If Suit-and-Tie could have sucked his head into his neck like a turtle, he would have. After several failed attempts, he whispered a “sorry.”
It said a lot about the type of people who rented souls that the man didn’t leave. She’d literally threatened him with eternal damnation—not that she would actually do that—and he’d found a chair near the wall and sat. He even had choirboy posture.
Callie turned her attention back to Charlie. His deep brown skin had sallowed in the last few seconds. She asked, “You were saying?”
“I’m supposed to give this soul back.” It wasn’t a question, but his voice lilted at the end. His confidence had puddled somewhere in the floor. Maybe that’s why the carpet was squishy.
“How much does he owe?” she asked Miguel.
He gave her a figure, and Charlie confirmed he had it. She stretched out to his soul, the one hidden behind the borrowed one. It was shredded. She wasn’t surprised, but sad. He wasn’t going to be able to function well without another soul holding him together. His arms didn’t bear the signature track marks she associated with the men and women who went the tweaker route to cope with what was missing after abusing soul rental. It wasn’t the definitive reason they used, but part of the damn cycle. For the first time, Callie was morally obligated to offer this man another rented soul if only to keep him from crashing hard.
“Do you want to swap out for another?”
“That’s what the Charmer does,” he muttered.
“If you’ve got the cash, that’s still what the Charmer does. I’m just doing the hard part.”
They brokered the deal, and before Callie knew it she’d taken a soul from this man, put a new one in, and was up a grand. All while the other man waited patiently for his turn. Miguel stood guard.
The businessman wanted a week’s rental for a casino trip. If Zara had still been working her game, he would have been the perfect mark. He had the cash, and he was determined to do wrong. That was the best kind of person to steal from. Callie wasn’t in the con game, but in this moment she could understand the appeal. She didn’t need Suit-and-Tie’s money to feed herself, but she didn’t hate the idea of there being consequences for his pride and gluttony. She overcharged him for the “quality” soul he demanded. She wasn’t putting anything immaculate in that man.
When the businessman was gone, Miguel said, “You want me to stay up here and keep watch for you?”
She might have scared him too with her rant earlier, but there was no ambiguity in his voice.
“That’d be great. I’m going to go check on Derek.” And Father Henry.
The Shepherd brothers were together in the office.
Derek whistled when she walked in. “I’m pretty sure I heard those guys pee themselves from here in, Callie.”
She angled up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Someone had to put the fear of God into them.”
“Pretty sure that’s Henry’s job,” Derek said.
Father Henry laughed. “It’s more about saving mortal souls than necessarily scaring them into obedience, but what you told that man wasn’t exactly wrong.”
“I thought he’d leave, honestly,” Callie admitted.
“Be careful or the Soul Charmer might be proud of your work.”
Callie moved around the guys to the desk, and tugged the still sealed cooler closer. She’d used the Charmer’s wares for the customers. The shield doors on the cabinet were still open. She started placing the souls she’d obtained on their own shelf.
“You going to mark them?” Derek asked.
She shuffled the souls onto a center shelf. “No, I know which ones are mine.”
“Mine?” Father Henry’s incredulity was probably warranted, but she understood Derek’s urge to slug him.
Callie ignored him. “Do you have information for us, Father Henry?”
“Some, and call me Henry. I left the collar at home.” He was still clad in all black, but sure enough he was off duty in as much as a priest could be.
“I showed him the quill,” Derek said.
Callie stiffened, and Derek moved closer to place his hand in the middle of her back.
“And?” she prompted.
“It’s clearly one of Petro’s artifacts,” Henry answered.
Callie hadn’t gotten a good chance to read the book. Clearly Henry had, though. Derek supplied more context, “Like the knife.”
“A quill and a knife that can collect souls? Those are rather random objects.”
“Not really. St. Petro was a monk who tended the original soul well in Seville. He was tasked with devising a way to protect the Cortean conquistadors as they journeyed to explore the new world.”
Callie folded her arms across her chest like it would get her distance from this weird-ass history lesson. “That knife was not a conquistador’s knife.”
“No, it was a monk’s knife,” Henry explained. He was leaning closer to them with each word. It was clear he really loved this shit. “St. Petro imbued a number of items within the monastery with the power to help protect the explorers. If we trust his journal—and it sounds like we should—those tools would allow the transfers of souls.”
“Why’d they need to borrow souls while on a mission of expansion?” Good question, Derek.
“Expansion is a bloody thing. The leaders found peace in doing necessary, but horrific things in the name of extending the Cortean empire. They had not found the well here yet, but as you know that’s how Gem City became this continent’s seat for the Cortean Catholic Church.”
Callie was not about to remind this priest—her boyfriend’s brother—that normal people had no clue that the soul well is why the church was here. She vaguely remembered hearing the stories about this being the place the conquistadors found salvation, but she’d thought it had merely been the place they’d been
