by Hero Bowen
I should’ve saved that picture, but at least I’ve got a piece of you here. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about the house too much, knowing it would only break her exhausted heart. There’d be time to grieve it later, along with all the family heirlooms that’d been lost to the ashes.
Her eyes flitted across every filled page, stumbling now and again over faded writing or Polish words that called for her to rack her memory of Basha’s language instruction. She was pleasantly surprised that some of it was written in English. Reading the journal softened her sharper feelings toward her grandmother, though Nadia still had a long way to go before she could think of Basha fondly.
She was so absorbed in the journal, drinking in every passage, searching for the part that might help her, that she barely realized it had started to rain. It pattered against the window, like a lover trying to catch her attention.
“I’m getting closer to you, Nick,” she whispered, smoothing her fingertips over the old pages.
She watched droplets slide down the mirrored windowpane like the tears upon her cheeks, and imagined those speckled splashes were the shooting stars of wishes yet to be made.
Chapter Thirty-One
The following morning, way too early for Nadia’s liking, she was back in the wishing cellar, sitting at a round table in a mostly empty room that she hadn’t seen during her previous visits. Its only real defining feature was a grandfather clock that ticked away in the corner. Miles sat opposite her, going to town on a vast selection of pastries, which he washed down with freshly pressed orange juice. Nadia, on the other hand, couldn’t handle a single bite, her stomach sloshing with anxiety.
As the clock chimed out seven strikes, Kaleena strode in, dressed in a floaty blouse with an anchor brooch, and cream pants with a navy pinstripe. A slight darkness colored the underside of her eyes. That one detail made Kaleena look utterly human for a moment, filled with fears and regrets buried under layers of emotional barricades.
The Wishmaster didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Now, let’s talk about your assignment.”
Miles put on a saccharine smile. “We’re all ears.”
Kaleena walked to the grandfather clock. She pressed her palm against a concealed panel on its side. After she scanned her fingertips, followed by her retinas, she typed in a lengthy code. Several holes twisted open in the stone floor. From their subterranean hiding spots, five pedestals rose, bearing glass display cases as if they were in some super-modern, gimmicky museum.
The display cases revealed a variety of wish traps: a ring box covered in white and black pearls, one reminiscent of Nadia’s broken wishing box, and a rounded one shaped like an old-fashioned hat box, the wood so thin and malleable that it looked like painted cardboard. On another pedestal stood a pale wooden sphere, with faint markings etched along the smooth surface. The third pedestal presented a wooden book, likely a cleverly concealed wish trap.
But by far the most interesting items to Nadia were the single strip of gnarled bark; the tiny, oily-black acorn with an almost white cap; and the dried, gray leaves. These were the flesh and fruit of the Wishing Tree itself—Nadia would have staked her life on it.
Nadia pointed to an unoccupied pedestal. “That one’s empty.”
Kaleena shot her a withering look. “Ten points for observation.” She walked up to the case bearing the bark and acorn and caressed the glass. “These are the most potent wishes in my possession. I’m saving them for a rainy day, or maybe I’ll just keep hold of them forever. Call me judgmental, but I’ve yet to meet someone who deserves their power.”
Miles gave a low whistle. “What’s that collection worth? Millions? Tens of millions?”
Kaleena smirked. “Priceless, actually.”
“Where did they come from?” Nadia asked.
Her sister delivered an appreciative stroke to each filled case. “Where all wishes come from,” she purred. “But these have such special stories: an army medic who dragged an entire battalion, one by one, to safety; a woman who hugged a suicide bomber to stop him from triggering the device; a teacher who saved a bus full of children after it veered off an icy road; a novice pilot who took control of a plummeting airliner after both its pilots passed out. These wishes are real, genuine power in a world full of fake dreams and manufactured hope.”
“And let me guess,” Miles said with a sigh, “you want another big one for that empty spot?”
Nadia’s heart sank. She could guess where this was going.
Kaleena turned and smiled. “Do you know Ethan Lovell?”
“The actor?” Miles nodded. “Sure. I met him once, when I played Burning Man a couple years back.” He paused. “But I don’t really know him know him, you know?”
Kaleena pressed her palm to the panel, and the pedestals sank back into the ground. “Well, get ready to. He has something I want—he just doesn’t know it.”
Dim memories of Hollywood gossip that Grace had blathered about a week ago struggled to the forefront of Nadia’s mind. “Wait, Ethan Lovell is the guy who stopped an accident on set, isn’t he?”
Miles whistled. “Ooooh, shit, yeah. I remember now. Filming on a railroad, and Ethan was way up the line, set for some motorbike stunt where he’d ride along the tracks, wasn’t it?”
“That’s it,” Kaleena said. “An eighty-car freight train passed their site, even though the tracks were supposed to be clear, and Ethan realized the crew was on the tracks just a few miles down. So he hopped on his motorcycle and rode ahead of the train, across a railroad bridge—at full speed. He got there just in time to warn the crew to get off the tracks, right before the train obliterated the entire film rig and set trailer, then derailed. Cost the studio four and a half million dollars and counting, according to the tabloids.” Kaleena smiled, the smile of a shark presented a school of fish. “Also saved the lives of seventeen of the production crew.”
Nadia remembered Black Hat telling her about a big client the Wishmaster wanted to target. With a wish like that in Ethan’s tank, it had to be him.
