Wish Hunter (The Savannah River Series Book 1)

by Hero Bowen

  She sighed. “It could’ve been way worse for him. He’s lucky to still be alive. And to have another eye left.” She mustered some sympathy and tried to form it into a comforting smile, but Miles had sunk back into his pit of guilt.

  Of course, she understood why he felt responsible. Jack wouldn’t have gotten involved in the situation if it hadn’t been for Miles, just as Miles would be sitting pretty with a brand-new granted wish if she hadn’t tried to outfox him. Like the roots of the Wishing Tree itself, everything had a funny way of connecting, and not always for the better.

  Miles stared up at the ceiling. “Guess we could be in here for a few days. Weeks, for all we know.”

  “My clients will think I’ve ghosted them.” Nadia felt a pang at the thought of the couples who would take her disappearance to heart. Of course, depending how the next interaction with her captors went, she might end up actually ghosted, so there was that to worry about too. “I need to call them somehow, just to let them know . . .”

  Miles gave her a sympathetic look. “Maybe they’ll figure you had a family emergency or something.”

  “Maybe,” Nadia murmured.

  It was definitely true, in all kinds of ways. But the vise around her lungs tightened. She thought of a couple she had been counseling who had recently lost a child—stillborn at thirty-nine weeks. The wife had suffered miscarriage after miscarriage before that baby, so they’d put everything into that little boy who almost made it. The love they shared for each other became lost somewhere in the wreckage of all that tragedy, and it was Nadia’s job to help them sift through the debris until they found it again. Tears welled in her eyes. Who would be there for her clients come Monday, when her door was closed and her phone went straight to voice mail?

  Sometimes, she envied her clients’ wishless lives, since all her world seemed to do was screw things up. Or, rather, she screwed things up because of this wishing, stealing, deceiving side hustle.

  Miles had fallen back into a comfortable silence, only the whir of the vents filling the empty cube of maddening steel walls.

  “Why didn’t you make the wish back on the boat? I bought you plenty of time,” Miles said ten minutes later. “It wasn’t easy for me to give that up, you know. I mean, that was my last one, and I was really going to use it on something good! I could’ve stomached losing it if it’d gone to saving my ass, but here we are, ass unsaved.”

  Nadia met his accusatory gaze. “Three words: wet friggin’ wick. Your designer bag wasn’t as waterproof as you claimed.”

  Miles groaned and put his head in his hands.

  “The wish is still here.” She patted her chest, then murmured, “And I know it couldn’t have been easy for you, after thinking you were finally getting it back. I’m sorry it didn’t work.”

  “Well, I doubt either of us will get to keep it now. But I’m gonna find us a way out of here eventually, if my name ain’t Miles Clarence Hunter.”

  “Clarence?” Nadia raised an eyebrow.

  “Clarence is a great name. Best saxophonist in the world was Clarence Clemons, God rest his soul.” Miles made the sign of the cross.

  She made a subtle gesture toward the security cameras. “Careful what you’re saying. And not just about the sax player. Bad things happen to people who give away their own game.” She turned back to him, lowering her voice to a barely audible whisper. “Anyway, if your . . . exit strategies were so infallible, we’d have escaped before we even got here.”

  She was careful not to mention “finding” in case the surveillance picked up on it.

  “Sometimes, it takes time,” he muttered back. “And sometimes, exits can’t be found because they don’t exist. But I’m working on it.”

  Nadia frowned. “Are you getting any tingling in your waters?”

  “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but I do know that the warm and fuzzies seem to be pointing toward one thing . . . or person.”

  “Huh?”

  “Apparently, you’re what I’m looking for,” he replied. “I mean, you’re my ticket out of here. Well, you’ve got something to do with an exit, anyway, but it’s figuring out how that’s the hard part.”

  Nadia groaned. “You mentioned that at The Scrapyard. That nuance kind of pisses me off.”

  “You’re a counselor! Nuance is what you do, I thought. But you know what pisses me off? The whole damn wishing world.” He smoothed a hand over his close-shaven head. “How does it even make any sense that I’m getting the rap for wanting to take back my own wish? I didn’t do anything wrong, but I guess that’s the justice system for you, even in this underground, shady, cloak-and-dagger business.”

