Borrowed Souls (Soul Charmer #1)(48)

“You know I’d never—” Was blathering a side effect of soul extraction?

Derek cut him off. “Yeah, yeah, you’re an upright citizen. Just tell me if anyone else asked about taking that soul.”

Joey looked around his tidy home, as though spies might pop up from behind the credenza. “Some lady offered to take it. Said she’d fix me.”

“Fix you?” Derek asked, nonplussed.

“She didn’t seem all too lucid to me. The Charmer is creepy—” he paused, as though wondering if the criticism would earn him a smack. When it didn’t, he continued “—but at least he’s got all his marbles together. That woman definitely did not.”

“What exactly did she say?” Callie asked.

“She offered to purify me. Said she could tell I was masking myself and could make me the true person I was meant to be. I told her unless she was offering a billion dollars, she couldn’t improve my life that much.” Hear, hear for skeptics.

“Did she mention her name?” Derek was on edge, his jaw tightening.

“She gave me a card for when I changed my mind. Not that I’m going to, man.” He’d tacked on the last part. The Soul Charmer had cultivated a sincere amount of fear in him. Callie could relate. Joey pulled his wallet from his back pocket and produced the card.

“You kept her card?” Derek was at peak malevolence.

“So, I, um, could give it to you.”

Derek rolled his eyes at that bullshit, but accepted the card. It was for the chakra massage storefront. Lovely. “She short or tall, this crazy woman?”

“Tall.”

Callie’s mind raced. That meant the woman who offered to purify Joey hadn’t been Bianca. No one would mistake her for tall. Derek’s eyes narrowed. She knew he was thinking the same thing he was: Tess had long legs and the height to prove it.


Two of the three other retrieval jobs they did that night had also had run-ins with Tess, though not a one knew her name. Anonymous benefactors were real, but could Tess be classified as such? They were leaving the final stop, Callie’s flask a hot stone against her thigh, filled with another soul. While she’d expected the inherent grimy sensation of being good at something foul, she was surprised how much Tess and Bianca had gotten under her skin. Understanding others is how you avoid getting hurt, and she just didn’t get them. That made them the scary unknown.

Bianca had alluded to some masterful plan to cleanse the city. If she were donating millions to city renovation, avoiding credit could make sense. Not everyone said yes to her little proposal—it’d been a fifty-fifty split, half too fearful of the Soul Charmer (and probably Derek as well) to accept whatever she offered. Why not give a name? She didn’t hide where she worked. Though, maybe that was just a front. Leave your name and we’ll mystically pop up at your house later.

Derek swore under his breath while reading messages on his phone. “We’ve got another stop to make.”

“How many souls can this thing hold?” Callie wondered aloud.

“The most I’ve heard of is seventeen. So you’re good for at least one more, doll.”

She’d climbed on his bike expecting a drive to an apartment building. But when Derek pulled into the parking lot of St. Catherine’s Memorial Hospital, her stomach dropped to her toes. Only the pegs below her feet kept her insides from dripping to the pavement.

“Why are we here?” Her voice had gone reedy, but Derek had already killed the engine.

He avoided her gaze as he stowed their helmets. “Need to snag a soul real quick.”

“From here?” She bit back the urge to tell him she couldn’t.

Hospitals didn’t scare her. She used to find the astringent-laced hallways comforting. Before she’d been sacked from her gig there because of a brother with sticky fingers. From the hiss of the automatic doors opening as they entered, to the muted commotion of heart rate monitors and EKG they passed, to the hearty clacking on keyboards from the nurses’ station, every sound inside the building reminded her of what she’d lost. Her plan to become a nurse, her better-than-average pay gig, her escape from being like her mom. She’d lost it all when she’d lost her job at the hospital. Derek couldn’t know how much pain walking down these hallways was causing her, but he must have guessed at least part of it, because his silence had grown tenfold.

He paused outside a closed patient room. The nurses had averted their eyes as Callie and Derek passed. He was known here, too. Great.

“This is going to be different.” He winced as though waiting for the wallop the words could deliver.

Callie narrowed her eyes. “How?” No point in avoiding bitterness now.

Derek pushed open the door, and Callie’s fingers pricked with simmering heat.

He walked in. Curiosity made her follow.

He inclined his head toward the patient’s bed. “He’s not exactly conscious.”

Kapow! There was the punch. Only it smacked Callie square in the stomach. Traction held the man in the bed’s right leg and arm aloft, a brace cradled his neck, and an arc of nasty staples left a red semi-circle above his temple. He didn’t move when they entered the room. When Callie checked the IV bag, she knew why. Derek reached to rest a hand on her shoulder, but she pulled away. “No,” she said, filling those two letters with undiluted determination. “I won’t steal souls for him. I don’t build his fucking collection. There’s a line, Derek, a goddamn line, and this is way over it.”