Borrowed Souls (Soul Charmer #1)(40)
So the Soul Charmer hadn’t lied to her. It still didn’t make sense. “I saw it, though. Felt it. Her—her shoulder … ”
“She’ll heal. I’ll explain, but not here. We need to go.”
Callie’s hushed tone was less about privacy and more about shaky vocal cords. “Don’t you need to talk to her?”
His sharp shake of his head was a no and a suggestion to shut up in a single move. Derek wrapped his arm around Callie and escorted her out.
It was for the best; Callie would have made a shitty belly dancer.
—— CHAPTER TEN ——
The earlier fire in Callie’s belly had disappeared along with the flames in her hands. Bravery came much easier when the consequences of your actions could be ignored. That’s what adrenaline was for, to blind us from peering toward the future. The churning worry in her gut shifted its focus from what kissing Derek meant for her future to how big the Bianca blowout would be. Violence wasn’t in her handbag. Yet she was the one who’d escalated the interaction with Bianca. She hadn’t intended to burn the other woman. Intent required forethought.
She’d melted fabric to another person. Callie’s stomach pitched and she swallowed the result of her guilt. Derek parked the bike, and she climbed off quickly. Sucking down quick breaths of clean air had to clear her head, right?
“You’re not going to puke, are you?” That Derek, he was all class.
She scowled at him as she shoved her helmet into his hand.
“I’m surprised you didn’t take me home,” she muttered. She was even more thankful he hadn’t taken her to the Charmer. Instead, he’d brought her to the outskirts of Gem City. They’d climbed in elevation, and the thinner air was actually calming her. The empty road and huge spaces between buildings around them would make it a great place to lose someone. Permanently. Her heartbeat started to sprint as her thoughts turned morbid.
Derek’s brows pinched together as though to hold back his menace. He scrubbed an open hand against his face, but it couldn’t siphon the emotion. “Too much to talk about.”
“Talking?” She didn’t hide her skepticism. She lit a woman up. Exposed them. If the consequences were merely a chat, why were they out in BFE?
“You took it upon yourself to question Bianca, who you know nothing about, without me.” He flung his hands wide, measuring the problem. The hard chest she’d pressed against earlier rose and fell rapidly. The cotton of his shirt strained. She knew the feeling.
“She found me. What was I supposed to do?”
“You couldn’t have just made nice with her until I got back?”
“You couldn’t have warned me my hands might be on fucking fire when she was around?”
He rocked on his heels, an unbidden reaction to the invisible slap, and then slowly dropped his hands to his side.
“Yeah. Want to explain how my formerly-normal hands—that now turn to ice around soul magic users—pulled some seventh-circle shit next to Bianca?”
He wrapped a hand around his nape. It wasn’t going to warm his brain stem or generate better answers, but Callie kept that to herself. The move jutted his elbow in the air like a leather-clad flag. As long as it wasn’t a rallying signal, she’d wait. “Well? Any bright ideas there?”
“It’s the same thing as last time.” Regret twisted his features.
The big man winced, and her chest tightened, but that didn’t change the situation. Her voice lost its edge. “I’m going to need more than that, Derek.”
He nodded. “Can we go inside first?”
None of the small adobe buildings surrounding them looked particularly inviting. “Where exactly?”
He hiked a thumb toward the building behind him. “Maria’s.”
The restaurant name was familiar, but she never had reason to spend time in the city’s outer edges. The little restaurant was more akin to a home from the outside, but as they neared it she saw there was a hand-painted sign on the door reading: Maria’s Cantina.
A woman not much older than Callie led them down two sets of stairs and past whitewashed walls covered with license plates and painting of cowboys with ten-gallon hats to a table with tile inlay. She handed over two laminated menus. “What can I get you to drink? House margarita?”
Callie’s stomach rebelled at even the mention. “Water’s fine.”
The hint of a smile played at the corner of Derek’s mouth. “House is fine for me. Rocks. No salt.”
The waitress snatched a leftover newspaper from their table and then left quickly to fetch their drinks. She didn’t need to see the headline to know police had found another body missing hands. Fucking Ford and his threats. They followed her even to down-home restaurants on the outskirts of town.
Callie fought to stay in the moment. “I didn’t peg you as a margarita man.” Her judgment was real. Last time he’d ordered one, he hadn’t taken a sip.
“It’s the best drink they’ve got. Plus, it’s become a tequila kind of night.”
In the hierarchy of booze-as-medicine-for-emotional-woes, it clearly went beer, wine, rum, vodka, tequila, and then whiskey. However, depending on your defining experiences, one could, possibly, swap the top three into almost any order. Regardless, Derek was bypassing the beer and going straight to the hard stuff, and that didn’t bode well.