  They fell silent again, and Nadia found her thoughts drifting, as always, to Nick.

  If she didn’t make it out of here alive, at least she was one step closer to holding him in her arms again. It wasn’t what she really wanted, but she’d take it if that was all she could have. As she’d silently told him a thousand times, death wasn’t going to part them. She’d left that out of the vows for a reason.

  Miles sighed. “I’m never getting my third wish. I guess my happy marriage just wasn’t meant to be.”

  His words, so close to where her own thoughts were, snuck past her guard. “You don’t really need a wish for that,” Nadia retorted, only half realizing that she’d said it out loud. “You can find a fulfilling relationship on your own. Part of your problem is thinking that a wish will bring that to you when you could just put yourself out there.”

  Miles waved her away. “You don’t know how many bad dates I’ve been on, how many times I’ve had my heart broken, how many hearts I’ve broken, or how many women turned out to be gold diggers.”

  “Isn’t that the trade-off for being Savannah’s most eligible bachelor for so long?” Nadia said, resting her chin on her knees.

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. If that wish is gone for good, that’s my destiny. Three down, none left.” He tipped over to one side slowly, wincing the whole way down to the floor beside her.

  “You all right there?” she asked.

  “My neck is killing me. I feel like one of those assholes sprained it while they were dragging me around, or Mr. Pinchy dislocated something.” He flexed his fingers. “Though the old magic makers are almost back to normal.”

  “Good to focus on the positive where you can.”

  He chuckled. “I feel like that’s the therapist in you coming out: ‘yes, let’s focus on the growth here.’ Is that what you do for your clients?”

  “Close enough.” Nadia smiled, amused despite herself.

  “Been a while since I’ve been to therapy.” He folded his hands behind his head. “Is this where you drag out my deepest, darkest secrets and tell me I’ve got unresolved mommy issues?”

  She cocked her head at him. “That depends. Do you think you have unresolved mommy issues?”

  He closed his eyes. “Not really.”

  A thought popped into Nadia’s mind. Or rather, the destination they might’ve been headed toward if Jack hadn’t screwed them over.

  “You mentioned your mom’s wishing jar on the speedboat, and you said she was the one who wanted to help you figure out how to really use it,” she said in her dulcet counselor tones. “Was she the one who came from a wishing line? Did the two of you ever talk about what you wished for?” The wishes people made always intrigued her.

  For a while, he didn’t reply. In fact, Nadia was beginning to wonder if he’d fallen asleep. Nick had always been able to fall asleep within a few minutes—a trait she’d envied, since she tended to have a billion things racing around in her mind when she laid her head on her pillow. Even back then.

  “I have no idea if we’ll get out of here alive,” he said, startling her, “but I kind of feel strangely at peace with that, somehow. Like I can give my last confessional to a professional—ha, that rhymed—and free my soul from any heavy burdens before I drift on up to the heavens with my angel wings.” His tone was
joking, but his expression looked tense.

  Aided by the gift of experience, Nadia knew it was best to wait and let him fill the silence.

  “My first wish, I admit, I spent on something selfish,” he went on. “My mom’s wish was the opposite—she used her heirloom for a greater good, though I’d be lying if I said she didn’t influence my decision. I wanted to make her proud, you know?”

  Nadia continued in her patient silence.

  “Growing up, I’d spend every available hour listening to records on my mom’s old vinyl player. Even now, nothing else comes close to the sound of vinyl.” He sighed wistfully. “I’d play them again and again, picking out the different instruments, listening for those hidden melodies and bass notes and that kind of thing. But the guitar . . . Man, I’d wear some records out by going back to the solos and trying to figure them out on the acoustic that my dad bought me one Christmas. I must’ve been ten or so.

