Wish Hunter (The Savannah River Series Book 1)

by Hero Bowen

  Basha harrumphed. Grace harrumphed. The house probably harrumphed.

  “I’m still putting scores on the board,” Grace insisted, with a satisfied upturn of her red-painted lips. “I just don’t get them there as fast as you.”

  Nadia held up her hands in surrender. “I brought wish hunting into the twenty-first century, that’s all I’m saying.”

  From childhood, she and her older sister had been trained in how to steal wishes. That line of education hadn’t been negotiable, but the way they went about it was. Nadia had decided to update the profession a touch by getting her master’s in marriage and family therapy, precisely because that line of work would give her greater access to people’s secrets. Sneaky? Probably. Helpful? Definitely—for her and her clients. Plus, she got a vague sense of normalcy from having a “real” career rather than pandering to tourists with a fortune-teller ruse. Crystal balls and tea leaves had never been her jam. Plus, with a judicious choice of office locations, she put herself in a prime place to capture wishes from people who had them in abundancy: hospital workers.

  With everyone satisfied that they’d won the argument, Grace flapped her fingers into her palm. “Hand over the compass coin, daughter of mine.”

  “Are you hunting tonight?”

  “Not tonight, but I plan to head out to Tybee Island tomorrow morning to scope out the lifeguards. For wishes, of course,” Grace replied with a sly smile.

  Nadia plucked the coin out of her pocket and gave it to her mom with a sigh. “TGIF,” she said. Her workweek was over, at least for her day job. But she still needed to gather up the courage to make her request.

  “Cocktails?” Grace asked, face brightening as she breezed toward the freezer where she kept her margarita mix.

  Nadia fiddled with the chain around her neck. “Actually, there’s something I need to ask you both.”

  Grace circled back to the island, where Basha now leaned. “What’s up?”

  Part of Nadia feared to speak the words aloud in case that somehow jinxed her, but she wanted this more than anything. Needed it, really. She could never forgive herself if she kept chickening out and let years and years blur past without ever truly trying to change the course of her life.

  “I know we’re halfway to repaying our debt to the Wishmaster, but it could take another three years to get to the end.” Nadia gulped, steeling her resolve. “And what I need is urgent.”

  “Well?” Grace said.

  Nadia took a deep breath. “I want to use the next wish we steal for myself.”

  Chapter Three

  A morgue-like silence closed around the three Kaminski women. Unblinking, Nadia waited for some kind of reply from her mother or grandmother. Anything. Her muscles tightened like someone had turned a crank inside her.

  Finally, Basha spoke. “Wishmaster would never allow it.”

  “But it wouldn’t hurt to ask—” Nadia began.

  Grace made a strangled noise. “Yes, it would, Nadia! If you ask to use a wish for yourself, the Wishmaster will increase our debt. We already owe too much. Think about how long it’s taken us to get to fifty.”

  “I don’t care if I double the debt, if I can get the Wishmaster to agree,” Nadia shot back.

  “But what would you even use it for?” Grace asked, her tone part accusatory, part panicked.

  Nadia let the torrent of pent-up struggles tumble off her tongue, though she tried to maintain some counselor eloquence. “It’s been a year since Nick died—and it’s been unlivable. Not just today. Him not being here. I just can’t . . . I’m not . . . I’m just not me. I feel like I’m a ghost. A shell of a person.”

  “Nadia, you’re not . . .” Grace started, but the words slowed as she looked at Nadia’s face.

  “I can’t live without him,” Nadia continued tightly. “And frankly, I don’t want to. I need him back, no matter what it takes. I want him here with me so we can have what we should’ve had. It’s not getting easier—it’s just getting harder.”

  She didn’t have to tell them about the rift in her heart or the constant insomnia; her shuffling steps around her room every night and teary eyes every morning surely did that for her. Mornings were torture, especially when the days were sunny and mocking in their beauty. How could the world be so bright and happy while she was shrouded in the black, impenetrable grief of her husband’s murder and his shredded reputation?

  Grace walked to her daughter and gave her arm a squeeze. “Oh, honey . . .”

