by Hero Bowen
Kaleena straightened, a glint of rage in her eyes. “Ah, so that’s the tale they wove, is it? I assumed you’d stayed because of your loyalty to the rodzina—Basha’s old chestnut. If I’d known they’d lied to you, I’d have gotten you on my side before all this happened . . .” She clicked her tongue. “But that doesn’t matter now. What you need to know is this: that debt is Basha and Grace’s responsibility, not yours.”
Nadia’s stomach lurched, a prickling unease replacing her former anger.
“What do you mean?” Nadia asked, but that flicker of real emotion had vanished from Kaleena’s eyes. The car accident story was the only one Nadia knew, and since she’d been unconscious, it wasn’t like she had any memory of it. But what if her family had kept her in the dark about some part of what happened?
“Your recent behavior and interference aren’t something I can overlook,” Kaleena said. “You’re focusing on how you’ve been wronged and what you want, when you’re in no position to bargain. If you wanted to use a wish, you should’ve come to me and asked. As I said, the debt is Basha and Grace’s. I would have allowed you your wish. We’re sisters, after all. That comes with a few perks—if you come to me on a good day.”
The unease swelled in Nadia’s stomach. Basha and Grace had warned her against asking the Wishmaster for a wish, claiming there’d be hell to pay if she did. Yet Kaleena just said that she would’ve given her permission. If Basha and Grace had lied to keep Nadia from asking for a wish, had they lied about the cause of the debt too?
Or was Kaleena the one lying? After all, it was easy enough for her to claim that she would’ve allowed Nadia to spend a wish, even if it was only an empty promise. But Kaleena had no reason to tell Nadia that she didn’t owe a debt when the opposite would clearly benefit her as Wishmaster.
“Then where did our debt come from?” Nadia asked in a small voice.
“Their debt. Not yours.”
The room seemed to close around Nadia. “But how did . . . ?”
Kaleena wagged a finger. “The cause isn’t for me to say. You’d only believe it if it came from Basha, and I feel she ought to be the one to come clean, though she and Grace have been lying so long they’ve probably started to believe it.”
“So, it’s really . . . not my debt?” Nadia needed to say it aloud to try to process it. If it was true, then she now understood why her wish to clear her debt hadn’t worked. Why would it, when the debt wasn’t hers to begin with?
“Nope, but you took their debt on, never doubting them for a moment,” Kaleena continued. “Then you went against the rules—you stole a wish ‘off the books’ after already flubbing an exchange, and you plotted to attack my associates. I was hoping you’d decide not to go through with it so that I wouldn’t need to drag you in here, but you went and proved me right. You endangered Val, resulting in a client losing the product they’d paid for . . . I don’t think I need to go on.” She placed her hands on the table in a slow, measured way. “It’s bad for business, little sister, and you have to face the consequences. No perks there, I’m afraid.”
Nadia scratched her temple. “Then why did you send a feather, and why did Croak say he was watching me closely?”
“Not closely enough, it seems.” Kaleena sniffed. “But I’ve been having him watch you for the past year. I knew you’d be a wreck after Nick passed, and I couldn’t come and check on you myself when you moved into that den of iniquity, so I sent Croak in my stead. As for the feathers—one was yours, one was theirs. The latter came about because they were scheming to have me overthrown, and I can’t stand a mutiny. There’s too much cleanup afterward, so I thought I’d nip it in the bud. Still, let’s skirt back around to your feather and your transgressions, since that’s why we’re here.”
Nadia had hoped their bygone sisterly bond might save her from a brutal punishment, but it had always been a long shot. On to plan B: an all-out, hands-clasped-together, prostrate-on-the-ground, pleading desperation.
“Then let me buy this wish!” Nadia said in a rush. “I can get you a dozen more. Two dozen. You know that. Look how many we’ve already stolen for you!”
There was no movement on the Wishmaster’s face as she replied. “That’s a given.”
