by Hero Bowen
Chapter Eight
The adrenaline was finally wearing off—partly because Nadia had used up so much during the cemetery incident, and partly because she’d had enough time behind the wheel to put distance between her and the restaurant. She’d gotten away with it.
As if in celebration, Nadia’s phone rang. She tipped the phone out of her bag. “Mom” flashed on the screen. After juggling the steering wheel and setting the phone in the cupholder, she swiped the Answer icon and put it on speaker.
“I’m driving, so you might not be able to hear me.” Nadia’s voice fought the tick of the rough engine as she answered. “But don’t worry, I’ve—” She was about to tell her mom what she planned to do, only to remember that the Wishmaster might have their phones tapped. Maybe it would be better to just make the wish privately and save them all from the debt before anyone could talk her out of it.
Fortunately, Grace was already speaking. “Black Hat called and told me what happened at Bonaventure. Are you all right? I heard you lost the wish, but that’s not important right now. We’ll get another one, and everything will be fine. He said you were probably all right, but I need to hear it for myself. I almost had a heart attack when he said you got shot at.”
“I’m fine,” Nadia replied, touched to hear such concern from her usually self-absorbed mother.
“Where are you?” Grace’s voice brimmed with worry.
Nadia checked the nearest street sign as it blasted by. “About ten minutes away, depending on traffic.”
Everything in Savannah depended on traffic, trolleys, carriages, and the couldn’t-care-less attitude of the respective drivers. As long as she didn’t get stuck going around the squares, where so many fences and posts had been dinged over the years by overenthusiastic cars, she’d make good time.
“Drive safe, but try to get here as fast as you can.” Grace sounded more unsettled with each passing word. “Your babcia isn’t doing well, sweetheart. I put the phone on speaker like an idiot when Black Hat called, and when she heard what happened to you . . . well, she took a turn. I’m arguing with her right now, trying to get her to go to the hospital. She doesn’t want to, since . . . you know.”
Nadia did know. Given that her grandmother needed to be in the house to protect it and be protected by it, she always kicked up a stink at the merest suggestion of having to leave, since it left their home vulnerable to attack. Plus, Basha always claimed she was fine, even that time her ankle had bent ninety degrees, thanks to her other wish to never feel pain—a wish she had made, she’d told Nadia once, in the wake of a difficult childhood. That inability to feel physical pain made her getting sick all the more dangerous. Right now, Basha was probably christening the toilet bowl with her dinner.
“Will she go to the hospital when I get there, do you think?” Nadia asked.
Grace said nothing for a moment, then lowered her voice as if Basha might be listening. “You know she can be a mule sometimes. It’s like wrangling a toddler to the dentist.”
“Well, I’m coming straight there either way,” Nadia confirmed, chancing a yellow light ahead. “I love you, Mom.”
Maybe it was Miles’s story, or maybe it was thinking about her grandmother being unwell, but she needed to let her mother know that last part.
“Me too,” Grace replied.
As Nadia hung up, she decided right then and there that she couldn’t risk telling her mother the truth, even if they were the only ones in the room. With how much more cautious Grace and Basha had become, they would undoubtedly try to dissuade her.
No, she had to take matters into her own hands if she ever wanted to clear the debt before Nick’s resurrection deadline. She caressed the wishing jar in her lap. It would seem suspicious if she walked into the house with an obvious new lump in her satchel. Better that she absorb the wish into her body now and leave the wish trap in the car.
She pulled off the side of the road and coasted to a stop on a nameless side street. Taking a deep breath, she flipped open the jar and put her hand inside. The warm, tingly, almost liquid-feeling wish tickled her skin as it slithered into her palm. She took her hand out—and pressed it to her heart.
The reaction was immediate and intense.
“Whoa.” Nadia tried to focus on breathing, but her heart pounded like her Chevy’s engine at full throttle. “It’s mine! It’s friggin’ mine!”
She cackled like a witch. She’d warned Miles about wishing to fly, but now she felt like she could actually sprout wings and soar up into the evening sky.