  Nadia’s head swam, her throat dry. She fought against the void that threatened to pull her in again. She needed this wish. Just one wish.

  “We all miss him, sweetheart.” Grace offered up a pitying look. “He was the best of men, certainly better than your coward of a father.” Even now, her mom couldn’t resist an opportunity to get a jab in.

  “I just want him back,” Nadia whispered.

  Grace nodded sympathetically. “I know, honey. He didn’t deserve what happened to him, but there are occupational hazards. People in that line of work—”

  Nadia couldn’t believe there was a “but” after her saying he hadn’t deserved what had happened to him. Her mom had always lacked tact.

  “That line of work?” Nadia repeated. “If he’d burned in a fire saving someone, maybe I could stomach it. Maybe. I mean, I knew that was a possibility every time he put on his helmet. But he was shot, Mom. It had nothing to do with his line of work, damn it!”

  Basha leaned heavily on her cane and looked hard into her eyes. “I loved that boy down to his bones, but he was not . . . how you say? Entirely innocent, now was he? Who knows if his deeds before—”

  “Don’t! Ever,” Nadia snapped before Basha could go down that road. “I want my wish. That’s all I’m asking you. I don’t want your opinions on my dead husband.”

  “Nick was good husband, good son-in-law, good man. But he is gone, and rodzina—family—remains. You do what is right for us all.” Basha banged her cane on the floor. “Don’t forget why we are in this debt in first place, wnuczka.”

  Nadia flinched, half remembering the hazy scene from three years before. She’d driven to a family gathering after being awake for thirty-six hours straight, courtesy of the final year of her master’s program. She might as well have driven drunk. She was glad no one else had been hurt when she flew off the road and plowed into a tree, her liver battered to mush by the perfect storm of a defunct airbag and the steering wheel’s attempt to push all the way through her abdomen.

  Her mother put the family in 101 degrees of debt to secure an eleventh-hour wish before it was too late to save Nadia. The curved scar on Nadia’s stomach from the underground surgery served as a constant reminder of that fact. That wish, and the consequent debt, had allowed Grace to grow her a new liver. Nick had convinced Nadia to take a medical leave of absence from her program for a short time afterward, but it’d taken her a full year after the accident to get over her fear of driving.

  It didn’t matter that she’d been unconscious when they’d asked for the wish. They were still paying off the debt because they hadn’t taken the precaution of keeping a wish on hand for emergencies. Wishes used to be easy to buy in Savannah; they thought they’d always have access to them. Until the day they didn’t. The day they needed it most. Grace had used her third and final wish after begging the newly “appointed” Wishmaster to give her one potent enough. Grace had spent it to save Nadia, and for that, Nadia would be forever grateful.

  “I didn’t ask you to pay such a steep price,” Nadia replied weakly. “I can go to the Wishmaster myself and strike a deal that won’t be your responsibility.”

  “I disown you if you seek Wishmaster alone!” Basha spat, her earrings swaying. “Debt of one is debt of all. Do not ask this. Is too much, dziecko.”

  Basha’s retort lit an unexpected fuse inside Nadia. “And when the debt is paid? Then will you allow me to spend my own wishes?”

  “Of course we would, Nadia.” Grace clasped her hands toget
her. “We just have to pay off the debt first—and not give the Wishmaster more reasons to punish us.”

  Basha waved a hand. “Your mother try to protect your hopes, and I tell you again and again, but you never listen. Reviving dead is impossible. Is against rules! You think no one notice if dead man comes back to life? It must stay within boundaries of explanation.” She wagged a finger at her granddaughter. “I am not who is saying no. Wishing Tree is saying no. Accept that, or you drive yourself mad.”

  Nadia didn’t need reminding of the rules. She’d had them bored into her since she could toddle around.

  “All wishes are technically against the laws of nature,” she responded dryly. “And, sure, necromancy is technically impossible, but there are stories of people making it happen.”

  Basha snorted. “Pfft. Nonsense. Just like I tell you before.”

