Wish Hunter (The Savannah River Series Book 1)

by Hero Bowen

  She decided to humor him. “Oh, and why’s that?”

  “Unlike my other wishes, I actually earned this one by doing a good deed. That’s why it has to be used on something special,” he replied, surprisingly earnest. “How about you? What are you so desperate to wish for? I mean, you were gearing up to fight tooth and nail to get that wish back from that Amazonian chick.”

  “Valhalla, and she’s not a chick. She has no beak or feathers. She’s a woman,” Nadia corrected.

  Miles saluted. “Apologies. No offense intended.” He hesitated. “But that wish must be pretty important, if you were willing to risk a crack to the head or worse.”

  “Well, I was trying to wish away my debt to the Wishmaster, but that wish was really just a means to an end. There’s a bigger one that I want.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

  “I haven’t had enough to drink to spill my guts yet.” Nadia turned her gaze back out to the starry night and watched the reeds sway in the breeze.

  Miles took her glass and disappeared, only to return with a full measure each. “You drink this while I guess what your deal is.” He put the sipper in her hand and sat up on the couch with crossed legs, like a teenager at a sleepover preparing for some juicy gossip. “Are you sick? Did you get a bad diagnosis and you’re trying to heal yourself?”

  “Close, but no cigar,” she replied, wondering if that might be the answer to her wish-wording conundrum. If she wished to have her broken heart healed, would the Wishing Tree give Nick back? No, there’d be way too many variables.

  Miles took a sip of his drink. “Are you in trouble with the law? Does it have something to do with some student loans you need to pay off?”

  “Nope and nope.”

  He tilted his head up toward the skylight. “You want a talent? Or you want to be able to read minds to make your job easier?”

  “Getting colder by the second.” She sipped more of her port, her eyelids growing heavier.

  He leaned forward and stared at her hard. “Do you want to have the power to grant wishes so you can help your clients? Can you do that? Would the Wishing Tree allow that?”

  “Now you’re just looking for inspiration. And no, you can’t do that.” She sighed, feeling the urge to unburden herself. “Look, I don’t know exactly how much you heard at my house, but I’m trying to find a way to bring my dead husband back to life.”

  Miles froze. “I definitely missed that part. It got pretty heated, so it kind of just blended into one big screech toward the end.”

  “He was murdered,” she went on, staring down into the maroon liquid and watching the viscous trail cling to the glass as she swirled it.

  Somehow, it was easier for her to say that he’d been murdered than it was to say that he’d died. There was culpability in a murder, even if there hadn’t been any justice in her husband’s case. She didn’t even realize the bomb she’d dropped until she saw Miles’s stunned expression.

  “He was a firefighter,” she continued. “A hero, really, though I used to tease him for having that complex. Anyway, there’d been a spate of arsons in the months leading up to his death. A year ago, he was called to another suspected arson, and he never came home. His supposed best friend, Chris, shot him in the back—he was a firefighter too. Another fire truck got there in time to stop the house from burning down, but Nick had already lost too much blood.”

  A moment of stilted silence passed before Miles spoke. “Why would his best friend do that?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” she replied bitterly. “Chris never made it to trial. He hanged himself in his cell. My guess is, Chris was the one responsible for the other arsons and Nick somehow found out. Nobody will ever know for sure. The only thing I do know is that he was guilty of murder. Otherwise, why would he kill himself?”

  She neglected to mention the accusations that had come out after Nick’s death—that he had been the serial arsonist. The sheer outrage that anyone, let alone the courts, could even suggest it made her want to punch a wall. Sure, firefighter arson was a known phenomenon, but her Nick would never do such a thing. He’d scolded her for leaving a candle burning while she napped, for Pete’s sake. Looking down, she noticed that her hands had curled into fists.

  Miles went strangely quiet, his expression sorrowful and sympathetic. “What was he like?”

  The question threw her but also touched her in an unforeseen way. She’d fully expected him to flip the conversation back to himself and how she’d intended to use the stolen wish.

