Borrowed Souls (Soul Charmer #1)(31)
She squeezed the couch’s arm until the wood beneath the fabric pressed back against her fingers. Deep breaths. “That’s good. I’ve got to go soon.”
“No you don’t.” Zara’s over confidence squeezed through the phone receiver like a sneer. What? Callie couldn’t make plans on her own? She couldn’t change the script?
“I’ve got work this afternoon, and still need to run errands.” Not even a lie.
“That retirement home is running you ragged.” Concern? From Zara? Nope, she continued, “That’s why you’ll never force me into one of those places. If they have enough money to be paying time and a half, then they’re bleeding those people dry. You work for heathens.”
Would knowing she worked a second job change anything? Unlikely. Besides, she didn’t want Zara involved in this whole business with Josh and Ford and the Soul Charmer. If there was one person who needed to be kept out of the loop here, it was Zara. Josh might be her favorite, but that didn’t mean their mother was street smart enough to keep her nose out of this. Nothing would complicate their lives further than Zara trying to track down Ford to negotiate. Though, at this point, all she had was her apartment, her cat, and the television Callie had sprung for last Christmas—right before Josh had liquidated all her funds, again.
“Yeah, Mom. Well, I still have to go.”
“Tell Josh to call me.”
“I will.” Right after I pay off his most recent drug debt.
Zara hung up before Callie had the chance. She set her phone on the couch cushion beside her, and imagined how it would feel to have her mother worry about her the way she did for Josh. Would it fill her chest with warmth? She shook her head to erase the idiotic idea.
She liked to think her mom hadn’t always been like this. Zara had been fun once, back when road trips to Aunt Lily’s were an adventure instead of an excuse to ditch the kids. Callie had turned seven just a few weeks before the event and was over-the-moon when her mother had bought her a new swimsuit and hot pink flip-flops. She’d clomped up and down the sidewalk while her mom loaded the car for the drive down to the low desert.
The July sun cranked the outdoor heat to a wicked 107 degrees Fahrenheit, but it didn’t matter, as someone—probably Uncle Joe—had crafted an oversized, homemade Slip ‘N Slide in Aunt Lily’s backyard. The hill it rested on was subtle, but Callie had been scared once she’d seen it. Josh’s pre-teen bragging about how “wild” the slide was had not helped her fears. Zara, though, wouldn’t allow Callie to shy away. Her mother had borrowed an oversized shirt from a cousin and took a monumental run at the slide. She’d screamed in delight on her first run. The second time, she’d lifted Callie on to her back. Callie rode down the slide with her mom, bound together by fun.
Zara wasn’t a something-for-nothing kind of woman. These days, every word she gave to Callie was in exchange for something else. As riled as she pretended to be over Cedar Retirement working Callie, she was a hustler.
When they visited Aunt Lily’s a couple weeks later, though, Zara had spent the entire day on the phone. Her underlings in a pyramid scheme involving five-dollar bills and tarot decks were dropping like flies. Money was short and Zara’s temper more so. That was the way of their relationship. The bright spots had become fewer and fewer as Callie aged. She had watched her mother con people year after year. It had just taken a couple decades to realize she was part of a long con herself.
Derek arrived at Callie’s apartment at seven on her fifth night as a strong-armed soul collector. It was later than their normal meeting, but she’d liked the change. Not only did it mean fewer hours involved on the darker side of Gem City, but it also allowed her to bypass a visit to the Soul Charmer. The man had already turned her into a human treasure detector. She wasn’t particularly game to discover what else he could do to her. That whole humans-to-toads deal sounded fake, but when your hands went Icelandic out of the blue, you started believing in the outlandish.
When she’d encountered soul magic in the retirement home, she should have expected it everywhere else. Her afternoon trip to the grocery store, her first time in a crowd since her quality time with the Charmer, had underscored just how many people dabbled with soul rental. Kristi had done it, sure, but that was one family member, and she was the only soul renter Callie actually knew. But her hands had damn near fused to the cart in every other aisle, passing person after person with either too much or too little soul. At least the flask was with Derek, instead of burning a hole in her pocket. It was irritating, but illuminating. At this rate, borrowing souls had to be close to the norm in Gem City.
Plus, the inability to tell a difference between the freezing cold of a renter in between souls and the wicked chill of those who’d hawked their souls bothered her. If she was stuck with this skill, it’d be nice to know which people were doubling down on souls and which ones had said fuck it—for money or a high or whatever else a rented soul was used for—and pawned their own to the Charmer. She’d never be that hard up for cash. Hawk a television or bicycle to help cover rent? Sure. She’d been there. There was a reason she nodded along when her coworkers talked about their favorite reality show. She caught glimpses of shows playing in the dining area at work, but that had been it for a long time. She was okay with that. Give her a stack of paperbacks borrowed from the library to read, and she was a happy woman.