  “They’re not,” Nadia insisted. “People always say that wishes used to be more powerful and that resurrection was possible. Look at any old myth or legend with magic in it, and I’ll bet your amber earrings that it was a potent wish.”

  Grace sighed. “Your grandmother’s right. Maybe after the debt is paid, you’ll think it over and find other things you could—”

  Nadia stood and braced her palms against the countertop, meeting her grandmother’s stubborn gaze. “It happened in our family, didn’t it? An old story you used to tell us about a daughter being brought back from the dead—by my own great-great uncle. Are you going to tell me you pulled that out of your ass for the sake of some fireside storytelling?”

  Basha’s hazel eyes flickered, her web of wrinkles deepening. “I don’t pull anything out of ass. I am not sideshow magician. But I do tell tales to entertain.” She puffed out her chest, her ruffled blouse filling with indignation. Her cane protested against the tile floor as her grip shifted to one hand. “You are clearly passionate about this matter. But if you dare use wish for yourself, I will know, and I disown you for going against needs of rodzina. You won’t see penny of inheritance, and that includes wishing box.” She tapped the side of her temple. “Basha knows what you’re thinking, Nadia.”

  It was never a good sign when her grandmother started talking in third person. Nadia cast imploring eyes at her mother, but as always, Grace said nothing. She never dared contradict Basha, never even hinted she might have a backbone somewhere.

  “Besides, there is time limit to these things,” Basha added dismissively, dropping an atom bomb on Nadia’s realm of possibility.

  “What?” The word came out of Nadia’s mouth as a strange hiss.

  Basha shrugged. “Is time limit. You think bodies stay fresh?” She gave a condescending sniff. “Is impossible to knit with rotten wool. Is same with fabric of person.”

  Nadia balled her hands into trembling fists. “How long?”

  “Does not matter. We cannot fulfill debt before time is up,” Basha replied matter-of-factly.

  Nadia’s guts morphed into a mass of writhing snakes, their nipping fangs dripping venom into her veins. How long did she have, exactly? The terror that she might miss the deadline made her want to grab back that wish trap and dip her hand right in, to seize the wish then and there.

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” she snapped.

  Basha mustered a gruff sigh. “I no keep from you. No wish is potent enough. Is no one living who has done this . . . even though is fairy story, so is not possible anyway.”

  The fact that Basha had first said no one living had done it, then tried to cover it up by saying it was a “fairy story” wasn’t lost on Nadia, but she knew better than to press right now. Basha was in one of her moods.

  “Fine,” Nadia muttered.

  “Fine? What is fine? What does that mean?” Basha prompted, making Nadia feel as though she were one of her counseling clients.

  Nadia turned and left the kitchen rather than reply with something that would only make things worse. As she stepped onto the sweeping curve of the staircase, she could’ve sworn that Basha grunted in satisfaction.

  Mounting the stairs, Nadia stomped past portraits of the Kaminskis, their oil-painted eyes homing in on her with silent judgment. She continued along to her childhood bedroom and entered, spinning on her heel to give the door a satisfying slam. But rather than closing with a resounding bang, the door bounced back and smacked into her face. She staggered away from it, her hands flying to her forehead.

  “The house does not like to be treated so!” Basha shouted up. “Behave yourself, or I make you pick a switch from yard.”

  “I’m too old for this shit,” Nadia muttered.

  After living with Nick for so long—but not long enough—she’d almost forgotten that the old mansion had a mind of its own. Technically, it was a mind of Basha’s own. When Grace was a toddler, Basha had used a wish to make sure the family home would always be protected, and it was still as strong as the day she’d uttered it. Though it didn’t stretch to the gardens, which was unfortunate for the fountain with the cracked wing outside.

  “What am I doing?” Nadia whispered.

  It seemed that the grown woman she’d once been had disappeared the moment she’d moved back into her childhood bedroom. Being under the same roof as her family morphed her into a teenager again. She’d read enough articles to know this regression thing was a psychological phenomenon among “boomerang kids,” but she’d never intended to come spinning back into this place. It was supposed to be temporary, after Nick died, but the anxiety-inducing thought of living alone had made it a more permanent deal, at least until the debt was paid off.

