Borrowed Souls (Soul Charmer #1)(20)
“With the elderly, it’s simpler to ease them in their own beds,” the woman replied.
“Oh. The others always bring tables.”
“I focus on energy and overall well-being more than deep kneading.” Her voice had a lulling quality. It was probably helpful in her profession.
“Like chakra alignment?” Callie remembered her cousin Jackie saying that crystals had reinvigorated her. The business cards Jackie had shown her called the woman she was seeing a healing specialist, for what it was worth.
“Something along those lines.” The woman paused to offer an overly sweet smile again, the kind strangers flashed before coming in for a hug. Callie resisted the urge to step backward, and the woman kept her distance. “I ease their souls so they can improve the world.”
For as long as Callie could remember, a strong undercurrent of the mystical had run beneath the smothering omnipresence of the church’s religious authority in Gem City. In fact, most of the state was open to both healing crystals and Cortean Catholicism. You had to travel fairly far over state lines to find skeptics. That temptation to escape to the land of non-believers had been palpable when she was a teenager who had no interest in church confessions or having her aura read. Before she knew soul magic existed.
The woman was too woo-woo for Callie. She didn’t care much about energy and chakras and hunks of rock hidden under beds. One could find a massage spa or three in every Gem City neighborhood, and the therapists were good about visiting Cedar Retirement for real work. Still, Callie hadn’t seen this woman before. “Right, well, I can’t let you into the locked wards. Visit the front desk and someone can escort you to the patients you’re cleared to help today.” She pointed toward the hallway leading to the information desk.
The woman keened her head to the right and smiled. “You could use a massage.” It wasn’t a question.
Her fake laugh didn’t fool the massage lady.
“I could balance your energy. It would only take a moment.” She took a step toward Callie.
She stepped back to maintain the distance between them. “No time. Sorry. People are waiting on lunch. I’ll see you around.” Her stomach twisted.
“Thanks.” The other woman’s gentle smile didn’t falter, but relief washed over Callie as she departed.
Callie buzzed herself and the large rack of meals through both sets of doors, but stopped immediately inside the ward. It wasn’t the beeps of medical machines or the soft voices that made her uneasy. Those were normal. It wasn’t the too-white walls, either.
Her fingers were frozen. Not. Normal.
This was no case of shitty circulation, or someone screwing with the thermostat. She tried to let go of the cart, but her fingers barely moved. Her dark blue nail polish was chipped and peeling, but the fact her skin was beginning to take on a similar hue was more concerning. She pried a hand from the cart and lifted it closer to inspect. Her skin was turning a cool grey color. Great. She was locked in a facility with the dying, while her skin took on its own ghastly shade. That had to be a bad sign. About right for this week. Brother abducted. Shanghaied into the service of the mafia, and then blackmailed into working for the goddamn Soul Charmer. And now her fingers were turning necrotic and would probably fall off any second. Could she bail on the deal with Ford if she didn’t have fingers? There was a fucked-up silver lining.
“Girl!” The shout shook Callie from her spiraling stress. She looked to find one of the residents, face red as he hollered to get her attention. Maybe he’d been at it awhile. How long had he been right next to her?
“Yes?” She did her best to bite back the nasty instinct clawing at her throat.
“You gonna stand there all day?” As he finished speaking, an orderly rushed up and corralled him.
“Sorry about Mr. Beck. He’s been in a mood lately,” the orderly said.
As the moody Mr. Beck moved away, Callie’s fingers began to regain their dexterity, and the color lost the undead sheen. What the hell had that been all about? “Sure, thanks,” she muttered, trying to hold it together.
The orderly gave her a genuine smile, and went back to his duties. Callie did the same. She tried to stay focused on getting to the end of the hallway, on finishing the task she’d come here to do. The local news was playing on a television mounted in the far corner. She’d start at the end, and work her way back to the way she came in, toward the door and her escape.
She took a deep breath, and started down the corridor, barely taking more than a few steps before her hands went AWOL, turning frigidly cold again. Callie’s head was spinning. She told herself to keep moving. Another few steps, and the cold almost immediately thawed, and her hands returned to a normal temperature. A few more steps and they were back to freezing again.
The sensory overload was overwhelming, almost too much to handle. She didn’t know what was setting her off, but the sooner she got out of the ward, the better.
She passed the small lounge area on the right. Usually family members joined the patients to play cards here. No one was visiting now. She glanced at the TV blaring from its corner mount in the nook, and damn near skidded to a stop when she saw Ford on the screen. He was playing up his teenage looks in a blue and white button-up shirt, even though he was nearly thirty. His blue eyes glinted as camera flashes lit the scene. He was speaking with a reporter. The ticker below read MOB BOSS’S SON IMPLICATED IN NARCOTICS RING. The time stamp said the clip was from the day before, but Callie could feel Ford in the room with her. He flaunted that genial, nice-guy charm as he spoke past the reporter and directly into the camera. “My father made mistakes. No one denies that. His Alzheimer’s puts him at no risk to anyone, though. I’m just trying to keep Ford Aluminum—the business he bled to build—up and running while taking care of my family.”