Borrowed Souls (Soul Charmer #1)(60)

Joey’s ass collided with the metal counter as he scuttled away from her. A stack of Styrofoam cups toppled behind him. “How did he know?” His eyes darted from her face to the door and back again in rapid succession.

“Know what? I thought you could use some napkins.” She extended them to him again. He had to yank hard to get them out of her icy grip.

He dropped the wad on the counter, and then wrapped his arms around his torso. His hands were tight against his upper arms and grated up and down. The soothing motion warped by pressure left red streaks in its wake.

“What are you doing here?” Why was he so scared of her? The grey accent to his visage was new.

Her brows screwed upward. “It’s a gas station.”

“Ha. Yeah. Sure.” His stilted movements reminded her of Josh coming off a high.

Why was she involving herself in this? “What’s wrong?”

Joey glared at the floor for so long she thought he’d forgotten she was there. Whatever he was fucked up on had done a number. She wouldn’t have pegged him as a user of more than magic, but she wasn’t exactly batting a thousand on character assessments. “She came back,” he finally whispered.

“Who?”

“The woman who wanted the soul.” His voice dropped low, but the words still pierced Callie’s heart. Tess.

She fought against her clenching jaw to ask, “Did you give it to her?”

He looked up at her, eyes blazing as unshed tears welled against his lids. “Not mine. She said she needed permission to take mine … ”

Her knees almost buckled, but she had to ask. “But?”

“I had another one from the Charmer.”

That snapped her back into reality. “Already?”

He had the audacity to look sheepish. “I needed it.” He let out a mirthless laugh. “I guess she needed it more.”

“What do you mean?” Joey’d asked Tess for money last time. Had she paid up?

“When I told her no, she just took it anyway.” He met Callie’s gaze, the plea blatant. “I wouldn’t have betrayed the Charmer. You know that.”

She mostly believed him. “Yeah. How’d she do it, though?”

He grasped her arms, and frost surged forward immediately under her skin. He let go before it could bite him. “She dug her nails into my shoulder and then put her mouth at the hollow of my neck. It wasn’t like when you took it.”

“She sucked it from you?” There was no way to conceal how gross that was. Callie did not say the words “soul vampire,” but holy shit was she thinking them loudly.

“I know how it sounds,” he snapped. He yanked at the collar of his shirt. No fang marks, but Joey did have three small slash marks at the center of his chest, in the hollow below his neck. The edges were ragged. He wasn’t bleeding, but he would probably need liquid stitches to keep from scarring.

“I believe you,” she said, mostly to herself.

Joey leaned close, voice dropped low, “She told me she’d be back the next time I rented, but I won’t give her more souls. I swear.”

Like the Charmer would continue renting souls to a guy who gave them to the competition.

“You’ll tell the Charmer then? Explain everything?” Joey continued. The hope welling against his lower eyelids was almost enough to fell her.

Almost. “You want respect from the Charmer, go there yourself and tell him.”

Joey gawked at her, despite the lack of a second head suddenly sprouting from her body. “I can’t.”

“You’ll be safe. It’s the best option.” She didn’t know if that was the truth, but she wasn’t about to walk into the Soul Charmer’s store and tell this story secondhand. No fucking way. This was the price Joey paid for dabbling in soul magic, instead of helping his kid with algebra.

Besides, she had a cat to rescue.


Zara talked a gang of shit about safety, but the screen door of her ground-level apartment was unlocked, and the dilapidated white door behind it left ajar. The neighbors’ ones along the row of the complex she lived in were all damn near barricaded. Not that the fifty-year-old construction would withstand a solid foot thrust near the knob. Callie pressed in when her mom didn’t answer the doorbell. “Mom?”

“In the back. Frankie needs me.” Zara’s voice floated, placating and melodic, from the back of the house.

All the damn cat needed was for Zara to quit pussing out and climb the stepladder to get him out. Sure enough, Callie’s mom was sitting at the dinette sipping tea. “Your texts said it was an emergency,” she said.

Zara pulled her purple robe closed over her exposed thigh. Like Callie cared about seeing her mom’s leg. “He’s frightened.”

Frankie, a ginger fluff ball, was purring so loudly Callie could hear him when she’d passed through the living room. There was no point in arguing with her mom. No matter how many times he’d leapt from shelf to refrigerator to cabinet, Zara hadn’t picked up on Frankie’s obvious attempt at solace. Callie wouldn’t be able to leave until the cat was “rescued” from his favorite hiding spot.

She glanced around the kitchen, but didn’t spot the two-step ladder. She only saw three tabloids with recent dates and a tower of empty take-out containers. So much for hoping Zara would learn to solve her own problems. “Where did you put the step stool?”