“Callie?” It was Josh’s turn to look worried. If she weren’t being assailed by ice, she might have cracked a joke about their taking turns breaking down these days.
The trailer’s door slammed open. Callie staggered back into the shadows. Josh followed her. Nate lingered in the doorway. Either the white bomber jacket or the ocher glow behind him made Nate look bigger. No. Callie wouldn’t let herself go there. Up close he’d be the same acne-scarred weasel as before. He’d asked too much then, and he’d ask too much now. Her knuckles ached to move, but the web of ice was woven too tightly to allow her to stretch her fingers.
What was Nate doing here? If he’d only been here to screw with Josh, then why the long meeting inside the singlewide? Ford’s family owned slaughterhouses and land throughout Gem City. Was Nate actually taking up a role in the Ford mob business, and not just slinging dope? Callie once would have said Nate wasn’t smart enough to run a business, much less a surreptitious one. Then she’d found him with the journal of St. Petro, a holy book with a whole lot of details about soul magic. He’d been studying. She’d taken his soul, and put herself in this whole goddamn mess.
Nate hopped down the two steps to the curb. A tall woman followed him out. She had a wide nose and broad shoulders, and was very clearly a woman you did not want to get into a fight with. Nate gave the woman his least creepy leering smile. To her credit, the woman didn’t blanch. Callie had been on the other end of that look before, and it stained. Nate extended a hand. The brilliant glow from the open office door didn’t allow for secrets. Pinched between his first two fingers and his thumb Nate held a shiny black card. Even from her frozen hiding place, Callie couldn’t have missed it. That slick material and the promises it made were etched in her mind.
Anonymous Souls.
Nate was involved in Anonymous Souls.
Of course he fucking was.
The woman accepted the card, and gave Nate a curt nod. Adam rushed out of the office to join Nate, and the two walked in the opposite direction of the job site. Whatever they were here for, they’d accomplished it.
The woman returned to the office, closing the door. The construction workers continued bustling back and forth. No one else had seen the exchange. No one else would have had the sense to be scared. That was the burden of knowledge. Innocent moves like handshakes and card exchanges took on another light when you understood the real business being brokered.
Callie stepped out from the darkened hiding spot. The flood lamps hit her, illuminated her, and blanched her skin. No hiding. She couldn’t let Nate keep coming at her family. Messing with her one was thing. She deserved it for what she’d done, but we own our own shit. Zara and Josh hadn’t stolen Nate’s soul. They hadn’t denied his advances. They hadn’t done shit to him. The urge to sprint after him, to remind him of how the world worked hit her. If he had a problem with her, then come after her. This tormenting of her loved ones was weak.
She only made it a couple steps before the realization hit her: She couldn’t go after Nate now. He knew what hospital Zara was in. He knew where Josh worked. He knew she’d given him souls that didn’t belong to him—and was, she realized, not so dumb as to ignore the obvious dotted line that she’d stolen them. He had Adam with him, and back up like that carried weapons. She couldn’t very well pull Josh into that fight. She curled her fingers into a fist and squeezed until her nails dug into the meat of her palm.
“I work here, you know.” The uneasy tremble made Josh’s attempted joke fall flat.
“I know,” she whispered, still watching where Nate and Adam had stood moments earlier. “You going to be okay?”
“Kind of feel like I should be asking you that, sis. You good?”
Far from it. “If you can avoid them for awhile, I will be.”
That might have been a lie. She’d be closer to good if she didn’t have to worry about him. She needed time to regroup, to figure out what was happening, to make a plan. Once again, she found herself missing the Soul Charmer. He’d have shoved her into this sand pit, too, but at least he would have handled all the machinations. He’d have had some strategy. He could have frightened people into compliance. Until then, she needed to find out what the Anonymous Souls dealer knew about Nate and his operations. She also was going to have to tell Derek about this, because if there was any hope of forcing Nate to back down it was going to require some leather-clad teamwork.
“He’s got nothing for me anymore.” Josh’s earnestness hurt.
Callie extended her magic out to protect his soul again. It was cold and crying and she somehow understood her brother better in that moment. The jagged scars from growing up too fast were stippled across the whole of his soul. The ragged edges missed who he once was—before the drugs, before Zara had become self-involved, before adulthood—and there wasn’t a plea for a home or for a rented soul to mask the pain. Deep down, her brother’s soul wanted only to heal. A shimmer of hope fluttered in Callie’s chest. Unfamiliar, but welcome. She let her magic coil around his soul. It kept the chill from assaulting her, but also gave him a moment of peace. His lips parted on a slow breath.