In the year since Nick’s death, nothing—not her body, her soul—had felt so light. An overwhelming sensation of joy blossomed in her mind, sending her memories whizzing back to the early hours of a Saturday morning with him, tangled in the sheets and around each other. Their bodies, their breath, their ecstasy had never been more perfectly in sync than on that morning, while the sound of sultry jazz had floated in through the open windows like they were part of the music.
Her skin tingled with the remembered touch of his lips and fingertips, her cheeks flushing with the heat that no humid summer could replicate—the bedroom glow that made her feel feverish in the most delicious way.
“I feel you, Nick,” she murmured, throwing the car in gear and hammering her foot down. Two quick turns later and she was barreling toward home. “You were right there, in our bed, and everything was perfect. After I make this wish, I’m going to get you back.”
Now, all she needed was a candle and a match. It would be easiest to spend this wish before she got home, since Basha and Grace would be able to see the wish on her—not literally, but in every flush of joy in Nadia’s cheeks, in the warmth of her glow. And if that wasn’t enough, the telltale warmth of the compass coin in her mom’s possession would tell Grace there was an unused wish under their roof. She had to do it now.
At the first set of traffic lights, she leaned over to check the glove box: old candy wrappers, a service manual, a flashlight, and an ancient bottle of Coke that appeared to be growing its own ecosystem. But no candle.
Basha must’ve done one of her random checks and removed the emergency candle Nadia could’ve sworn she’d put in there. Her mom and grandma liked to police her on the sly, which never failed to cause friction. She wasn’t a child. It was another clear reminder of why she wanted to leave Savannah with Nick—maybe, with some distance, she wouldn’t feel the urge to strangle her family members so often.
She swore under her breath, debating whether or not to run into a store for matches and birthday candles. On one hand, if she walked into the house with the wish, she was more likely to get found out. On the other hand, Nadia wasn’t a heartless monster who didn’t stop to see if her grandmother was on death’s door. Plus, her paranoid brain kept delivering nightmare scenarios where Miles—or a rogue wish hunter—tried to gun for the wish while she was out in public. At least at the house, she’d be protected from any surprise attacks.
And she needed to get her head on straight. How had Miles phrased it? Everything had to be in sync, or it’d come out jumbled and wrong. Maybe with a musical metaphor that she was forgetting. She just needed to slow her ass down and have a long, hard think about how she should word her wish. This could be her only shot. She wouldn’t mess it up by rushing.
The Wishing Tree vetoed any wishes directly related to gaining more wishes, which extended to wishing that you could sense unused wishes without a compass coin or steal them without a wish trap. That was a no-brainer that only rookies tried to swing.
However, the number one principle that all knowledgeable wishers understood was that wishes could only impact others indirectly, which was why you couldn’t wish for all wars to end, or for your sick loved one to be magically cured, or for a particular person to fall in love with you. But you could wish to have incredible negotiation skills, or to have more knowledge than anyone else about lung cancer, or to be so charming that it would inspire people to swoon at your feet. All fair game. Wishes had to affec
t personal skills or circumstances—but it was up to the wisher to bring their desires to fruition.
Trying to brainstorm the best wish wording while weaving through traffic—and with her heart pounding—threatened to be a recipe for disaster. She needed time and space to think without the initial wish rush putting everything on fast-forward.
“Take deep breaths,” she instructed, her voice like a self-help tape. “Focus on the things you can control. Picture the outcome you want, and the steps from where you are now to that end point. Ugh, I’ll be telling myself to imagine a wave crashing on the rocks next.”
The breathing helped. Concentrating on the inhale and the exhale, and the familiarity of the road ahead, she sensed the wish rush ebbing, allowing her mind to clear a bit.
She chewed on her lower lip as she tried to think of the best way to phrase her wish, building a pros and cons list in her head for possible outcomes. It was an old habit. The brainstorming began as a game that she used to play with Kaleena when they were small, when the wishes were more innocent. Now, like silly rhymes about how to remember the planets and how Henry VIII’s six wives had died, that child’s play had followed Nadia into adulthood.