  “He was mine, and I was his,” she said quietly. “While I was always a tortoise, head forever tucked into her shell, he was universally adored and a social butterfly who dragged my tortoise ass out of the house and taught me how to have a good time.”

  Miles gave a subtle nod, as if to say, it’s okay to keep talking about him. After the years with Grace and Basha, his willingness to listen was unfamiliar and made her feel a bit nervous, but the port had already loosened her tongue.

  “There was this one time, at a Christmas party, where some guys were going around offering up Chatham Artillery Punch,” she began. “I took a cup of it, not knowing what it was, and he swiped it from me before I could take a sip.” She laughed at the memory. “He drank the whole thing so the guys would think I’d done what no one dared, and he shoved the cup back into my hand. I’ve never seen him so drunk in all the years I’ve known him.”

  Nadia paused. Verb tenses were weird when it still felt like he should be alive.

  She took a deep breath and continued. “There was one point where he started prowling across the room on all fours, howling like a wolf and tugging on a man’s pantleg with his teeth, hissing and spitting. He raided the buffet table and started flicking shrimp at a bunch of older women to see if he could ‘get the prawns in the purses.’ His words. Then he started smooching a lamp because he thought it was me, threw up in a potted plant, and passed out on the dance floor. It took four men to carry him out, because he woke up and tried to fight them all. The hangover lasted three days, and he wasn’t even over thirty then.”

  Miles stared at her, his mouth agape. “What the hell is Chatham Artillery Punch?”

  “You haven’t heard of it? The old Savannah regiment concocted it. It’s been nicknamed the ‘killer of time’ and ‘vanquisher of men,’ if that makes things clearer,” she explained, smiling.

  “Is it made with sunset rum or something?”

  “Well, basically, you mix a whole bunch of booze—brandy, whiskey, rum, champagne, lots of sugar, and maybe lemon to mask the taste—in a horse bucket, then you serve it. It’s apparently floored many an American hero, though only the oldest member of the Chatham Artillery knows the actual recipe.”

  Miles offered a sad smile. “Sounds like your husband was the life of the party.”

  “He was, but I loved the quiet, at-home, cuddles-on-the-sofa him too.” Her eyes prickled with tears. “He really cared about people, you know? I’d come downstairs and find the front door wide open, and he’d be out in the neighbor’s garden pulling up weeds, or mowing the lawn, or fixing a broken sprinkler. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for me or anyone who needed help.”

  Her goal of reviving Nick and running off into some distant sunset together, with the debt settled and no chains weighing them down, had never felt further away. Somewhere along the line, that goal had morphed into avoiding confrontation with her sister. And though she was already deep in the self-pity quagmire, she’d veered herself off course by taking the wish. But who wouldn’t, in that position, with a panic-inducing deadline clanging in their head?

  Miles dipped his chin to his chest. “I can see why you’d want him back. I don’t even know him, and I wouldn’t mind meeting the guy.”

  “I know I can make it happen,” Nadia said. “There has to be a loophole in the Wishing Tree’s rules that’ll let me bring him back.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”

  “
It’s happened before, in my family. My great-great-uncle was rumored to have brought his daughter back from the dead,” she said, bristling with nervous energy. “I’ve only heard about it in bits and pieces, mostly from my sister, Kaleena, who heard it from my mom and my babcia.”

  Kaleena. Her name slipped out every now and again, but never within spitting distance of her mother and grandmother. Nadia couldn’t remember when the shift had begun, when her sister had become a nameless entity in the Kaminski household. One day, Basha had simply refused to use Kaleena’s name again. Grace had slowly followed suit. Time, and the threat of being cast out, had deleted the name from Nadia’s tongue, though it came back unbidden every so often. Those in the Savannah wish-hunting circle called her sister “Wishmaster” with such a fervent, almost religious devotion that Nadia spent half the time thinking of her more as a distant figurehead than a sibling she’d once laughed with over silly pranks and bedroom fashion shows.

  Miles drained the last dregs from his sipper with a slurping sound. “For real? Do you think there’s truth in you having a resurrected relative?”

