Wish Hunter (The Savannah River Series Book 1)

by Hero Bowen

  Dominic had just reached the fire exit when—

  The hammer strike of bone yielding to a bullet.

  There wasn’t time to register anything other than the strange sensation of the bullet tearing through the back of Dominic’s skull and the floor rushing to meet his still-open eyes.

  Inside the prison of his mind, Nadia screamed. But there was no one to hear her.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Time and space took a fleeting hiatus in the aftermath of Nadia’s unheard scream. She tried to focus on her body, but the pain and the shock—and the echoes of Dominic’s turbulent emotions still surging inside her—made concentration impossible. In the impenetrable blackness that followed his collapse to the ground, face down in the fishy, salty sludge, she floated in an expanse of nothingness. Not part of him, but not part of herself anymore. A double out-of-body experience.

  Is this what death feels like? Is there just . . . nothing, after the spark goes out? With no gateway into Dominic’s dying mind, she couldn’t sense his experience of this earth-shattering moment. There was only the fear from his last, rattling breath, and the awful stillness of a body that no longer had a purpose to serve.

  Is this how it was for you, Nick? Did you think of me when that bullet went through you, or was there no time? Are you out there, or am I just dreaming every time I feel you around?

  The darkness took on an unfamiliar weight, as though someone else were there in the shadowlands with her. They were almost within her reach, yet she had no hands to feel for them, whoever they were. Was it Dominic’s mind, migrating from this world to the hereafter? Or was it someone else, some other soul who’d slipped through the veil for a moment?

  Before she could dwell on it to the point of insanity, she felt a familiar pulse—her own heartbeat. Her eyes flew open to the atmospheric glow of her sister’s private domain. This time, Nadia was perched on that clamshell armchair, her T-shirt sticking in all the wrong places, drenched through with sweat. A firm hand rested on each of her shoulders.

  “The wanderer finally returns,” Val grumbled—the owner of said hands. “Whatever autopilot your body went into kept trying to get up and walk around. It didn’t like me trying to stop it, so I had to use a bit of force.”

  Nadia didn’t care. At least she was back. Her body felt cold and clammy, every breath like sucking down a fireball that seared in her lungs. And though she gripped the armrests as tightly as she could, nothing stopped the violent tremble in her fingertips, or the sick, detached sensation in her stomach, like the universe hadn’t quite stitched her back into place properly.

  Val eyed her warily. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I just . . . watched someone . . . die,” Nadia said, gasping through her words. “No . . . I just died. I felt it. I felt myself hovering in . . . I don’t know where.”

  Val went to the dining table, poured a glass of water, and brought it back to Nadia. When Nadia didn’t immediately reach for it, Val said, “Relax, there’s nothing funky about it. It’s just water.”

  Nadia took a tentative sip, spilling half of it as her hands shook. “There’s nothing, Val. It’s . . . black. Endless black.”

  “Nobody knows what really happens until it’s their turn,” Val replied, and Nadia appreciated the flicker of humanity in her gentle tone. The tall woman crouched in front of her. “But looks like you get to stay on the carousel ride for a little while longer, at least.”

  Nadia shook her head. “I felt pretty fucking close to getting tossed off.”

  “Well, you’re handling it better than the other . . . trial runs we’ve had.” Val smiled encouragingly, though Nadia had a feeling she’d wanted to say “guinea pigs” instead. “First time somebody tried it, they couldn’t handle being in other people’s minds. Now she’s enjoying the psychiatric services up at Georgia Regional. Well, maybe ‘enjoying’ isn’t the word. Second time, our guy got addicted to the voyeurism of it and refused to leave the last body he inhabited. He’s probably still there, eagerly awaiting a flash of skin in a mirror. We don’t know for sure. We got his body down in one of our vaults—just an empty husk that sits in the corner and has to be tube-fed so he doesn’t waste away.”

  Nadia squeezed her eyes shut, debating whether or not to rant about the fact that her own sister was willing to risk the same happening to her. She decided against it. “I’d say I’m much closer to that first one.”