  “I sucked at school. I was always, like, third last to get picked in sports, and I had the singing voice of a strangled cat. But when my fingers strummed that guitar, I felt like I was actually halfway decent at something.” His brows lowered in consternation. “But I wanted to be better. I’d practice and practice, but it was like I plateaued at mediocre. The gap between my talent and my aspirations used to frustrate the hell out of me, to the point where I almost smashed my guitar against a wall once. I didn’t want to be playing gigs at The Scrapyard forever.”

  “I can imagine that was exasperating, especially considering your passion for music,” Nadia prompted, wanting to hear more about his life. She’d spilled her guts at his house. She figured she should let him return the favor, in case this was where they parted ways for good.

  “It sounds cheesy, but I idolized these famous guitarists and wanted to be on the same level as them. I wanted my name up in lights, you know?” he went on. “My mom thought I was there already, but that’s what moms are for—to cheerlead your mediocrity.”

  Nadia smiled. “That’s not cheesy at all. It’s understandable. And I’ve seen you play—there’s nothing run-of-the-mill about it. Your mom was right.”

  “That’s the problem. I never used to play like that. It all came from a wish.” He took a deep breath, putting Nadia on edge in case he blurted out the wish itself in the monitored room. “And my star basically rose from there.”

  She exhaled a sigh of relief.

  “My voice and playing improved until I could shred with the best of them without really trying too hard,” Miles continued. “It was like my fingers knew exactly what to do without getting muddled the way they used to. Then, I got discovered and signed, and I rocketed to international fame.” He tapped his fingers on his chest. “Monique assumed I’d been holding out on her and the band and that my fame was overhyped. She’ll never know how close to the truth she was.”

  “Have you felt unworthy of your stardom, then?” she asked.

  Nadia was genuinely curious. It seemed Black Hat and Croak had made an educated guess when it came to the “dirt” on Miles they gave Jack. When someone was rich and famous in the wishing world, it wasn’t hard to guess what they might’ve wished for. But until Jack had mentioned it, Nadia hadn’t even considered that Miles’s talents might be wish-given, because his love for music seemed as deep rooted as his Georgia upbringing.

  He tilted his head, his eyes still closed. “Sometimes, I feel like the people I grew up with—my dad and mom especially, at least when she was alive—look at me like people must’ve looked at Robert Johnson.”

  “Robert Johnson?” Nadia asked.

  “The way the story goes, back when he was working on a plantation in Mississippi, he had these big dreams of becoming a famous blues musician,” Miles explained. “You can understand why that might’ve been tricky for him. Anyway, some guy tells him to take his guitar to this crossroads at midnight—you know, ’cause the spooky stuff always happens at that time. Midnight comes, and this big Black dude appears and tunes Robert’s guitar. That dude was supposedly the Devil, in case you didn’t catch that. So anyway, the Devil plays a couple of songs on the guitar before giving it back to Robert, who then becomes this guitar god. Like me, one day he was mediocre and then—bam!—he became a master pretty much overnight. All for the price of a soul.”

  “Or maybe he made a wish, like you?” she suggested.

  Miles shook his head. “Nah, I doubt it. He just had immense talent during a time when Black men weren’t supposed to be good at anything, so people started telling these tall tales to make that reality seem plausible. They did him dirty in a lot of ways. Like, if they were going to make up a story, why did it have to be this Faustian thing instead of it being an angel or the Lord Himself who gave Robert his talent?” He pursed his lips. “I’ll tell you why. Back then, the Lord wasn’t supposed to be generous to Black folk either.”

  “Is that a sticking point for you—that Robert Johnson had a naturally extraordinary talent?” Nadia asked.

  He made a quiet thinking noise. “I guess I feel like my story is closer to selling my soul to the Devil, and I hate that. I wish I could’ve had my talent naturally without wishing for it.” He paused. “That’s why I told Jack that you don’t get automatic happiness when you wish for things, because . . . you sort of miss out on the journey and the sense of pride you’d get if you made it to the top under your own steam.”

  “I understand that,” Nadia said softly.

  He gave a small nod. “Wishing for good health or to get out of poverty is a worthwhile wish, because it’s not inherently selfish,” he continued. “Those are things I can get behind being given rather than earned, for the most part.”