She hung a right, bringing her onto the home stretch, and huffed out a strained breath. She’d have to be quick about it. Get in the house, make sure Basha was okay, race upstairs, find a candle and a match, then brainstorm a wish that would hopefully work.
Straightforward in theory, but in the world of wishes, the floor was lava and everything was guarded by an intricate web of laser beams.
Nadia hurtled through the front door, expecting to find a dramatic scene to rival any soap opera. Instead, her mother was sitting in the den to the side of the kitchen, sipping on a frosted margarita as though she were on her first day of vacation.
“Did I miss the memo to stand down?” Nadia asked.
She hung back against the partition wall, keeping a safe distance in case Grace had the compass coin on her. One touch of that warm wooden surface and her mother would sense the unused wish inside Nadia.
Grace looked up with a casual shrug. “Your babcia insists she’s feeling much better, after I told her you were okay. She stopped shaking and went up to her room, where I’m sure she’s making some tea to calm her nerves.”
Thinking of all the stores she could’ve stopped at to buy a candle and matches, Nadia bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from saying something she’d regret.
“Are you sure, or is she just putting on a brave face?” Nadia cast a sly glance at the kitchen counter, but the compass coin wasn’t there either.
Grace lounged back on the squashy sofa. “Do you think I’d be sitting down here, taking it easy, if I didn’t know it was a false alarm?”
“Good point. Sorry.” Nadia was being unnecessarily snippy, but in fairness, she did have a wishing debt to get rid of.
“Actually, I’ve got a bit of good news for you. It’s why I’m celebrating.” Grace fluffed back her wavy brown hair and jiggled the half-empty margarita glass at Nadia. “Black Hat says the wish still counts as number fifty, even though we didn’t completely deliver it!”
Nadia frowned. “Did he sound like he was in a hospital when he called you?”
“Hmm? No, I don’t think so. There wasn’t any screaming or beeping. Though he did sound like he was talking through the worst stuffy nose of all time.” Grace sipped her drink. “But think about how great that news is, Nadia! Why aren’t you losing your mind right now? You look like you’ve been slapped with a pair of old panties.”
Nadia forced a smile. “I’m just wondering what the catch is. I’ve never known Black Hat or the Wishmaster to be particularly benevolent.”
“Always so cynical,” Grace chided playfully, before patting the seat beside her. “Now, why don’t you grab a drink, come on over here to your mama, and unload your traumatic tale so we can get around to the happy, smiling relief part.”
Her mother hadn’t mentioned the broken wishing box, so either she didn’t know the full extent of the damage, or she was trying not to have her mood spoiled by doom and gloom after the win of keeping their tally at fifty. With so many more wishes to go, even that didn’t feel like much of a victory to Nadia.
“I’m going to jump in the shower first, before my clothes decide to glue themselves to my skin thanks to all the rain and humidity,” Nadia said with an awkward chuckle. “If they stuck a tiny AC unit to every gravestone in Bonaventure, that place would be heaven. But now that I think about it, it might be frowned upon to put fans on dead people . . .”
She knew she was rambling, but she couldn’t stop. After she’d stepped through the house’s invisible membrane, the giddy feeling of the wish in her chest had come back with a vengeance, turning her into a hyperactive mess.
Grace’s eyes narrowed. “Do you need to go to the hospital? You’re weirdly bouncy for someone who almost died.”
“It’s all the adrenaline,” she said, wafting a hand through the air. “Makes the brain go haywire. My clients do this all the time after they’ve experienced trauma. One minute they’re right down in a pit of despair. The next, they’re climbing the walls, jumping around like they’re kids again.”
“Then you should definitely come and sit with me so some of your energy can rub off.” Grace flashed a wink. “I might have a date tonight, and I could use a little extra pep to keep up.”
Nadia pulled a face. “Well, I’ve got a date with the shower, because the only thing that’ll rub off on you is this stench.” She gave her pits a hard sniff to prove the point and escaped upstairs.
She crept along the hallway and paused outside Basha’s door, which was slightly ajar. Through the narrow gap, Nadia could see Basha snoring softly in her antique rocking chair beside the tall windows on the far side of the room, facing the vista of a magnolia tree.