  Val shook her head. “You’ve shown a lot of promise, and the Wishmaster is certain it’ll keep working because of what you do for a living. Being a counselor and everything, you must know how to exist in other people’s heads without it breaking you or consuming you.”

  Nadia creaked open her eyelids and shot Val a sour look. “I don’t get inside their actual minds, Val. I ask questions, I listen, I advise. I don’t slither around people’s brains like a frigging parasite.”

  “You do now,” Val replied. “Welcome to the inner circle, where your wish is the boss’s command.”

  Nadia had never desired to be anywhere near the Wishmaster’s tight-knit group of devout puppets. More than ever before, she wished she could go back to the parking lot outside Bonaventure and sincerely talk herself out of doing anything stupid, shunning any temptation that came her way. But there was no wish for time travel—that was another entry on the Wishing Tree’s banned list, for the same reason you couldn’t wish someone had never been born. No grandfather paradoxes allowed, thanks very much.

  Her thoughts flitted bitterly toward Kaleena’s wording. Nadia still wasn’t sure that the “perfect spy” could lie without consequence. Nothing Kaleena did was left to chance; everything was meticulously thought out, way ahead of time. Did it also mean Nadia couldn’t use the power on Kaleena, or did it mean Nadia wouldn’t be able to use this ability for personal purposes? The limits would need to be tested—and sooner rather than later.

  Figuring now was as good a time as any, she focused in on her sister, certain that they’d at least accidentally touched. Then again, she couldn’t remember feeling a skin-to-skin jolt. Nadia’s vision distorted for a few moments, but it was like a broken shutter lens that wouldn’t open all the way. No matter how hard she strained her eyes and tried to will that wrenching vortex to whiz her away into Kaleena’s head, she got nothing but throbbing temples, aching eyeballs, and a disappointing answer to her questions.

  Nadia turned her attention on Val, knowing she could be useful as a fly on the wall around Kaleena, but got the same busted-shutter feeling.

  “What else did you learn from these poor bastards?” Nadia asked instead, figuring insight would be almost as good as actual experimentation. For now, at least.

  “Based on experiments with earlier, um, subjects,” Val said, “touching people seems to be the way to get a connection up and running. You can’t just hop inside anyone’s mind unless you’ve established that physical catalyst first. Once you’ve touched them, you can get into their head whenever, no matter the distance.”

  Val kept a distance of her own, making Nadia wonder if she had to be the one to touch her target to make that mind bridge. Val had had her hands on Nadia’s shoulders when she’d zoomed back from Dominic’s corpse, but Nadia hadn’t initiated any skin-to-skin contact with Val, so that was another aspect that would require some knob-twiddling.

  Miles . . . Realization pierced her jangled brain, like she had a rod sticking out of her head and lightning had just struck. She’d touched his hand in the wishing cellar and experienced that warping shutter-lens effect. He might’ve been locked up somewhere in this rabbit hole of a building, but based on what Val had said, that distance would mean nothing to her, since that epidermal direct line had hooked up the cell towers of their minds, so to speak.

  She cast an anxious glance at Val, but really, what could the woman do if Nadia left her body on a whim? After all, Nadia worked for the Wishmaster now too, whether she wanted to or not.

  Nadia went ahead and thought of her coconspirator.


  The marble and velvet furnishings swelled in her periphery, while Val, who’d gotten to her feet in front of Nadia, seemed to teleport into the distance, as if Nadia were simultaneously looking through the small and wide sides of a pair of binoculars. The vignettes darkened the edges of her vision, then whorled inward, turning her world into two tiny dots of light. She spun with the darkness and sucked in one last breath as her mind disengaged from her body, letting the now familiar, but no less terrifying, vortex suck her out of herself and fire her through time and space to a different mind altogether.

  Her vision cleared like the sea calming in the eye of a storm, and her disembodied mouth unleashed a startled gasp that only she could hear. Kaleena stood front and center in her private room, her expression cold and humorless.

