Derek lifted the Anonymous Souls card for all to see. “Did anyone try this number?”
The low-wattage bulbs peering from worn shades at the corners of the room couldn’t reach the black surface. Lighting was unnecessary.
Three sets of eyes narrowed on the business card.
On the blocky yellow digits printed on the back.
No names, slogans, or promises.
The back of the card held all potential clients would need: Ten simple digits and an understanding.
Derek was done with the preliminary dance. He’d been watching the others, too. She’d seen the shuffling, and the collaborative looks. Had he seen more?
“Your girl just found the card, man. When would we have called?” Miguel angled himself toward Savannah. Like she could help him.
“That a no?” The hollow depths of Derek’s voice promised a solid threat.
Beck shot his answer quickly, hands open and high. “I ain’t called the number.”
Derek stared at the other two. Hard. That steely look made mobsters’ knees knock together.
Savannah scratched behind her right ear. “Why are you looking at me? I don’t recognize the stupid card.”
“He didn’t ask if you recognized the card,” Callie said, her voice skating close to a sneer. “He asked if you’d called the number.”
Derek raised his chin a smidge, his jaw holding that same stark line, but beneath it she saw the pride beaming. His eyes caught hers, and in their light grey sea she saw only the welcome of acceptance.
“If I’ve never seen the card, how would I have called the number?” the other woman shouted.
Miguel rested a hand on Savannah’s knee. “Chill.”
“Are you saying none of you have heard of this Anonymous Souls before today?”
Beck offered , “Nah,” but the other two merely nodded.
Derek’s chest puffed, but Callie could handle this as long as he was at her back. “Doesn’t make sense. You dragged in Vega who is associated with this anonymous group, but didn’t know he was a part of it?”
“We bring in who the Charmer says,” Savannah snapped.
“I get that. I also know how he works. I know his tirades and his rants. I know he doesn’t give a shit about some scrawny dude promising souls and not delivering. He cares a whole fuck of a lot about someone setting up shop. Someone printing goddamn business cards. Someone who would have the balls to trash his fucking store. He didn’t send you to pick up anyone. He sent you to handle a threat.” She didn’t bother pointing out they’d failed miserably.
The Charmer wouldn’t stand for this. If he were here, his magic would be slamming them against the walls, fire would be licking Callie’s torso, and someone would be giving up a soul. Only he wasn’t here and that was possibly even more terrifying.
Savannah launched off the counter. The invisible shield that popped the other woman in the chin and knocked her back against the wall wasn’t planned. Callie didn’t have the forethought to imagine using the soul magic in such a manner. She hadn’t given it any thought, actually. Maybe it was the stress of going from a missing mother, to a hospitalized mother, to stealing souls, to picking through blood and glass, to a missing boss, but her emotions were too close to the surface. It wasn’t safe to let her guilt and anger out of the black lockbox within her ribcage.
Not that Savannah cared how complicated Callie’s life had become. Not when she was bent over, gasping and coughing.
Derek brushed Callie’s hair back behind her ear. He whispered, “It’s okay, doll. I’ve got you.”
Her fingertips vibrated in time with Savannah’s rapid breath. The other woman’s soul was responding to her magic. She hadn’t erected a magical wall between them. She’d simply shoved the other woman’s soul back. The body went, too. Callie straightened her fingers, released her control of the soul, and then shook her hand out. Anise filled her sinuses and the bitter bite of guilt coated her tongue. She wasn’t this kind of person. Couldn’t be this kind of person. She wasn’t someone who grabbed other people’s fucking souls. That was horror-show shit reserved purely for the Soul Charmer. He did it with purpose. She’d done it on accident, and that was probably worse.
“What the hell was that?” Savannah said between gasping breaths.
The need to apologize pummeled Callie’s gut with a one-two punch combination. Before she could do so, Derek spoke. “A reminder we all work for the Charmer.”
Savannah bristled, and then Derek added, “And to mind yourself around Callie, too.”
