Borrowed Souls (Soul Charmer #1)(22)
“Glad you think so, because you’re buying.” She picked her purse up from the floor, and started down the stairs. Derek’s thunderous steps followed closely behind.
He insisted on taking the motorcycle to the diner. Callie didn’t bother telling him it was only a five-minute walk. He probably didn’t want to leave his bike unattended outside her apartment building, and admittedly, it wasn’t like her complex was going to be getting any of those renters’ top picks awards or a safety seal from the city.
They commandeered a large booth at the back of the restaurant, adjacent to the Dia de los Muertos altar the diner had already begun to fill with candles and ceramic butterflies. The din of the place was more than enough to conceal their conversation, but Derek wanted the extra security. Callie hadn’t argued there, either. “Pick your battles” was her motto today.
Once his coffee and her Coke arrived, and they’d both placed orders for suitably unhealthy meals, it was time to talk. Derek leaned back against the cherry vinyl upholstery and rested his hands on the table. Nothing-to-hide posture didn’t sell Callie these days. Her brother had once turned out his pockets to prove he wasn’t carrying meth on him. Turned out he’d hidden it in his shoe. His fucking shoe. Derek wasn’t her brother, but simply not being a junkie didn’t mean he was Mr. Truthful.
“Where do you want to start?” he asked.
Starting at the beginning would have been smart. Dominoes falling in a line, and all would be clear if she followed that path. Being smart would have been a whole lot easier if her fingers hadn’t locked up and turned straight-up Icelandic this morning. “I want to know what the fuck that asshole did to me.”
Derek arched a brow. The sugar skulls in the painting above his head may have given her the side-eye, too. Perhaps she could have been a little less accusatory.
“My hands.” She lifted them, palms toward him.
His grunt said he understood. Derek closed his eyes as he hauled in a deep breath. With every Zen move he made, the volcanic rage simmering inside her edged one notch closer to exploding. She was about to slam her hands against the table when he finally spoke. “He made it so you can sense when a person has too much or too little of a soul.”
She was not goddamn Goldilocks. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“You’re able to sense soul magic.” At her exasperated look, he held up a hand and took a hearty swig from his coffee mug. “You know people rent souls, right?”
“Yes.”
“Those souls have to come from somewhere. So from time to time, people barter theirs out in exchange for money or other goods.”
“Sure,” her tone soured. She remembered the Charmer’s original offer. No clerics winked and nodded in tacit approval at that part of business, as far as she knew. “The Charmer’s souls have to come from more places than just people who want to hawk them, though, right?”
Derek’s nostrils flared, but he replied, “I can’t tell you where he gets the other souls from, and he sure as shit ain’t going to tell you.”
“What can you tell me then?”
He ignored the acid sprinkled atop her words. “Well, now you have the ability to sense those who have been a part of soul magic. Two souls were never meant to inhabit a single body. If someone’s renting a soul, the two will fight against each other. They both want a home, and they both want dominance over the other. It’s why we have so many crazies here. The longer you keep the borrowed soul in you, the more damaged yours becomes. Anyway, when your hands get hot, it means you’re close to someone carrying multiple souls.”
“Hot?” She remembered the burning sensation back at the Charmer’s shop when he’d grabbed her hand and held it to the jar of souls. So she’d been sensing those extra souls? That still didn’t explain her morning in the ward. “Okay, except this morning, when I went into a few of the patients’ rooms, my fingers locked and froze at work. I know these people couldn’t be harboring bonus souls. They’re in a secured facility, and no one is letting the Soul Charmer into that ward.”
He winced. That couldn’t be a good sign. “That’s the other side of the spectrum. Remember I said too little? People who have used soul magic and have a less-than-whole soul will make your hands cold. It’s the most common reaction, and the strongest, which is why you can feel it from farther away.”
“Less-than-whole?”
“Shit. I don’t suppose you’d forget I said that?”
His wince worked on her. Callie replied, “Explain it, and then maybe I can promise not to share.”
His grunt of appeasement pleased her. “Souls like to fuse to the same spot, right?”
She nodded, despite not knowing what he meant.
“They also, kind of, fuse to each other. So when we extract a borrowed soul from someone after they’re finished with it, a little bit—really, it doesn’t make a difference to the person we’re taking it from, they’d never know—of their own soul, the one they were trying to keep pure, comes with it.”
“He takes part of people’s souls? Takes souls that haven’t been pawned or whatever?”
He wasn’t meeting her gaze. “It’s not the same. They still have a soul. It just has a little more character.”