Wish Hunter (The Savannah River Series Book 1)

by Hero Bowen

  Nadia scoffed. “You think I’m going to tell you? Ha. You figure it out. If you don’t, the wish stays with me.”

  He smiled furtively. “You think you’re clever, huh? I’m going to the Wishmaster. Someone will tell me how to make it work, and you can get whatever’s coming to you.” He started to pull open the door as Nadia slowed for a stoplight.

  Panicking, she floored the gas pedal and ripped through the red light. She swerved to avoid someone about to make a turn, and swiped a utility pole, crunching his door shut.

  “You could’ve killed me!” Miles shouted, his eyes wide.

  Nadia’s attention was fixed on the rearview to check for cop cars, but the only thing behind her was a blue BMW. She was already going to have a hell of a time explaining the damage to the car to her mom, and cops would only make things worse.

  “Glad you’re getting the picture,” she replied more casually than her racing heart suggested. “So, what do you say we strike that deal before any other poles come along?”

  He glowered at her. “I wish this Pole hadn’t come along.”

  “Ah, you’re a funny guy. I wouldn’t have known.” She half smirked.

  Miles looked down at his wishing jar. “I’m not making that deal with you, not when you’re guaranteed to win. You think I’m stupid enough to get tricked twice?” He put on a fake smile. “Come on, rich musician like me—there’s got to be something else you’d take for my wish so we never have to see each other again. What would someone like you want, huh?”

  “I won’t know until you suggest it,” she replied, hoping her vagueness would buy her more time.

  His shoulders slumped. “With a house like that, you don’t need property or money. Judging by your clothes and what you said about mine, you don’t care about designer gear. You’ve got some janky chain around your neck, so you clearly aren’t into jewelry either.”

  That one hurt.

  She was about to reply, to make him think he had a chance of buying his wish back while she worked a way out of her dilemma, when her phone blared in her pocket. With one hand on the wheel, she took it out and slotted it into the cupholder. On the screen, the caller ID read “Babcia.” Her heart nearly stopped. Her grandmother never called unless it was to be the bearer of bad news.

  Hands shaking, Nadia ignored it and breathed a sigh of relief when the ringing stopped. But Basha called right back.

  “Shouldn’t you pick that up? Seems important,” Miles said. “Maybe she knows, or maybe she’s in trouble. Might be your fault. Trouble seems to follow you.”

  Nadia eyed the screen and let it ring off for a third time. What if Basha had learned of the broken wishing box and the stolen wish? Or what if she was sick again?

  Miles tutted. “Damn, you are cold.”

  Stung by his words, she glanced at the blackened phone screen. He was right. If she didn’t check in on Basha and something awful had happened, she’d never forgive herself.

  She cursed under her breath as the phone buzzed again, then answered.

  “Is everything all right?” Nadia asked, wedging the phone between her ear and her shoulder, swerving as she did so.

  “I don’t know which I regret more—saving your life or getting in this car with you. Again,” Miles muttered.

  Basha’s croaky voice echoed through the phone. “Basha knows,” she rasped, setting Nadia’s nerves on edge. “You thought you get away with it. You stole wish, and you thought you could keep it for yourself.”

  Basha’s words chilled her with the force of a Polish winter, and Nadia wondered if it might just be easier to crash the car into the nearest wall. Nothing could be worse than her grandmother’s fury.

  Chapter Eleven

  Nadia slammed on the brakes and came to a dead halt in the middle of the road. A bleary-eyed partygoer stumbled off the sidewalk, banging on the hood as if she’d almost hit him. He bared his teeth at them like a rabid dog before lumbering off.

  Miles braced against the dash. “Ground control to Major Kaminski! Are you trying to get yourself a night in a cell?”

  Nadia took a rattling breath and pressed the phone closer to her ear again. “I’m sorry, Babcia. I didn’t hear what you said—I was driving.”

  “I know you heard Basha,” her grandmother replied in a tone so icy it could’ve brought on a rare Savannah snowstorm. “Make stop at church down the road.”

  Nadia’s head twisted around. “How did you . . .” She trailed off. There was no way Basha could be watching her. Not unless she could see through buildings.

  “Make stop,” Basha repeated. “This I command.”

  Nadia peered through the fuzz of the headlights and spotted the imposing, grayish twin spires that wouldn’t have looked amiss in a gothic fairytale. Her grandmother must’ve guessed her general location, since she’d only left the house about five minutes ago.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Nadia saw Miles reach for the door handle, and she stomped the gas. He wasn’t getting away just because she was distracted. She pulled into the church parking lot, its stark-white façade and gold-bordered doorways shining even in the lamplight. She did a doughnut in the parking lot, trying to split the difference between driving fast enough to keep Miles in the car and making Basha think she really had stopped. Thankfully, the lot was empty, since evening had fallen and Savannah’s visitors were more interested in sampling the bars than the holy water.