He made her sound like a badass. Callie was merely a woman pulled a dozen different ways, but doing her damnedest to keep going. Apparently that now included taking hold of others’ souls and shoving them about a bit. Callie let out a short, derisive snort. The Soul Charmer would be practically cooing with praise if he’d witnessed this. Funny how her best improvements with the magic he’d placed in her body were won when he wasn’t present. If this smash-and-dash move was intended as a teachable moment, she was going to be pissed.
The others may have grumbled or perhaps the floor was merely whining. Beck stepped between the two factions with referee poise. “So it sounds like we need to call that number.”
Callie nodded. “If we’re going to assume no one here knows anything about this group, we need to learn as much as we can.”
“Answers before the boss gets back are top priority to me, too,” Beck said.
Miguel sighed. “You assume he’s coming back.” Not a question.
“He’ll be back,” Beck and Derek said together.
“Did anyone talk to the Vega guy?” Callie asked.
Miguel held up two fingers.
“Good.” Callie nodded. “We’ll call the number and see if you recognize his voice. If Vega answers, this gets a lot simpler.”
“He answers, he’s probably behind the Anonymous Souls. He doesn’t…” Derek stopped himself from pointing out the situation could get worse.
He was a good guy for trying to protect her, but Callie was intimately familiar with the universal truth that shit could always get worse.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Vega didn’t answer the phone.
Even through the echo of the speakerphone, the gruff, “How much you need?” wasn’t familiar to anyone in the room. Miguel shifted his thumb to end the call, but that wouldn’t do.
“A little something through the weekend.” Callie’s affect was close enough to the regular customers to make her suck her teeth to dislodge the taste. Everyone was watching her, which only made it worse.
“You got cash?” the man on the other end of the line asked.
“It’s not like you take cards.” Faking this shit was hard. Derek arched a brow, and she could only give him a melodramatic sorry shrug. She was supposed to be ditzy, and antagonizing the source wasn’t a good way to get info. She tacked on a fake trilling laugh.
“Is that a yes?” he finally said.
“Cash isn’t a problem.” Souls were.
“Bring three hundred to this address—” he rattled off an address somewhere in the Railyard. Beck jotted it down. “Be there at six, and we’ll hook you up.”
“That’s a lot of money for a weekend. The Soul Charmer is cheaper than that.” Well, he could be. If someone was soul slumming.
The room went silent. Miguel and Savannah were wide-eyed. Beck was holding up a single hand in the international sign of HOLY MOTHER OF GOD STOP. Even Derek was holding his breath. Had she borked this whole thing?
After a half-second longer of awkward silence, the man on the phone said, “The Soul Charmer is screwing you. If you want quality, be there at six with the three hundred. If you don’t, good luck renting from that Plaza dwelling asshole.”
Callie fell over herself apologizing. It’s what one of their “upstanding citizen” customers would do. She also couldn’t lose this chance. No matter what she’d done with the collected souls before, no matter what she’d traded to Nate, if Callie could
find out who was behind the Anonymous Souls and who stole the Soul Charmer’s wares—probably the same people—he’d get over it. He’d exact a price, because he was that kind of person, but it’d be a cost she could bear.
The soul broker hung up first.
“What the hell was that?” Miguel sputtered.
“Looks like she got us a fucking lead,” Derek said.
Beck’s smile slipped into a toothy grin. “That was the start of a good plan. Understandable it’s unfamiliar to you, M.”
Savannah was white-knuckling the edge of the counter. “Har har. Now they know we’re on to them.”
Was she kidding? “What part of that made you think he was on to us?”
Before Savannah could explain, Miguel said, “Whatever. It’s done. Now we have to go get the soul from him and let him stick it in one of us. The Charmer is not going to be good with that.”
“The Charmer isn’t here,” Beck said.
“You’re not the one going,” Derek added.
“I brought Vega in. The Charmer put this on me,” the third soul collector argued.
