Was that a compliment? “Sure.”
“I haven’t seen that happen before.”
Sure enough, the hawk on the inside of her wrist was casting damn near disco ball radiance. “I’m sure it’s nothing.” Another lie to a man of God.
“Never doubt a sign. You’ve done a good deed here today. Thank you, Miss Delgado.” She appreciated he didn’t bring up the whole slipping a hand into the afterlife and squashing some asshole souls part.
“It needed to be done. Hopefully, the Soul Charmer will be available to you again shortly.” Would it be worth it to say those words upstairs with a rosary in hand?
Father Giles only nodded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Callie entered the Soul Charmer’s store and the attentions of four men snapped to her. Father Henry fidgeted at the edge of the front room, a slick, styled man was pacing a tiny circuit its center, and Miguel stood near the counter with a death grip on an older man’s arm. All except for Father Henry spoke immediately. The volley of demands might have been worse than the gang of souls trying to barrel through the veil at her. Or maybe she was fucking tired.
She didn’t stop to listen to their pleas. She walked straight to Father Henry, and took his hand. She didn’t stop moving. She plowed directly to the back curtain, towing Henry behind. She held up her other hand, and hollered, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Holding her breath as she moved through the protected hallway was habit. Callie exhaled once she was back into the newly pristine office space. The Charmer’s ward over the door was in tatters. She should put up a protection of her own while she was in here. The tarry sensation the Charmer had crafted might have seemed like a jerk move, but there were real threats. She got that now. Only she wasn’t certain how to make a ward that didn’t require her standing there and focusing. If her boss ever returned, she’d ask.
“Have you been waiting out front for long?” she asked Father Henry.
“Not at all. I’ve already spoken with Derek. He went downstairs for a minute.” His voice hitched on ‘downstairs.’ How much did he know about what happened in this basement?
“How long ago was that?”
Color dappled his cheeks. “Ten minutes.”
The radiator hummed and the fan whirred, but no harsh noises rose from the floorboards. Whatever was happening downstairs, at least it wasn’t a fight. “I can run down and check on him.”
“I got the impression he wanted us to talk, actually.” The priest had been trained to read the room. Did that mean he could tell how badly she didn’t want to go down another set of stairs to another set of problems?
She, however, could read Derek. Henry might be his brother, but that didn’t mean he understood how she and Derek worked. They were a team these days, and while he couldn’t venture into the cathedral’s well with her, he certainly could be part of this. Father Henry might have taken vows of honesty, but she’d made a promise to Derek. That counted more to her.
“I’m going to go take care of the problems up front first,” she didn’t bother saying they were going to wait for Derek either way. “You can hang out back here.”
“I’m not sure…” Father Henry was already trying to touch as little of this store as he could. If he could have stood on his tiptoes without anyone noticing, Callie thought he would have.
She set the cooler containing the souls from the well on the nearby desk.
“There’s a stool behind the desk, if you want it. Make sure not to touch anything.”
She didn’t wait to hear him stammer through another request. She pushed back through the curtain and to the guests at the front of the house.
The men began shouting when she appeared again. Hell. Did she need to bring the priest back out here to remind them of their manners? She pointed at Miguel. “You. Start.”
The other men grumbled, but let Miguel talk. “Charlie here is overdue by a full week,” he said.
The man he’d brought in had six inches on Miguel, and the extra layer of donut around his belly probably gave him a full forty pounds on the soul collector. Callie wondered what moves had been used to get this man into the shop.
“I don’t owe you nothing,” Charlie said.
Callie looked closer. The man’s eyes were milky, the film of white deadening the iris. With signs like that he couldn’t be new to the soul rental game. “Of course not. We’ve just met. Do you owe the Soul Charmer, though?”
“You ain’t the Soul Charmer, lady.” He spoke to her breasts.
A heavy band of tension clapped against Callie’s belly.
The other man in the room unbuttoned his suit jacket. “I’m here waiting for the Soul Charmer. When is he going to be here?”
Another thick band snapped against her stomach. Dread bit into her like some industrial strength rubber. She glared at each man in turn. “He put me in charge today, so if you owe him money, you pay me. If you want a soul, you pay me.”
Miguel dropped his grip on Charlie. He was back near one of the incense tables in half a breath. If he moved any farther away, he’d be wrapped in a wall tapestry. At least someone could read a room.
Suit guy stepped up to the counter. “Why would I pay you if you can’t even give me a soul?”
The cables crushing her abdomen frayed and snapped. The edges igniting darkness and power and action in her blood. Rosewater filled her lungs. Iron, her mouth. She stared pointedly at the businessman’s chest. He squirmed. She stepped closer, and he mirrored her steps in the opposite direction. “You’ll pay me because I decide what souls go in you. You’ll do business with me because if you keep looking at me like you’re in fucking charge of me, I’ll borrow your goddamn soul and send it on with any person