  Nadia shrugged. “Mom and Babcia were always tight-lipped about it, since they’re against the whole idea of necromancy in general. But the story feels too personal to our family history to be made up.”

  “Sounds riskier than wishing for love, if you ask me.” He sprawled out like a cat. “But I won’t judge if you don’t.”

  She was slightly tipsy from the port, but an idea ignited in her mind. “You! It’s you!”

  “Huh? What?” His hands shot to his chest like he was protecting his modesty.

  She sipped the last of her port to give herself that final dose of courage. “It’s you, dummy! You’re my key.” She set the sipper down and clapped her hands together. “You can find a way for me to bring Nick back!”

  Miles’s mouth dropped open. “Holy shit, you’re a genius! I knew that port would get some neurons firing. Aw man, imagine if I could do that for you. You’ve been a royal pain in my ass, but at least now I understand why. Hell, I’d have stolen my wish if I were in your position.”

  “You’ll do it?” She bounced up and down, giddy as a kid on a trampoline.

  He cricked his neck and flexed his arms. “Leave it to the maestro, Nads. One loophole, coming up. Fresh out of the kitchen.” He closed his eyes tightly, apparently putting his feelers out. His eyes flicked back and forth beneath his lids as Nadia waited for a hopeful outcome. His forehead crinkled and his lips puckered inward, his fingertips tapping an unsteady rhythm on the stiff leather.

  All of a sudden, Miles cried out in pain. His hands flew to his temples and pressed against them hard, like he was trying to keep something inside his skull—or stop something from getting out. His face contorted into a mask of agony, and his lips parted, releasing a rasping whisper.

  “It feels like guitar strings pulled to . . . the breaking point and then . . . past that.” He gasped and his eyes shot open, revealing a few thread veins in the whites of his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

  Nadia touched his knee. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  She recognized the twisted pain on his face. It seemed the Wishing Tree didn’t just reject wishes; it also rejected using wish-given abilities to seek answers to forbidden wishes.

  “Apparently, the Wishing Tree . . . doesn’t want anyone finding a . . . loophole,” he managed to get out, groaning and massaging his temples more gently.

  The disappointment swept in like the tide, rushing through Nadia’s veins and dousing the flame of hope that’d flickered in her chest. She could’ve smacked herself for allowing the optimism in, but when it came to Nick, she couldn’t help it. She had to cling to anything that came along that could improve her chances of resurrecting him—no matter how painful it was when the bubble burst.

  “Is the Wishing Tree a metaphor?” Miles asked, squinting at her. “Or is it, you know, really real? ’Cause I feel like I just got smacked with an actual branch.”

  His question reminded her of her childhood, when she’d asked similar ones like “Where did the Tree come from? How old is it? Who found it? Where does it live?” and Basha had replied again and again, “Nobody knows, dziecko. Is myth. Is legend. Is Wishing Tree. Simply is.”

  Still, it had some level of sentience, considering the kick it had delivered to her body when it rejected her, as well as the jolt Miles just received.

  She gave Miles’s knee an awkward pat. “I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known it would do that. But thanks. Can I get you an Advil from the kitchen or something?”

  “You’re giving up already?” he said. “Here, let me try again. Maybe now that I know what’s coming, I can withstand it. I reckon it’s like getting the hang of a really complicated solo—once I’ve done it a couple of times, it’ll be second nature.”

  Nadia shook her head vehemently. “No, don’t. I’m not getting blamed for your brain turning to scrambled eggs. Thank you for the offer, but . . . don’t.”

  “We just need to have a jamming session with it,” he continued, his enthusiasm undiminished. “You know, approach it in a few different ways. Reword it or bog it down in a bunch of jargon, like the lawyers and the contracts I’m always dealing with. Something that doesn’t sound like I’m looking for a loophole while leading me straight to it.”

  Nadia sighed. It wasn’t worth putting herself through another hope rollercoaster. “Really, thank you, but don’t wreck your head for me. I don’t want someone else getting hurt on my behalf. The guilt would bury me.”