“Or take this one!” Nadia blurted out, not quite on her knees yet. “You can have it back. Forget I stole it from you in the first place.” She sagely avoided mentioning that the wish rightly belonged to Miles. This was about saving both of their hides—hers and Miles’s—and if it cost him his last wish, then at least he’d have his life and his freedom.
Kaleena raised an unimpressed eyebrow, every hair immaculately in place. “Well, thank you for the kind offer, but you didn’t really have an option of not returning it.” She mustered a half smile. “Still, I appreciate you reducing my workload. I would’ve hated to have to drag you to extraction, especially if you’d planned to wail and scream. Embarrassing.”
Nadia’s skin crawled at that putrid little word: extraction. It made her think of teeth being yanked and alien objects being plucked out of wide-open carcasses on a surgical table.
“I messed up. I know it. But if you let me keep this one, I’ll work twice—”
“I’m more concerned with quality over quantity right now,” Kaleena said. “And I have something else in mind, if you’re really determined to prove you won’t break the rules again.” She fell silent, an expectant tension twanging between them.
Nadia swallowed. “What is it?”
Her sister smirked. “You are going to use your wish for me.”
The chair’s soft cushioning and layers of fuzzy add-ons felt suffocating, keeping Nadia trapped in her seat. “What?”
“Should I repeat it to you in Polish? I thought my meaning was clear enough. Or are you asking what I want you to wish for?” Kaleena took a purple tea light out of the nearest lantern and flicked it back and forth between her fingers, as though taunting Nadia about the imminent loss of her wish.
“Well, maybe I need it simpler,” Nadia replied, her throat constricting.
“There’s a certain . . . skill that no other associate of mine has been able to use.” Her eyes met Nadia’s, her pupils reflecting the flickering flame. “I think you’d be the perfect candidate for it.”
“So, you actually want me to use the wish?” Nadia floundered.
“It saves having to bounce it around other people.” Kaleena nodded to Nadia’s chest. “That wish has been through enough bodies.”
“What’s the skill? What do you want it for?” Nadia asked with narrowed eyes.
“Oh, this and that.” Kaleena wafted a hand through the air. “But I have three very important tasks in mind. Succeed in all three, and you’ll have your freedom. No more debt, no more servitude, no catch beyond those three little tasks. And maybe we can get together for brunch once in a blue moon and take that wander down memory lane that you crave.”
Nadia got the feeling there was a catch and that those three tasks wouldn’t be remotely small, but she held her tongue. After all, this was the kind of “out” she’d never expected to get from her sister, queen of the zero-tolerance policy.
“And when I say you’ll be free, I mean it,” Kaleena continued, her tone softening. “You can do whatever you like. Take wishes from whomever you like. Try to resurrect a couple of people if you want, though I’m not going to be making any bets on you succeeding in that anytime soon.”
Nadia shook her head. “There’s an enormous ‘but’ here, and it isn’t mine.”
“Hilarious,” Kaleena said. “Think of it as terms and conditions—a form of motivation. I’ll have to give you two more wishes, take them back, and hold them as collateral until the job’s done. Standard protocol so you don’t get tempted to steal wishes for yourself instead of me, especially given that you now have a history of that. I want no Nick distractions.”
Nadia rubbed her thumb against the pressure point in her palm to try to quell her nerves. “But you would give them back in t
heir unused state, right?”
“Of course.” Kaleena looked momentarily offended. “In this business, my word is my bond. I’ll return the wishes when the three deeds are accomplished. I could even give you a guiding hand about how to use those last two to find a way to revive your dearly departed, if that’s what you really want. Call it a sisterly sweetener.”
If anything, it was sisterly aspartame: pretending to be sweet while it made your guts gurgle and sent you sprinting for the bathroom. But Nadia could sweep past all the sarcasm and incongruity to see the very real hope that Kaleena was dangling in front of her.
“What’s the wish? How do I know it won’t counteract any kind of resurrection wish?” Nadia said, trying to soften the edge of desperation in her voice.
