The Charmer was meticulous about the storage process. Every soul had a place. Every one was marked, measured, and secured. This shelf hadn’t contained the purest souls. It hadn’t held the recent returns, either. The Soul Charmer liked to have the recently used souls sequestered. Said they needed a moment before going back into a host. Callie had thought this was about the Charmer controlling the supply, but after seeing the well she thought this might be an actual rule. Not that he’d fucking told her. None of that mattered now. The souls that were missing were the most rented, the ones burdened with the most sin. Those souls had seen some shit.
The Soul Charmer was a shitty mentor, but some truths were too important to hide from her. When they’d been alone, he’d told her about the filthy souls and made her promise to never repeat it.
She’d reached out to grab one of the souls from the tainted shelf. He’d slapped her hand before she could touch it. “Not that one.”
“Why not? You said you wanted anything under 900. This is labeled 775.”
“You must always read the whole label.” His tone had been cutting.
Callie had held back a curse. “I thought I had. What did I miss?”
“It used to be a 775.” He retrieved the jar, and rotated it. Down the right side of the label were other numbers and dates. “It’s now a 104.”
“I didn’t know you had souls that low.” Callie read the checkout log on the side of the jar. “Has this soul really been rented thirty times?”
“Twenty seven.”
She hadn’t known what to say to that.
“After ten, most souls are no longer capable to producing a good match. Most of these rentals were to the same person. You don’t make that call. All you need to remember is that any soul we rent out more than ten times goes here. They can only be placed with the right host, which means you don’t pick them out for my customers.”
The command in his voice caught her in the chest, but not hard enough to stop her from trying to squeeze more information out of him. “What happens if one of these souls is put in the wrong host?”
Most of the time the Soul Charmer’s talk about matching souls was about getting the most cash out of the customer. This was different. His conviction was real. His eyes had narrowed until only black slits peeked back at her. He’d clacked the bulky gold and emerald ring on his index finger against the jar. “Some souls have been through too much. Rising to Heaven isn’t in their future, but the weight of sin can do more than keep one from celestial paradise.”
Callie understood sin. She understood right and wrong, and consequences that haunted a person. These were the rented souls, though. They were supposed to be the Cortean Get Out of Hell Free Card. This didn’t sound like an escape at all.
The Soul Charmer hadn’t been done. “When it becomes more sin than soul, the rental may try to take over.”
“Take over?” She knew this shit was shady.
“Not always the way you mean, Calliope. Yes, it could override the host, but more likely it would take over to ruin him. Suicide, car crash, murder. It’d get the host caught or killed to find an escape. Sin can drag a soul down just as the lack of it can raise one up.”
Callie tried to shake the memory. At the time, she’d cracked jokes about the Soul Charmer’s theological past. That had been before he’d taken her to the soul well. That was before she knew some souls were here as part of purgatory. Before she knew a mismatch could lead to murder. Now she looked at the empty shelf and only saw dozens of missing souls that were done being used.
Sin can drag a soul down just as the lack of it can raise one up.
“Someone had to have taken them,” she whispered. Those souls were dangers to nearly anyone who rented them. Those souls were ready to move on and face consequences.
“That’s Problem B,” Derek said.
“What’s Problem A?”
“Some of those pieces are broken shards, right? If you come closer, we might be in a situation.”
A short, staccato laugh popped from her chest and disappeared just as fast. “I hadn’t even thought of that.” She did now, though. She pushed with her magic. Nothing rumbled near her. She took a tentative step toward Derek. Still no flames. She edged closer to him and around the blood. No souls shimmered in the room.
“We’re alone.”
“No, Beck, Miguel, and the Charmer are supposed to be here.”
She’d meant the souls, but saying so aloud now would be awkward. “Where are they? Where is he?”
Derek glanced from the scattered papers on the desk to the back hallway. “Whoever did this, I pity them.”
The last time she’d been in the basement of the Soul Charmer’s emporium, she’d tortured a woman. She’d forced Tess to give answers. A room set up for interrogations was beneath their feet, and she had no desire to go there again.
“They have to be downstairs.” Defeat tasted bitter.
The rear door of the office led to a small hallway. While it was normally Callie’s path out of the building, it was also the only way to get to the basement. Derek opened the door, and swore.
“What?” Callie pressed against his back, but his bulky frame filled the doorway. “What’s wrong?”
“More glass,” he muttered.
That couldn’t be enough to unnerve him. She nudged him until he acquiesced, finally taking a step to the side so she could see. The picture frames were shattered. Every single one. None were stolen, but fractals in the remaining edges of the panes suggested a small hammer had been taken to every one.
Derek crunched his way over to the second door, the basement door. “We’ll clean it up later.”
Callie started to agree. The Charmer was probably seething that she and Derek weren’t there