Who the fuck fought over doing the Charmer’s bidding? What did their boss have over them? This wasn’t loyalty. It was fear. It had to be.
“First, that wasn’t Vega on the phone. Unless you were lying.” Callie waited for Miguel to tell her she was wrong. When he didn’t, she continued, “Second, you didn’t keep Vega here. So fail there. The Charmer is missing, which we all know is batshit. Souls are missing, which is actually even worse. Finally, we work for the bastard and he’s going to blame all of us.”
“That we can agree on. None of us have forgotten what happened to Gerard,” Savannah muttered.
Miguel’s harsh whisper sliced the room. “Don’t mention him. Not now. Not ever.”
Gerard’s name didn’t slap Callie the same way it did the others. She hadn’t known the man, the soul collector. He was gone now, though, and from the ever-darkening vibe in the room, the Charmer was to blame.
Savannah stretched, and then stepped forward, and Miguel followed.
The five Soul Charmer employees huddled together. Okay, Callie thought, time for a plan.
“I have to go get the soul. Beck and I are the only ones who can retrieve directly.” Callie did not mention that she could pull souls from bodies or force them into jars. The Soul Charmer was shit about sharing information with her, and she hoped he was with the others, too. Until they proved themselves to be more than threats, there was no reason for them to know what she might be capable of.
“Why you?” Beck asked with genuine curiosity. She appreciated the lack of bravado.
“He spoke to a woman on the phone.”
“I doubt he’ll be the one making the switch,” Beck countered.
Derek leveled his best ‘back off’ look at Beck. “Probably not, but he’ll have the details of who is coming. Even if it’s just that she’s a lady and will have three hundred bucks on her.”
“Fine, but I can’t just sit around waiting to hear how this goes,” Beck said. “I doubt the big man can either.”
The infinitesimal tilt of Derek’s head suggested he was on the same page, but doing his best not to fight Callie’s battles. It was moments like this that she did not regret telling him she loved him.
“I know the Charmer’s haunts. I’ll hit them and see where he’s holed up.” Miguel made moves toward the door.
Callie caught his arm. She released it quick enough to avoid being iced in place, but frost hardened in small rings around her fingers. “It’s too risky to go after him now.”
When it looked like an argument was brewing behind Miguel’s tight lips, Callie added, “If people see us looking for him, they’ll know he’s gone. If someone did take him, they’ll also think they’re winning.”
Miguel deflated. “Good point.”
“We need quality souls back in this building. Beck, Miguel, Savannah, can you three hit the high-level targets and get those souls back in this building? We can’t have people cutting out on us right now.” Everyone looked at her like she knew what the fuck she was doing, and it took a moment to realize that she just might. At least she had a good gut sense of how the Charmer would react.
If the Anonymous Souls group was bold enough to take souls from within the Soul Charmer’s emporium, they would be brazen enough to jack souls from his clients. Tess had tried that, and had experienced immolation-level pain for her troubles. That was without robbing him directly. The blood on the back room floor was still wet. Whether it was the Charmer’s or Vega’s didn’t matter. The Soul Charmer was built like an apocalypse-proof insect, and Callie had no intention of failing him. She liked her soul and her skin right where they were.
“We already have a handful of pickups scheduled for today, but I know a few regulars who only rent the pure shit.” Savannah checked her phone. She nodded at the screen. “We can rattle five or six of them and push them in here, if you’re here to collect the soul.”
“Have them here after seven. The Charmer may have returned by then, but if not I should be back from the soul drop off.” Callie found herself nodding along like the plan carried at a steady beat.
“If Derek’s going with you, then do we put a closed sign?” Beck pulled a drawer from the chest against the far wall. These people were ready to help. Holy shit.
“Is there a closed sign?” Savannah echoed.
Closing shop was not an option. The Soul Charmer had never closed his doors since he’d opened the small space ten years ago. She hadn’t seen his living quarters, but he slept somewhere nearby. Obviously he slipped away for some Z’s, and to tend the soul well. One of them had always been here, though. The image of her arm ablaze lit her memory. Let’s not do that again.