Kaleena shrugged. “I can’t tell you what the wish is until you accept.” She ceased her private game of finger hockey with the tea light and skimmed it toward Nadia like a fiery puck, as if confident that Nadia wouldn’t try anything funny with her current wish. “The offer’s there, little sister, and you won’t get a better one. Either it’s this or you scrounge up another one hundred and one wishes for the next . . . however many years of your Nickless life.”
The mere thought of giving up decades to wish hunting made Nadia’s body go slack with despair. Three tasks sounded a whole lot better than running around like a headless chicken trying to coax out secrets while never getting to use a wish for herself.
Sorry, Miles. At this point, he wasn’t getting his wish back either way. The least she could do was accept her sister’s offer and throw his freedom into the bargain too.
“If I do it, will you let Miles go?” Nadia said quietly.
“Ah, a bold move, and very admirable. But no,” Kaleena replied. “No one gets out of a debt. Order must be maintained, no matter who the offender is or why they did it.”
Nadia wanted to push the subject more, but what if she only caused more trouble for Miles by doing so? It wasn’t worth the risk. Her only choice was to settle for the deal she’d been given. Nadia swallowed hard. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Excellent.” Kaleena pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and pushed it across the table to Nadia, leaving it curled up beside the tea light.
Nadia resisted the urge to glower, though she couldn’t help sending livid thoughts toward the Wishing Tree. Sure, it could stop people from resurrecting loved ones who had only good intentions for necromancy, or prevent people from wishing they were dead. Yet somehow it hadn’t come up with a way to stop people from forcing others to make wishes that benefited them. To Nadia, it seemed the Wishing Tree had some major reprioritizing to do.
“Say the words on the paper out loud,” Kaleena instructed, oblivious to Nadia’s inner raging. “Those exact words. No deviation. If you make a mistake, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
That was another wish prohibited by the Wishing Tree—for obvious logistical, genetically cataclysmic reasons—but the threat was clear enough, regardless of the wording.
“Do you know how painful it is to have a used wish taken?” Kaleena pressed. “Agonizing, I hear. They don’t call it ‘hope stealing’ for no reason. And if you try any funny business, I’ll force you to spend two wishes, then I’ll steal them back and let them disappear into the ether.”
With shaky hands, Nadia opened the piece of paper. It read, in elegant cursive, I wish to be the perfect spy for Kaleena Kaminski. She had no choice but to obey, or else she’d lose her ability to wish and face that torturous extraction.
Nadia looked up at her sister, whose expression remained an enigma. “This could manifest in so many different, twisted ways.”
She read it again, fearful of its simplicity. True, the Wishing Tree tended to outright ignore any wishes longer than a handful of words, and multipart wishes never worked, but every word was open to interpretation.
“Didn’t you see the name on the paper? The wish manifests the same way each time because it’s based on what I want in a spy, not whatever’s in your head.” Kaleena pincered the piece of paper and dropped it into her other palm, ready to crush it. “I hate to rush you, but time’s a-ticking.” She clicked her tongue, emulating the sound of a clock.
The wish’s wording could hurt Nadia, alter her forever, but what was worse? An uncertain outcome, or the certainty that she’d never get Nick back if she didn’t do this? She lunged for the paper and all but clawed it out of Kaleena’s hand. It startled Nadia how cold her elder sister’s skin was, as though she were carved from marble.
“I’ll do it! I’ll make the wish!” Nadia gasped. “I promise, I’ll do it.” She hated the groveling tone of her voice, but that was exactly what Kaleena wanted, with all her “little sister” and “Nickless life” business: control over her.
“Go on, then,” Kaleena said, eyeing her palm as if expecting to see scratches.
Nadia unfurled the piece of paper and read aloud without hesitation in case she lost her nerve. “I wish to be the perfect spy for Kaleena Kaminski.” Then, closing her eyes, she leaned forward and blew out the tea light.
As a wisp of smoke spiraled upward, a peculiar warmth tingled across Nadia’s chest, up her throat, and into her skull, where it bubbled around in her brain. Then the heat dispersed, taking the wish rush with it. She waited to feel empty, or unusual, or changed in some way, knowing the manifestation couldn’t be far away. The effects were usually instantaneous, or at least within a twenty-four-hour window. How long would hers take?