  “It’s very noble that you tried to stop Jack from repeating what you view as your mistakes, though I’d argue that your music has brought comfort to many, many people. There’s good in that,” she pointed out.

  He shrugged. “Maybe, but it’s not something I built for myself. You know, like eating vegetables you grew in your own garden. I robbed myself of that. Worse, I robbed myself of the chance to try to get there on my own.” His face fell. “Now, when I play, I’ll never know what’s my actual skill and what’s just . . . magic, or façade, or whatever you want to call it. All because I wanted to be an all-around guitar god, like my idols. Although I still haven’t mastered ‘Memories of the Alhambra.’”

  She turned her gaze toward the wall opposite, seeking questions in the void. “Wouldn’t you feel the same way about a good relationship? Surely, you’d want to earn that too, instead of wishing it into existence? I can imagine that not knowing if someone actually loves you or if it’s the magnetic draw of a wish would be worse than not knowing if your talent is yours or wish-given.”

  Miles sighed. “It’s me I want to change, not someone else. I don’t mean my personality or my face or anything, but the intangible parts of me, if that makes any sense. I want to be a better man, and I don’t know if I have it in me to do that on my own.” He cleared his throat, sounding a bit embarrassed by the admission. “Aaaand that’s enough of that.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said honestly.

  He coughed, dipping his head. “Well, thanks for listening. I don’t normally talk to people like this. Must be your counselor vibes making me all like ‘think about your childhood traumas’ and that sort of jazz.”

  “My brand of psychology isn’t as intrusive as tha—”

  The vault lock made its clattering rotation. The door wheezed open and Val strode in, one arm in a hospital-blue temporary sling.

  Cold fear grabbed Nadia. Val had reason enough to beat her senseless after the riverboat fiasco. But the tall woman merely gestured for them to stand, and they dutifully obeyed.

  “The Wishmaster is ready to see you now,” Val instructed, but when Miles moved to the door, she shook her head. “No, just her.”

  Miles shot Nadia a glance, her own concern reflected on his face. Not twenty-four hours ago, she’d have given anything to lose him, and now she�
�d rather have walked on hot coals than be separated. What if she got hurt and needed to find a way out? What if he got hurt while she was being interrogated? She’d told him they might go easier on him, but that had been nothing more than speculation. Kaleena wasn’t called a ballbreaker for nothing. And Nadia couldn’t do anything to help her newfound conspirator except try to bargain with Kaleena—which would’ve stood a better chance of success if she wasn’t already in debt. She had briefly talked to her older sister only once or twice in the three years since Kaleena had become Wishmaster.

  Stretching the stiffness out of her legs, Nadia gave Miles what she hoped was a parting nod of reassurance and followed Val out of the vault. In sulking silence, the blonde bruiser led Nadia back through the maze of hallways, giving her no choice but to contemplate Miles’s fate and all the dire consequences that wishing brought.

  Aware of Val’s eyes boring into her, Nadia broke the silence. “Remember, you were the one who grabbed me and tipped us both overboard. Not to mention stealing the wish from me.”

  “It hurt like hell to pop this shoulder back into place,” Val grumbled.

  Nadia shrugged, happy that both her shoulders worked perfectly well—at least for now. “I repeat, you came at me. That wish wasn’t yours to steal, so you brought all your pain on yourself. If you’re looking for sympathy, you’re barking up the wrong Kaminski.”

  Val slammed Nadia up against the nearest wall. “I wasn’t doing it for myself, you stupid bitch. I need to earn back my third wish, or my wife will—” She stopped herself.

  Nadia blinked in surprise at Val’s sudden outburst. “Is that what the Wishmaster has on you? Your—”

  “No.” Val’s tone cut off further discussion, and a ripple of annoyance passed over her angular, Scandinavian features. Now that they weren’t actively trying to kill each other, Nadia could actually get a good look at the woman. She had a strong jaw, cheekbones to make a sculptor weep, and eyebrows so fair they were almost invisible. Honestly, she wouldn’t have looked out of place with braided hair, war paint on her face, and a shield and sword in her hands, rowing to victory on a Viking longboat.