  “It wasn’t meant to be like this,” she murmured. “You weren’t supposed to leave me.”

  Nadia slipped off her olive-green pencil skirt and the breezy white blouse that hid her beloved rings. From her closet, she grabbed a pair of faded black jeans and one of Nick’s old hoodies, putting them on and burying her nose in the fabric. She’d tried to preserve his smell, but time had wicked it away.

  In the bathroom, she washed her face and wiped off a layer of concealer, which put her smattering of moles and freckles in harsh relief against her pale skin. Nick used to joke that her whole body looked like a dot-to-dot puzzle, and that fact still made her feel self-conscious on a beach. A few moles had made their way onto her face, including a noticeable one above her eyebrow and a smaller one above her top lip, but she didn’t pay much attention to them anymore.

  Maybe she should run away to Tokyo and try her luck there. Or London could be nice. Baghdad might be a stretch, but apparently the safety was improving. Those cities were some of the world’s most plentiful wishing hotspots. But those dreams were as empty as her wishless chest. No matter how much she wanted to, or how quickly her window to save Nick was closing, she couldn’t abandon her mom and grandma to the Wishmaster’s debt.

  Right before they’d gotten married four years ago, Nadia had told Nick almost everything about the wishing world—and when the debt landed on her lap a year later, he’d hugged her close, saying he would’ve paid any price to have her in his arms again. Those 101 wishes were her price to pay.

  She wondered, not for the first time, what it felt like to absorb a wish. She’d never experienced it, but she’d heard about it plenty from her family. Like the taste of fine cuisine or a work of art, everyone had a different way of describing it.

  Her grandmother once told her, “It feels like smooth caramel, with those—how you say? Poppet rocks inside. All fizzing and warm and molten, dripping over heart.”

  And her sister had countered, “No, it’s more like cotton candy melting on the tongue, kind of fuzzy and a bit scratchy, but then it turns all syrupy and gives you that kick of giddiness you get when you’re a kid, hyper on sugar. Only it’s melting on your heart and not your tongue.”

  “No, no, no,” her mother had said as she shook her head. “That’s not it. Ever sat in a jacuzzi, in just the right spot? That’s what it’s like. Same kind of bubbly goodness, only in your chest.” She’d sighed wi
stfully. “There’s nothing in the world like it, unless you find a guy who’s really good with his t—”

  “Grace Kaminski!” her grandmother had scolded, though not nearly soon enough to prevent Nadia from being scarred for life. “You sit there while I fetch soap for filthy mouth. Basha didn’t raise you to talk like that.”

  Those had been happier days, before the family had fractured beyond repair. With a sigh, Nadia left the bathroom and headed back into her bedroom. Grace was waiting for her on the edge of the bed.

  “Mom,” Nadia said curtly.

  Grace bit her lip. “I know you’re mad at me, but I wanted to talk to you privately.”

  “No such thing in this house.” Nadia pushed her hands into the pouch of the red-and-black Falcons hoodie.

  “Your babcia is just worried about the decisions you want to make,” Grace said. “She’s trying to protect you, honey, so you don’t end up like your sister.”

  Nadia stiffened at the mention of her sister. Speaking directly about Kaleena in this house was tantamount to blasphemy. But Grace knew better than to say her name out loud, in case the house—or, rather, Basha—hit back in anger. At times like these, Nadia regretted that she hadn’t adopted Kaleena’s ballbreaker attitude. Her sister wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass what anyone thought. Kaleena had once told a new neighbor that their “minimalist” remodeling looked like a dentist’s waiting room. She had been the kind of girl who spent her free time marching in the streets with signs that screamed “FUR IS NOT FAIR” and “DON’T BUY WHILE THEY DIE.” But that was years ago, and so much had changed.

  Nadia swallowed her irritation and shook her head. “Don’t we all need a light at the end of the tunnel? It can’t be all about the debt, Mom. What comes after? That’s what I’m planning for—so we can all get back to our lives. You’ll be able to roam for boy toys wherever you like, and Babcia might actually leave the house again, but I need something too. And that’s him.”