At first, nothing seemed outwardly different. She hadn’t transformed into a cyborg with guns for arms, and she wasn’t feeling a sudden urge to have her martini shaken, not stirred. Her eyes couldn’t see through solid walls, and her ears weren’t hearing a dog take a piss against a fire hydrant twelve blocks away. But there was an odd darkening around the edges of her vision, like the room was vignetted, skewing her sight to the point where she felt like she was looking through a fishbowl.
“Two people have tried this before,” Kaleena said, watching her with interest. “Hopefully, you’ll be lucky number three.”
The use of past tense didn’t escape Nadia’s notice. What the hell had happened to those previous wishers? Presumably, they weren’t around anymore. Or, if they were, they probably weren’t the same as they’d been pre-wish.
Before Kaleena could elaborate, the imposing double doors sprang open and Val stormed in with a face like thunder.
“We had a runner, Wishmaster, but we found him before he got far.” Val bowed her head, breathing hard as if she’d sprinted the whole way there.
“Bring him to me,” Kaleena instructed. “Though tell me—how did he manage to get out?”
Val winced. Nadia got the impression that Val didn’t want to answer the Wishmaster’s question, but the answer came nevertheless, as though it had been squeezed out of her like the last blob of toothpaste in the tube. “He tricked the guards.”
Craning her neck to get a look at the empty hallway behind Val, Nadia felt a ripple of anxiety about the “him” they were referring to. What if Miles had tried to escape on his own, after getting some kind of epiphany from his finding ability? She wasn’t annoyed, just worried. After all the time they’d spent together recently, she couldn’t help but feel responsible for him, especially after getting him into this mess in the first place.
But she had no idea if the favor she’d just given her sister would go any way toward saving Miles from the Wishmaster’s punishment. He might’ve dug himself a hole that she couldn’t airlift him out of. Had she condemned him to a terrible fate?
“He’s already been taken to the cellar for extraction,” Val went on, her breath leveling. “I can take Clover Eyes back to the vault, if you’re done with her?”
Nadia still had no clue what her wish had wrought. Dread percolated down through her chest and into her stomach. Although . . . she did feel a bizarre sensation as she looked into Val’s eyes. Detachment. Floating. But it was gone in an instant.
Kaleena scraped back her chair and stood with a smile. “This is the perfect opportunity to test-drive your new wish, little sister.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Nadia kept her eyes down as Kaleena and Val marched her back through another maze of blurry optical illusions masquerading as hallways.
“How deep does this place go?” Nadia asked after five sets of stairs and a seemingly endless series of identical corridors. Overhead, huge chrome air-conditioning pipes and fans whirred nonstop, pushing fresh air through the labyrinth.
Kaleena checked her watch. “As deep as I want it to. Give me a white rabbit and a pipe-toting caterpillar.”
“All this Wishmastering has turned you into the Cheshire Cat,” Nadia muttered.
When they reached the end of a wide hallway, Kaleena punched a lengthy code into a keypad, in addition to using a hand and retinal scanner. A green light winked on, and the hefty steel blast door ahead opened wide.
Nadia highly doubted that anyone could ever break into this place, although some foolhardy thieves had probably attempted it. People who’d wished to shape-shift or break any code could crack a lesser gauntlet of defensive obstacles in no time, but by throwing the whole box of tricks into the security protocols—including the building’s weird distortion trick—it made any type of break-in close to impossible.
Beyond the door was a totally different aesthetic. Kaleena led Nadia and Val into an annex with a curved stone ceiling and a single wooden door in the wall opposite. A smattering of handwoven rugs covered the pale gray flagstones, and sprays of white lilies adorned several ornamental tables while purple lavender-scented candles flickered all around.
Kaleena pulled an old-fashioned skeleton key from her pocket and slipped it into the lock on the wooden door. It turned with a rusty grating sound before she pulled on the black ring and opened the door wide.
“Val, stay here,” Kaleena instructed. “Little sister, come with me.”