The last of the molten sunset snuck in through the opening in the heavy drapes made of blue velvet, and muted the jeweled tones of Basha’s bedroom. In the daylight, it was a kaleidoscope of clashing colors, rich fabrics, and what Grace affectionately referred to as “a junkyard of useless crap.” But to Nadia, it was a treasure trove of antiques and curios, accumulated from the days when her grandmother had dared to go outside for longer than a couple of minutes.
“Sleep well, and don’t worry about me,” Nadia whispered before darting across the hall to her plain but homey bedroom.
She closed the door behind her and bounded over her bed, then snatched up her laptop and a candle from her bedside table. The purple candle was supposed to smell of “Starlit Skies,” but she had no idea what that meant. Space dust and the inside of an astronaut’s suit, maybe? It had a subtle fruity scent with a hint of musk, and she never had to worry about forgetting to blow it out because Basha’s second wish essentially made the house fireproof.
Nick used to scold her when she’d leave a candle burning, especially if he’d come home still wearing his uniform. “Do I need to show you the videos again? I swear, if you leave another ‘One S’more with Feeling’ burning, I’m banning you from the candle store. And then Mrs. Flaherty will go out of business, and it’ll be sad times all around for everyone.”
Nadia sat cross-legged on the floor beside her bedside table and opened her laptop. In this position, if anyone came in, she’d have a few extra seconds to skim the candle under the bed like a hockey puck and act like she was casually clacking away on her keyboard.
“Shit, I really am a teenager again,” she muttered, setting the candle on the varnished floorboards in front of her as if she were at a very sad, very lonely birthday party.
For most people, blowing out candles was usually just a nice way to get some cake and a fleeting thrill. But the birthday candle tradition had started when wishing folk wanted to celebrate attaining a wish by sharing that happiness with their friends and family. After she made this wish, Nadia hoped she’d have more cause for celebration.
As she brought the head of the lighter to
the candle wick and rolled her thumb over the sparking mechanism, her heart thudded in her chest so loud she almost feared Basha would hear. A meager wisp of smoke appeared. Undeterred, she rolled the metal wheel again and again, willing it to ignite.
At last, a flame appeared, and she hurried to touch it to the wick. It caught immediately, blooming into that elongated teardrop of glowing comfort.
“I wish I had an easier way to pay off my debt to the Wishmaster,” she said aloud, her heart in her mouth.
It sounded promising. If she’d tried to wish the debt away in one go, it would be more likely to get bent out of shape by the Wishing Tree. This way, she wasn’t asking for too much at once: assistance instead of a cure-all.
The flame flickered, but as she bent her head to blow it out, the candle snuffed itself out with an unsettling whoosh. No smoke, no residual scent, as if all the air had been sucked from the room. Puzzled, she moved her hand all around her, trying to feel for a draft.
“Did I do it?” She paused, but the wish rush still warmed her chest. “Guess not.”
With determination, Nadia rolled the sparking mechanism and lit the wick a second time. She took a deep breath and repeated the wish, holding the air in her lungs until she was ready to blow the flame out. However, as she pursed her lips, the candle snuffed out again in that strange, smokeless snap. This time, it came with an added warning: a slight shock of pain in her chest, like static electricity.
She eyed the candle and pressed a hand to her heart. Maybe the wish wasn’t potent enough because Miles had saved only her life, rather than evacuating a whole town before an earthquake or something. Perhaps the house itself could sense she was trying to go against Basha’s edicts. Or maybe the Wishing Tree simply disliked the wish she was trying to make. But why? What was so off-limits about this particular wish? Was it because the Wishing Tree interpreted it as wishing for more wishes, like her mom had said?
A third try seemed like the quickest way to figure out the problem, though the flame extinguishing itself felt a lot like the equivalent of walking down a gloomy forest path littered with signs saying “GO BACK! DANGER AHEAD! NO, REALLY, TAKE ANOTHER STEP AT YOUR PERIL!”