  “Babcia, I was going to tell you about the wish. I just wanted to have some time to think first, and I didn’t want to make you feel worse.”

  Really, Nadia wanted to scream that they’d left her with no other choice in finding some faster way to get rid of the debt. But when Basha was pissed, nothing made her explode faster than a raised voice or an accusation.

  “I wasn’t being deceitful,” Nadia continued. “It happened by chance, and I wanted to help us with the debt—”

  “You make no lie to me! You use wish for your own selfish needs. You are ungrateful, wretched dziecko! Are you in church parking lot? If is no, you will pray for hiding place in this world where I never find you.”

  Nadia’s mind swirled. She couldn’t convince Basha that she’d had good intentions—not until Basha calmed down, at least. But how did her grandmother find out about the wish? It made no sense. Did she have a second compass coin that Nadia didn’t know about, which had warmed in the presence of the unused wish? If so, why wait to call Nadia out on that fact until after she had left the house? Had she seen Nadia trying to get the matches from the drawer while pretending to be asleep, but only now put two and two together?

  She glanced at Miles, who was glaring at her as she started the second doughnut in the parking lot. It didn’t matter how her grandmother had figured it out—the only question was what happened next. Basha had always made one thing as clear as crystal: she’d disown anyone who disobeyed her. And Nadia didn’t have enough people left in her life to risk that.

  I don’t want that. Never that. Her family had saved her life; she wouldn’t even be here, having this argument, without them. There’d have been no years of marriage to Nick, no brief exhale of utter joy amidst all the years she’d felt like she was holding her breath.

  Guilt threatened to drown her.

  Miles looked like he was debating about rolling out of the car, but he stayed put. “You gonna play it like that, then?” he mumbled, seemingly more to himself than her. “Fine. Maybe I’ll stay right here until I get my wish back.”

  Nadia turned toward the driver’s side door for some attempt at privacy. “I’m at the church, Babcia, but you need to listen to me. I—”

  “Get out of car,” Basha interjected, sounding breathless. “Go to church doors and apologize for betraying rodzina like this, after all we give you. Your whole life . . . so much we give, and you do such awful thing. Put us all in danger.”

  Basha may not have had a direct phone line to God, but the way she would pray by her bedside on tired knees and bent arthritic back without com
plaint undoubtedly commanded His attention. Her grandmother couldn’t attend church anymore because of her house-protection duties, but with all the Catholic paraphernalia in her room, it might have been considered its own sanctuary—a metaphysical one to match the real one of the wish-enhanced house.

  Nadia craned her neck to look up at the church through the windshield. “Okay, okay, I’m going. I’ll beg forgiveness.”

  Maybe once she did what Basha asked, her grandmother would stop complaining long enough for Nadia to explain why she’d stolen the wish in the first place.

  With a sigh, Nadia opened the door and got out, the phone still pressed to her ear. Miles’s door squeaked as he followed her and headed up the sloping gray steps to the grand wooden doors, though he stopped halfway up and leaned against the railing. He tossed the wishing jar from hand to hand as if he, too, was trying to figure out his next move on the chessboard.

  “I’m in front of the doors now,” Nadia said, tilting her head up. She soon brought her gaze back down to ground level, the sheer size of the church giving her vertigo. “I don’t think I can go inside. You want me to ask for God’s forgiveness out here or what?”

  “You no get flippant with me, dziecko,” the voice on the other end of the line snapped. “Now, you tell Basha, did you steal this wish you hide from your family from the handsome guitarist?”

  At this stage, Nadia saw no point in lying. “Yeah, I did. But it wasn’t the wish I was selling to Black Hat, so you don’t need to worry about it affecting our tally. That’s what I’ve been trying to say.” She glanced at Miles to see his reaction, but he just kept tossing his jar. “He—Miles—saved me from a bullet, so it was a different wish I stole from him. One that I created, in a roundabout kind of way, so it sort of belonged to me too. I’m just—”

  The happy wish buzz washed away like footprints in sand. Nadia stopped short, the memory of their earlier conversation unspooling in her mind. Miles had never told Basha what instrument he played. Nadia herself only knew because of his chatter about “Memories of the Alhambra.”

  The hairs electrified up the back of her neck. “Who is this?” she whispered.

  The call went dead.

  Nadia spun around, trying to pick out any strange figures or suspicious cars driving past that might contain the spy. But it was nighttime on a Saturday in Savannah: everyone looked strange and suspicious.

  Someone must’ve found a way to trick her. Spoofing a phone number was probably easy enough for anyone with a little technical know-how. But none of Kaleena’s cronies that Nadia knew could sound exactly like her grandmother, “dzieckos” and all. Regardless, she had to get away from the church. She’d been led down the garden path, and here she was, stopping to smell the roses. She needed to get moving. Now.

  Before she could form the thought to tell Miles to run, a tall woman with a slicked shock of blonde hair sprinted around the corner of the church. Nadia’s hands raised automatically, her feet spreading as she sank into her hips, going instinctively into resting attack mode. It was the first thing she’d learned during her Krav Maga classes in college.