  “You’re not what I thought you were,” Miles said unexpectedly. “I’d have gone a lot easier on you if you’d just been up-front. Don’t get me wrong, though. I get why you’d want to keep that kind of thing to yourself. It’s fresh still. You keep opening a wound, and it ain’t never going to heal.”

  Nadia nodded. “You’re not what I thought you were either.”

  “The way I see it, we’re all two people in one body: the person we show the world, and the person we show in private.” Miles shrugged. “There’s probably a third too: the person we only show ourselves. That’s the hardest one to face, I think.”

  “You sure you didn’t take a couple of psych classes?” She laughed softly.

  Miles smiled. “I read a lot. I’ve got a big library at my house in Malibu, but I don’t have too many books here. Just paperbacks I buy at the airport.” He met her sad gaze. “You’d think a wish hunter, somewhere along the line, would’ve written some volumes about making difficult wishes work.”

  “They did, but wish hunters got mixed up in witch trials across the world, so it became a safety thing to not keep records.” Nadia turned her face away and stared at a vein of black that threaded through the white marble floor. “I just wish my family would tell me the truth about the resurrection in our history. Then, at least I’d have a vague path to follow.”

  Miles gave a low whistle. “You come from one messed-up family, Nads.”

  “You don’t even know the half of it. Or even a third of it, for that matter.” She shot him a disapproving look. “And please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop calling me Nads. It sounds like testicles.”

  He chuckled. “I hadn’t even thought of that.” His expression turned thoughtful. “I’ve been wondering . . . If you’ve got such major beef with this Wishmaster, why don’t you just, you know, leave and get your wishes somewhere else? It’s not like they’ve got an invisible wall around Savannah.” He hesitated. “Or do they?”

  Nadia sank deeper into the couch. “They might as well. There’s no place I could run to where the Wishmaster wouldn’t find me, not until I’ve settled things. That’s why I need your wishing jar—so I can steal another wish and use it to somehow get myself out of this mess.”

  “Ah, I get you.”

  Nadia paused. “But I kind of feel like I should stay here and straighten things out with the Wishmaster, if only because she’s my big sister.”

 
“What?” His eyes almost bugged out of his head. “You didn’t feel like mentioning that sooner?”

  “I didn’t think it was all that relevant,” she said with a shrug. “It’s not like she’d listen to me if I begged her to give back your wish. She prides herself in being a hard-ass.”

  Miles gave a low whistle. “When I was a kid, I hated being an only child. Now, I feel kinda lucky. Was she always like that?”

  “No, and that’s the worst part. This Wishmaster persona of hers was made, not born, and I don’t know what happened to turn her into what she is now.” Nadia shook her head in frustration, livid that there were all these holes in her knowledge that no one had ever tried to help her patch up. Every attempt she’d made over the years of getting an explanation from Grace or Basha about the sudden rift in their family had come to a dead end.

  “I guess there’s no leniency for being blood, huh?”

  Nadia mustered a stiff laugh. “Apparently not, and I don’t feel like getting on the wrong end of her third wish.”

  “What do you mean? She wish for some scary superpowers?”

  “I have no clue what she used any of her wishes for. Rumor has it, though, that she’s got this unspent third wish that she’s threatened to use on anyone who crosses her. That’s what Black Hat told me once, anyway. When we were kids, she was always smart when it came to wish wording, so you can bet it’ll be just as nasty as she wants it to be.”

  Nadia’s heart suddenly ached. Kaleena never used to be that vindictive. Her sharp attitude had always come from a place of love. She’d been the kind of person who’d yell at the neighbor kid for taking a baby bird from its nest and then stay up nights raising the hatchling to adulthood.

  She sat up, her muscles tightening at the turn the conversation was taking. “Anyway, we should both get some sleep. We’ve got an early start to get to the drop-off point, and we’ll need to be sharp for it. There’s no telling what might be waiting for us.”

  Miles fidgeted uncomfortably. “Guns ain’t really my thing, but we should be armed in case things get nasty again. I’ve got a revolver in the safe, but I don’t make a habit of carrying it around. Might have to make an exception tomorrow.”