callie were parked only a few feet from where they’d watched the drug dealers shop their wares the night before. Dougie’s corner was empty, but Adam stood tall in the same place they’d met him yesterday. Callie saw him more clearly now. There was no slouching, gangly frame. He didn’t curl his chin into his coat—a new one in shiny black. Smugness seeped with each languid step he took. Even from a block and a half away the cockiness was overpowering.
He had the right to be. He’d escaped last night. His boss had backed him. Hell, now he got to be the one handling Nate’s very soul. Whether the mafia boss had told him so didn’t matter. They were trusting this guy with something vital. Callie hadn’t taken him seriously enough.
Scoring the second soul hadn’t been too hard. The Charmer wouldn’t be happy, but that was a problem for future Callie. Making the Soul Charmer mad tomorrow was better than making her mother dead. So fuck it. She’d shove these souls in Adam’s hands and take back her mother.
She scanned the steps in front of the cathedral and the pockets of light near each corner out front. “Zara doesn’t seem to be here.”
“I’m sure Nate’s watching,” Derek said.
“How can you be so confident?” She wasn’t.
Derek licked his lips quickly. “It’s what I would do. Smart business to watch over something important like this.”
“Oh.”
“Well, and he’s got a fucking hard-on for you, so he’ll be here to see you.” Derek spat the accusation. He’d intervened with Nate before on her behalf, but never mentioned it. Now his eyes narrowed. Jealousy wasn’t supposed to be hot, but Callie didn’t have time for supposed to.
“At least we won’t have to talk to him, and he’ll have to see you at my side.” She added the last part only to see his reaction. He licked his lips again, but slower this time.
“You’re not wrong, doll.”
Callie rested the flask in her lap, and pulled the jar with Nate’s soul from a pocket. The obsidian jar was opaque and the silver cap screwed on tight, but the sickly sweet call from within the container wasn’t dampened. It begged for entry into her body. Not a home. Not safety. It wanted to be in her.
She glared at the jar, and focused her thoughts, “Never happening.”
Callie reached to open the car door, but paused before pulling the handle. “I can’t give Nate the flask.”
“Shit. No, you can’t.”
Callie scanned the car’s interior for something, anything to put the extra souls into. Leave it to Derek to have a goddamn pristine ride. “Do you have anything in here?”
He flipped open the center console, and then pulled out a travel sized stick of deodorant.
If it weren’t so categorically unhelpful, she might have laughed. “That won’t work.”
C’mon brain.
“What about the jar?” Derek suggested.
“It’s already got Nate’s soul in it,” she said automatically.
“I’ve seen the Charmer slip a second soul in the same jar before.”
Callie couldn’t tell if he was lying. What would happen if more than one soul was stored together? Could the others be damaged by Nate’s soul? The dashboard clock gave her fifteen minutes to get the souls into Adam’s hand.
“Screw it.” Callie uncapped the flask. Her hands heated immediately. The souls were bound in the magic of the flask, but two of them together already had ash sloughing from her skin.
She pinned the flask upright between her thighs, and prayed her jeans wouldn’t singe before she could get this completed. She gripped the obsidian jar in one hand, and twisted the silver cap off with the other. Black flakes clung to the cap. She ignored the disintegration of her skin, and focused only on the thin tendrils of white swirling within the container. The soul immediately lurched toward the lid. Flames sprung from Callie’s knuckles. She ignored them. She didn’t ask or coax Nate’s soul. Even if he would have responded to that, he didn’t deserve her kindness. She shoved her power at the lid, choked the opening with a command to stay. A pulse of magic wobbled at the lip, and the flames on her fingers died.
Callie wasn’t sure how long she could hold this. Beads of sweat made her lower back sticky. She kept her gaze fixed on the
mouth of the jar, but dropped one hand down to the top of the flask. She picked it up without leaving too much soot on her pants, and then delicately poured the souls into the jar.
She had to coo soft encouragement to them, but eventually they slid past the barrier and into the jar. Her hand holding the jar flashed a bright blue, and then smoldered with the heat of a cooktop. Her skin started to blacken, but she slapped the cap onto the jar as quickly as possible with her other hand. When it was secure, the flame died out, and her flesh began to repair to a rich brown. If only the wounds on her heart could heal so quickly.
She stared at the little jar. Tried to ignore the pleas from within. She swallowed hard.
“How are we going to do this?”
Derek took the jar from her, offering a reprieve from the worrying calls within. “Together.”
Callie and Derek walked around the back of the cathedral before approaching Adam. They didn’t need him getting an eye on the car or knowing how they’d exit, if they could help it. Derek’s exhales lit the air, a dragon on the war path. The November chill no longer bit at Callie. Simmering magic had staked its claim and denied entry to all other sensations.
Adam turned toward them, his coat shining like wet ink beneath the halo of the low-hanging street lamp. Acrid anger hit Callie at the sight of the cocky dealer grinning at them from a post fifty feet from the church. There was likely a law on the books to drive him further away from holy places and schools. Laws didn’t do a whole lot if they weren’t enforced, though. Hell, they didn’t do much for her. She couldn’t turn Nate in for kidnapping her mom. She couldn’t send the cops to his door. The cops hadn’t touched Ford, and she had no reason to think they’d want to move on Nate either, but more importantly, Nate knew too much. He had leverage. He could turn her in. When you acted outside the law, you couldn’t rely on it. Callie sniffed, but it didn’t dislodge the odor. Fighting to escape a home where crime was the norm had been hard, but now she was back consorting with criminals. She couldn’t even blame someone else for this. She’d taken Nate’s soul. No one told her to. No one forced her hand.
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