“He’s scheduled to film in Savannah for a week, starting next Tuesday,” Kaleena said. “I want that wish before somebody else steals it. The LA and Atlanta wish hunters are probably all trying to work an angle already, plus there are other Adrian wannabes out there. Fortunately for us, Ethan is a famous actor and notoriously private.” She looked pointedly at Miles. “This is where you and Nadia come in.”
Nadia sat up straighter. “So, you do want this to be a team effort?”
“Unless you’d rather work alone?” Kaleena raised an eyebrow.
Nadia shook her head. “No, no, a problem shared and all that. Will you give me back my car at least, or did Val drive it into the river out of spite?”
“Your precious orange Chevy is in the garage, safe and sound,” Kaleena said. “I’ll have someone get it for you later. I know how attached you are to it, ugly as it is.”
Nadia was so relieved, she almost said a sincere “thank you.” But she wasn’t about to do more ass-kissing. “We’ll need it for the mission, although we can’t exactly just drive onto a film set.”
Kaleena waved a hand. “It’s usually difficult to get close enough to the rich and famous to steal wishes without outright kidnapping them. Not that the ultra-rich save very many lives in the first place. They tend to be consumers of wishes, not generators of them.” She gave Miles a pointed look, and his lips pressed into a thin line. “You won’t be as lucky as you were with Miles, little sister. However, I figured Miles is the perfect in. All the better that they’ve already met.”
Nadia frowned. “Then where do I fit in? Am I supposed to pretend to be Miles’s assistant or something?”
“Whatever you need to do,” Kaleena replied with a shrug. “If I have to figure it out for you, I don’t have a use for you.”
Nadia tried not to let her face betray her emotions. She had no desire to find out what happened to people Kaleena no longer “had a use for,” and she had no more illusi
ons that being family would protect her.
“There’s not some ‘hey, I’m famous’ club, you know,” Miles said. “Even for me, it’s not as easy as just—”
“Figure. It. Out,” Kaleena snapped, then turned to Nadia. “Once we finish up here, you will cancel all your appointments for the month. Working for me is a full-time job, and I don’t want any distractions.”
Nadia dug her fingernails into her palms to keep quiet. Counseling was her job, not wish hunting, and her clients were important to her. But she said nothing, thinking of the endgame: two wishes to use.
Kaleena nodded. “I trust that won’t be an issue.” It wasn’t a question.
“No,” Nadia lied.
However, there was a pressing issue. Kaleena wanted her to clear her schedule for an entire month. According to their great-grandmother’s journal—which Nadia had stayed up all night devouring page by page—she had only 128 days left to bring Nick back. After he’d been in the ground for that mathematically perfect number of 496 days, all would be lost. And if Julita’s experience with Basha was any indication, the resurrection process promised to be time-consuming, and it required two wishes.
But at least Julita had given her the exact wording of the first wish she needed to make.
Nadia clenched her jaw. She and Miles would just have to move quickly. She didn’t care. Even if it took her stealing a thousand wishes from a thousand movie stars, she was going to see Nick again, to hold his hands in hers, to give him all the love and want and need she’d bottled up inside her since he’d died. She would get him back, no matter what obstacles Basha or the Wishing Tree or the Wishmaster put in her way.
She was going to live again.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to give our deepest thanks to all of the talented and supportive people who have made this book possible. From our family and friends to our invaluable critique partners, we have appreciated your enthusiasm in seeing this passion project come to life.
As a collaborative novel, Wish Hunter was designed in tandem through the minds of Diane Callahan, Hero Bowen, and Jordan Riley Swan. You’ll see pieces of each of us in these pages. Angela Traficante of Lambda Editing took the book to another level with her developmental feedback. We’re also immeasurably grateful to our beta readers: Alyssa Wejebe’s insightful world-building questions helped us look at the story with fresh eyes, and Nicholas Fuhrmann’s attention to characterization and realism paved a clear path for revisions.
Special thanks goes out to Juno E. Baker, whose insights into the characters and diction helped create a more inclusive work. In addition, we were excited to have Kayla Black, the Museum Director of the American Prohibition Museum in Savannah, as our fact-checker for the book’s setting. We’re also lucky to have Crystal Shelley of Rabbit with a Red Pen as our incomparable copy editor. The custom Wish Hunter candles you might see on our social media pages were made by the esteemed Kate Glass of BriarWick on Etsy, who specializes in book-themed scents.
Diane in particular would like to say tusind tak to Jeanette Nielsen for her continual support and brainwaves. Laura Sukalac also deserves a warm hug for her cheerleading sessions during sleepless nights of editing. And Diane awards her biggest thank you of all to her husband Steven for being the devoted photographer of all Wish Hunter promo pictures, as well as for inspiring the “Polish-family-in-Georgia” basis of the Kaminski family.
Hero would like to thank her sister, Kate, for inspiration, the best childhood anecdotes, and being her Savannah tour guide. In addition, she'd like to thank the usual suspects. Hopefully, you know who you are.
Jordan takes his bow for Erin Spencer and Lisa Flanagan, the producer and narrator, respectively, of the incredible audiobook production. And he supposes that he owes Story Garden’s marketing manager Laurie Cooper a “thank you” for putting up with him.
And to you, dear reader, we bestow our best wishes.
The End.