Not that Savannah cared how complicated Callie’s life had become. Not when she was bent over, gasping and coughing.
Derek brushed Callie’s hair back behind her ear. He whispered, “It’s okay, doll. I’ve got you.”
Her fingertips vibrated in time with Savannah’s rapid breath. The other woman’s soul was responding to her magic. She hadn’t erected a magical wall between them. She’d simply shoved the other woman’s soul back. The body went, too. Callie straightened her fingers, released her control of the soul, and then shook her hand out. Anise filled her sinuses and the bitter bite of guilt coated her tongue. She wasn’t this kind of person. Couldn’t be this kind of person. She wasn’t someone who grabbed other people’s fucking souls. That was horror-show shit reserved purely for the Soul Charmer. He did it with purpose. She’d done it on accident, and that was probably worse.
“What the hell was that?” Savannah said between gasping breaths.
The need to apologize pummeled Callie’s gut with a one-two punch combination. Before she could do so, Derek spoke. “A reminder we all work for the Charmer.”
Savannah bristled, and then Derek added, “And to mind yourself around Callie, too.”
He made her sound like a badass. Callie was merely a woman pulled a dozen different ways, but doing her damnedest to keep going. Apparently that now included taking hold of others’ souls and shoving them about a bit. Callie let out a short, derisive snort. The Soul Charmer would be practically cooing with praise if he’d witnessed this. Funny how her best improvements with the magic he’d placed in her body were won when he wasn’t present. If this smash-and-dash move was intended as a teachable moment, she was going to be pissed.
The others may have grumbled or perhaps the floor was merely whining. Beck stepped between the two factions with referee poise. “So it sounds like we need to call that number.”
Callie nodded. “If we’re going to assume no one here knows anything about this group, we need to learn as much as we can.”
“Answers before the boss gets back are top priority to me, too,” Beck said.
Miguel sighed. “You assume he’s coming back.” Not a question.
“He’ll be back,” Beck and Derek said together.
“Did anyone talk to the Vega guy?” Callie asked.
Miguel held up two fingers.
“Good.” Callie nodded. “We’ll call the number and see if you recognize his voice. If Vega answers, this gets a lot simpler.”
“He answers, he’s probably behind the Anonymous Souls. He doesn’t…” Derek stopped himself from pointing out the situation could get worse.
He was a good guy for trying to protect her, but Callie was intimately familiar with the universal truth that shit could always get worse.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Vega didn’t answer the phone.
Even through the echo of the speakerphone, the gruff, “How much you need?” wasn’t familiar to anyone in the room. Miguel shifted his thumb to end the call, but that wouldn’t do.
“A little something through the weekend.” Callie’s affect was close enough to the regular customers to make her suck her teeth to dislodge the taste. Everyone was watching her, which only made it worse.
“You got cash?” the man on the other end of the line asked.
“It’s not like you take cards.” Faking this shit was hard. Derek arched a brow, and she could only give him a melodramatic sorry shrug. She was supposed to be ditzy, and antagonizing the source wasn’t a good way to get info. She tacked on a fake trilling laugh.
“Is that a yes?” he finally said.
“Cash isn’t a problem.” Souls were.
“Bring three hundred to this address—” he rattled off an address somewhere in the Railyard. Beck jotted it down. “Be there at six, and we’ll hook you up.”
“That’s a lot of money for a weekend. The Soul Charmer is cheaper than that.” Well, he could be. If someone was soul slumming.
The room went silent. Miguel and Savannah were wide-eyed. Beck was holding up a single hand in the international sign of HOLY MOTHER OF GOD STOP. Even Derek was holding his breath. Had she borked this whole thing?
After a half-second longer of awkward silence, the man on the phone said, “The Soul Charmer is screwing you. If you want quality, be there at six with the three hundred. If you don’t, good luck renting from that Plaza dwelling asshole.”
Callie fell over herself apologizing. It’s what one of their “upstanding citizen” customers would do. She also couldn’t lose this chance. No matter what she’d done with the collected souls before, no matter what she’d traded to Nate, if Callie could find out who was behind the Anonymous Souls and who stole the Soul Charmer’s wares—probably the same people—he’d get over it. He’d exact a price, because he was that kind of person, but it’d be a cost she could bear.
The soul broker hung up first.
“What the hell was that?” Miguel sputtered.
“Looks like she got us a fucking lead,” Derek said.
Beck’s smile slipped into a toothy grin. “That was the start of a good plan. Understandable it’s unfamiliar to you, M.”
Savannah was white-knuckling the edge of the counter. “Har har. Now they know we’re on to them.”
Was she kidding? “What part of that made you think he was on to us?”
Before Savannah could explain, Miguel said, “Whatever. It’s done. Now we have to go get the soul from him and let him stick it in one of us. The Charmer is not going to be good with that.”
“The Charmer isn’t here,” Beck said.
“You’re not the one going,” Derek added.
“I brought Vega in. The Charmer put this on me,” the third soul collector argued.
Who the fuck fought over doing the Charmer’s bidding? What did their boss have over them? This wasn’t loyalty. It was fear. It had to be.
“First, that wasn’t Vega on the phone. Unless you were lying.” Callie waited for Miguel to tell her she was wrong. When he didn’t, she continued,