  “. . . need her to come with me,” Nadia heard Miles say. “I mean, there’s gotta be some kind of wishing rights, where I get to see what my wish was used for. Partial custody, visitation, that kind of thing.”

  Nadia’s disconnected heart sank as she paused to feel out Miles’s emotions. She might not have been able to crack into his thoughts, but a strong current of disappointment made his chest—and, by proxy, hers—feel heavy. His shoulders were slumped too. This was a man who knew his third and final wish had already been spent. All hope gone. No takebacks. No do-overs. No wishing for the love of his life, no matter how impossible that wish might have been. His sorrow was palpable, even if he managed to keep it out of his voice.

  “Grace likes you. She trusts you. That makes you—and you alone—the best candidate for the job,” Kaleena replied. “Or perhaps you need more motivation?”

  A torrent of unease made Miles and Nadia’s shared stomach squirm. “Hey, I’m all for getting out of this debt you’ve lumped on me, though I’ll never agree I deserve it.” He spoke with a confidence that belied the discomfort inside. “But I’m guessing you forgot I got kicked out of Grace’s digs on my literal ass. Without Nadia there, Grace won’t trust me for whatever you’ve got in mind.”

  “Would you prefer to be on a task that requires less talking and more dodging bullets?” Kaleena retorted.

  Miles put up his tied hands. “I ain’t trying to get out of what you’re putting on the table.” He paused, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Hell, I’ll even tell you what I used my second wish for, if it proves that I’m not digging in my heels here. I was stupid with it. I wished for a bunch of Grammys. Worth it? Nah, but the after-party was killer. Could’ve used some of that Chatham Artillery Punch, though, if you know what I mean.” He laughed tightly, and Nadia guessed he hoped to protect his finding wish with a lie Kaleena might believe.

  And the fact that Miles had remembered her sad ramblings about Nick made her astral being swell with gratitude. With no one in her family on her side, he’d shown that he was, even though his wish was gone.

  Kaleena’s eyes narrowed, and Nadia shivered alongside Miles. “I feel like you’re being a little too eager here. Nobody likes a suck-up. Not even me.”

  Miles squared his shoulders. “You’re all about exchanges. I gave you the goods about my second wish in exchange for you putting Nadia on this ‘errand’ with me. It won’t work without her, and I don’t feel like getting hauled back into this room later just to say I told you so and then having you try ripping out my first wish for being right.”

  What’s he doing? Why is he trying so hard to get me in on this? She sensed a nervous energy in him.

  “Fine. You’ve made a good case, and Grace is sharper than she seems.” Kaleena gave a casual shrug. “Nadia will work with you this time. Just get me what I want. And you still owe me a wish to complete our bargain, once I decide where you’ll be most useful.”

  A wave of relief rolled through Miles like one of the jazz crescendos he’d talked so much about, only Nadia didn’t know what would happen when this drumroll ended. If Kaleena had plans that involved Grace, then that spelled nothing but chaos, and it would entail slicing the ropes of family ties that were already in pieces.

  “Get up. Since you’ve pulled Nadia into this, we’ll need to discuss the plan of action with her. Won’t that be so much fun?” Kaleena shot Miles a withering glare before striding up to the door of the prison vault and going through the triple-threat security measures.

  What’s wrong, sis? You think I might be the slightest bit uncooperative because you sent me out into Dominic’s mind, fully knowing that he was going to get a bullet to the back of the skull with me inside his head? If Nadia hadn’t just heard Miles put so much on the line to get her out of the Wishmaster’s headquarters, she might’ve slipped back into her body and picked up the closest thing to a baseball bat she could find. But if he could grin and bear it after losing his wish, she supposed she would have to as well.

  Concentrating on the thread of her own body, she retreated from Miles’s mind in that eerie black, tugging slipstream, and she slid back into her familiar form. Her vision opened on the marble floor to find her feet in the process of pacing. Abruptly, she stopped and whirled around to see Val a few steps behind her.