“No closed sign. Derek and I can stay here until I have to leave for the drop site. Derek, will you keep the clients distracted until I can get back?”
She winced in preparation for the impact, but all he said was, “No.”
“No? We can’t close the shop.” This was one of those times when she wished he could read every worst-case scenario flitting through her mind. This could go sideways in a hurry, and they couldn’t risk being caught in it.
“You can’t go alone.” Those four words were the granite foundation for an upcoming argument, if Callie didn’t fix this fast.
“I’ve got this. It’ll be quick.” She wiggled her fingers at him, a reminder she had a magical backup.
“It isn’t safe for you to be out there alone, especially not with them. Not now.”
Not now? she mouthed.
“Zara.”
Oh. Oh oh oh. Later she’d need to thank him for not spilling her secrets all over the soggy carpet. Telling these strangers that her mother had been kidnapped and mutilated recently was too dangerous. The less they knew of her weaknesses, the safer she and Derek would be.
“You need to lay low right now,” she whispered, “but you’re right. I won’t be alone.”
Beck was close enough to hear her hushed words. “I can go with her.”
“Where you go, I go.” Each time Derek had said those words to her, she’d gone a bit gooey for him. This time the promise hurt. He wasn’t holding her back, but by tethering himself to her, he was once again shoving himself into more danger. They needed to take turns on the danger shit. It was her turn.
“I can’t lose you now,” was all she could manage to say soft enough for only him. It was all she could manage without tears. A little louder, “Beck could help us.”
Beck took his cue, and infused it with earnestness. “It’ll be a short run, but I can make sure no one tails us and no one tries anything handsy.”
Handsy was the least of their problems, but he didn’t need to know that. Derek must have agreed on that front. “All right, Beck. You go with her. Stay close to her, and if she comes back with so much as a bruise, what happens to you is tenfold.”
Derek clapped him on the back, and Callie tried to ignore the
fact they were praising one another over taking care of a woman. Derek wasn’t that guy. He was thanking someone else for helping him, he was not doubting her. Magic skills were good, but when it’s five on one, an extra set of hands matters.
A broken, tired chuckle was all Beck could muster, but he nodded his agreement.
They had a plan.
Get one soul from the Anonymous crew, and hope it led to more. If they were lucky, they might even get the Soul Charmer back. Lord help her. Since when did anyone want that asshole back?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Beck promised to be back at five thirty to go with Callie to grab a soul from the Anonymous folk. He, Miguel, and Savannah left. It was still early in the afternoon, and that left Callie and Derek alone in the Soul Charmer’s shop.
The throaty rumble of a muscle car faded away slowly. When it was quiet, Callie asked, “What now?”
Those two basic words bore the weight of a massive question. She wasn’t asking how to kill the time.
“It’s an out.” His gravelly whisper was the kind of sound reserved for back seats of cars. While better when the conversation was dirty, the intimacy was not lost on Callie.
Stretching her neck for long seconds to the right, and then the left didn’t loosen the muscles bracketing her spine. “Maybe,” she said finally. “It can’t be this easy. We can’t just walk out.”
He turned meaningfully to the door. Their escape. Their answer. “Why not? That’s the plan, right?”
Did he doubt that she wanted him, wanted out of this? “Of course it’s the plan. We can’t let him hold us here, let him keep ladling on the fucking guilt like hot fudge on a Friday night.”
“You worried about rising to Heaven now, doll?” His eyes held no humor.
“I didn’t used to worry about sin, but now I’m bearing more and more. His and Josh’s and Zara’s and it’s a lot.”
“Hey.” Heavy arms and soft leather wrapped around her.
“I’m not worried about Heaven, Derek. I’m worried about here.”
He tightened his arms around her. “I’m good. I’ve got you.”
Lost Souls (Soul Charmer Book 3) Page 14