When the Soul Charmer placed a soul in a host, he made extravagant motions. He waved his hands and he whispered gibberish that almost sounded like Latin. He anointed certain people like he was a priest. He might have this weird stranglehold relationship with the Cortean Church, but he wasn’t holy. A direct line to purgatory was not the same as a direct line to God. Not that Callie was going to inform anyone of those facts. Callie did not play the put upon priest for the customers, but this time she tried to hold back her hostility. Brin and her boyfriend weren’t determined to ruin anyone’s lives. They’d been indoctrinated in fear of the afterlife, and wanted to make sure they weren’t going to lose their tickets to Heaven with a single night of revelry. Callie wouldn’t chide them for that.
She was gentle when she pressed the jars to each of their chests. The words she offered were real ones, though she barely moved her lips. “Go on now. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She did not care that she spoke to these souls like they were toddlers. She’d taken them from purgatory, and she was going to do her best to keep them intact. Besides, maybe that would keep them from going off the rails and fighting the match.
Brin called the experience “transcendental” and Callie didn’t even giggle. Derek was in her periphery, sentinel over the act. He smirked.
Derek took the teenagers’ cash. “Be back here tomorrow by seven,” he intoned.
Brin nodded solemnly, but the tall guy asked, “What if we need more time?”
“Then you should hand over more money now,” Callie answered.
“Or we come to collect.” Derek snarled. The tall guy shrunk an inch under the soul collector’s unyielding gaze.
The two ravers walked out the door, and Derek dropped a heavy sigh in the room.
“Do I even want to know?” Callie asked even though she knew damn well she had no interest in whatever new bullshit was rolling their way.
“Savannah messaged. The first two people she went to say they’d already turned the souls in.”
“People lie about that shit all the time.” That’s the whole reason they had people big enough to squish the renters show up to demand they come in.
“She believed them. Said they thought it was cool that the Soul Charmer’s guys were now doing more pickups on site.”
“Ask her what he looked like, how’d he do it?” Who the hell was taking these souls?
“No. I’m telling her to drag their asses in here.”
“You want to question them yourself?” Where would they put them? Lexi needed to stay sequestered.
“I want to know if they’re lying.” His even tone didn’t fool her. His gut—like hers—was certain they were telling the truth, and rankled at the realization that Anonymous Souls was likely snatching up the Charmer’s souls. If Lexi and Vega knew the Soul Charmer was missing, others in their organization likely did, too. They weren’t scared of the Soul Charmer now, and that was a big fucking problem.
Derek was tapping out a message on his phone back to Savannah when Callie’s phone began to buzz. Please don’t be Josh. She wasn’t ready for more bad news on the Delgado side. They were all clawing out of a cold cavern, and bloody and broken hands couldn’t make that climb again soon.
Well, it wasn’t Josh. “Why is your brother calling me?”
Derek slipped his phone into his pocket. “Henry’s calling you?”
Callie proffered her phone out between them. The screen asked for a decision to accept or decline. “It says Cortean Catholic Cathedral on the caller ID.”
“I hadn’t messaged him yet about the quill.” Derek’s brow drew tighter with each passing moment until he stared at the device in her palm like it was a blood-drenched dagger and not a mobile phone.
“We need to talk to him anyway.” Callie tapped the “accept” button before the call could kick over to voicemail. She then tapped the speakerphone button because if Derek was wound any tighter something was going to get punched.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hello. Is this…” there was a long pause and a rustling of papers “…is this Miss Delgado?”
The voice was gruff, razed, and one hundred percent not Henry’s. Derek was going to strain himself giving her an emphatic no with tight, fervent jerks of his head.
“May I ask who is calling?” Her customer service voice shot forward. Stupid nerves.
“This is Father Giles. I have an urgent matter I need to speak with her about.”
The priest’s voice was familiar, but it was his somber urgency that made her reply. “What can I do for you, Father Giles?”
“Oh. Miss Delgado. It’s a complicated matter.” In the background a door latched.
“I can keep up.”
“It may be best we speak in person.” His breath hit the phone line in uneven bursts.
A panicked priest was not something she was eager to take on. “Do you want to be seen at the Soul Charmer’s shop?”
Only the awkward cadence of his breathing filled the line.
“Didn’t think so. I’ve got a bit on my plate, so just tell me what’s going on.” It’s not like the cops were tapping the priest’s line. The Church probably had some sort of secret, secure red phone to them.
Father Giles stammered for only a moment before regaining the composure of one of the highest-ranking clergy members in Gem City. “Your employer has not been to visit me in some time.”
“He’s a busy man.” It would have bothered her to lie to a man of the cloth before, but something in his tone told her he’d understand the evasion.
“Well, he does have obligations at our cathedral. It is vital that someone with his skills attend…our private services.”
Oh no. No. No. No. How could she not step in this? The soul well had been billowing when she’d visited. What happened