  “I gave up trying to stop you,” Val said flatly. “You’ve been trying to psychoanalyze me for the past ten minutes. That, I couldn’t stop. Where did you go?”

  Nadia arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t go anywhere. That was me, not the autopilot.”

  “Uh-huh,” Val said.

  Nadia didn’t care if Val believed her or not. As far as she was concerned, this was a huge win. Nadia had been able to see through Miles—a person she’d touched and mentally zapped into—despite it not being for Kaleena’s benefit. Perhaps the Wishing Tree had intentionally screwed Kaleena over, and none of her previous “spies” had attempted such a loophole, given how quickly they’d traveled on a downward spiral.

  Before she could even think about running a victory lap around the long dining table, if only to confuse Val further, the gigantic double doors whispered open across the marble. Kaleena strode in with Miles and Croak flanking her, though the former still had his hands zip-tied.

  “Sit down,” Kaleena instructed, with no preamble. “I have another task for you.”

  Nadia feigned ignorance. “So soon? But I just got back.”

  “If I were running off your snail-paced clock, I’d be waiting years for your debt to be fulfilled.”

  Kaleena sat down at the head of the table, where Nadia joined her a moment later, trying not to scowl. Miles took a seat opposite Nadia, the two of them exchanging reassuring looks. Kaleena flexed her hands until her knuckles cracked, as though reminding her little sister of what those hands could do if she failed.

  “This will be your first of the three jobs I mentioned,” Kaleena explained coolly, tipping her head toward Miles. “You can thank him for that.”

  Nadia smirked. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” Miles replied, with half a smile.

  Kaleena ignored the aside. “Your task is to retrieve something that was stolen from me years ago—by everyone’s favorite charlatan, Basha.”

  That was the catch Nadia had been waiting for. Not only would it be difficult to steal anything from Basha, given that the walls basically had ears, but it also felt like a true betrayal. Even though Nadia had been unceremoniously booted out of the house, that didn’t mean she wanted to cause more trouble or actively deceive her grandmother and mother, especially not under the Wishmaster’s orders.

  Kaleena had no love for their mom, but she didn’t outright loathe Grace the way she did Basha. And though Nadia didn’t yet know what it was she was being sent to find, this felt like a textbook case of childhood trauma rearing its head in adulthood. She had seen enough clients to know that getting that final word rarely brought about inner peace. Only time, therapy, and years of conscious healing could do that, but Kaleena appeared more than happy to keep her old wounds fresh.

  And now, as Wishmaster, she was planning her revenge.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “There it is,” Kaleena said. They sa
t in her Tesla a few houses down from the Kaminski Mansion, which was backlit by a molten, early-evening sun. Golden hour. The Wishmaster and Val sat up front, with Miles and Nadia in the back.

  Kaleena peered through the windshield at their family home, giving nothing away in her body language. “Funny how it never changes. Same old, same old.”

  Nadia leaned through the gap between the two front seats, muscling past Val’s bulky shoulder and looking at her sister. “How does it feel, being here again?”

  “Like going to the dentist,” Kaleena replied, settling back into the seat. “It’s an occasional necessity, but I’m not thrilled about it. Truth be told, I’d rather have a root canal.”

  Nadia imagined that the final argument that had led to Kaleena severing ties with their mother and grandmother had happened within those walls. It seemed that, for the Wishmaster, the house was the tangled, withered branch in an otherwise flourishing tree of success.

  “But you’ve been thinking about all this for a while, haven’t you?” Nadia asked.

  A few hours had passed since their planning session in Kaleena’s war room, and while Nadia’s memory of the headquarters had faded to vague flashes of expensive finery, gloomy corridors, and towering pillars, the task ahead remained clear as crystal. The sheer depth the Wishmaster had gone into, covering every possible outcome, suggested that this wasn’t some off-the-cuff idea that had suddenly come to her. Kaleena had been refining her plans until the perfect pawn came along—someone who would be invited into the house, rather than a brute-force infiltrator.

  Kaleena turned around and gave her a hard stare. “Don’t try to be clever, Nadia.”