  But the woman never touched her. Instead, the Amazonian vaulted over the railing at the top of the church steps, landed like a gymnast on the grass, and took off running away at full tilt. In the dim light, Nadia glimpsed a wooden locket dangling from the woman’s hand.

  Her heart sank. She knew exactly what she was dealing with: a wish trap.

  “No, no, no, no,” she said under her breath as understanding flushed through her. She’d revealed her secret about Miles saving her life and her stealing his wish, and that was plenty big enough for this hunter to steal the wish right out of her chest. No wonder the buzz had evaporated.

  “Miles!” Nadia shouted. “She’s stolen the wish!”

  Miles jolted into gear. “The NBA all-star?”

  “Who else?” she shot back as she leaped down the church steps and gave chase.

  The vertically blessed thief hurtled toward a waiting car parked just up the street. The gleaming blue BMW was distinct enough to jog Nadia’s startled brain—it was the same car that had almost followed them through the stoplight. She’d been tailed the whole time, but she’d been so distracted by Miles that she hadn’t even realized it.

  Cursing, Nadia sprinted toward the car. If she threw herself on the hood, would the thief stop, or just run her over?

  From the right, a blur streaked past and covered the sidewalk in seconds, reaching the car before Nadia did. Just as the tall woman opened the driver’s door, Miles slammed it shut again.

  “Nuh-uh.” He shook his head vehemently. “My wish isn’t getting stolen twice in one evening.”

  The blonde woman stepped back—she didn’t seem to want to mess with Miles. Nadia ducked down beside the BMW’s rear bumper and whipped out the palm-sized folding knife in her jean pocket. She jabbed the blade into the back tires and smiled at the satisfying hiss as the rear quarter of the car sagged.

  “Nadia Kaminski! Call off guard dog before I really lose temper!” the thief shouted in Basha’s voice, confirming Nadia’s suspicions—a wish had been used to allow this woman to mimic others’ voices. Hell, the woman could probably impersonate any voice and had somehow managed to study Basha’s vocal idiosyncrasies, right down to the chilling intonation.

  Nadia popped up from behind the car. “How about you stop using my grandma’s voice, then we can talk. You’re not fit to have it come out of your mouth.”

  “Is not very friendly,” the woman replied mockingly in Basha’s voice before flashing a pristine smile, her eyes flicking between the two of them.

  With a quick pivot, the woman charged at Miles, trying to wrestle him to the ground. Instead, he pushed her off him and sent her stumbling a few steps farther down the road.

  Nadia slipped close to Miles, pulling up short a couple of paces from the thief. She raised her knife.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed as the blade gleamed in the streetlight. “You want fight? Is bad idea.”

  From the waistline of a pair of black cargo pants, the thief whipped out a collapsing baton. It clacked to its full length, the woman’s knuckles whitening as she gripped the handle. This would certainly make things more interesting, but Nadia’s classes had prepared her for weapons like these.

  The thief swung clumsily at Nadia, who ducked under the baton’s arc. Nadia saw an opening and slashed at the woman—more as a warning than anything else, but a bright-red cut appeared across the woman’s cheek as she made contact. Every synapse in Nadia’s brain was firing, every muscle tensing, and every nerve electric. The last thing she’d expected tonight was a knife fight. Despite everything, her lips curled into a wild grin.

  The thief jerked back. “Don’t be cocky, dziecko. First blood is no matter. Is only last that matters.”

  Why did this woman keep using Basha’s voice? Maybe she was just trying to throw Nadia off—or maybe she worried Nadia would recognize her real voice if she used it.

  The woman swung again, and Nadia slashed at her but realized too late that the swing was a feint. Nadia’s blade sliced through air, and the woman brought the baton down hard on Nadia’s hand. The force of the blow set her hand ablaze in pain and sent the knife clattering to the ground. Before Nadia could bend to retrieve it, the woman was on her again, delivering a blow to her shoulder that stung like a snakebite. The next strike was low, catching her just behind the left knee, sending her to the ground, tears of pain welling in her eyes.

  “Hey!” Miles shouted as the woman advanced on him.

  From the ground, Nadia watched him swing a haymaker at her, but the woman hit him with a body blow against his rib cage. He cried out and sank to his knees on the sidewalk next to Nadia, right hand on his possibly cracked ribs. He put his left hand on the concrete to keep from falling forward as he winced and moaned.

  The thief towered above him and stepped on his outstretched left hand, tapping the baton menacingly on his wrist. “You try again, I break
your fingers,” she warned. “No more guitar for you, Miles Hunter.”

  In desperation, Nadia reached for her knife just beside the woman’s left shoe. As Nadia’s hand clenched around it, a shadow of movement darted above her, then—

  A lightning bolt flashed across her eyes, and the world stuttered. She blinked and found herself on her side, eyes unable to focus. There were two thieves, two rock stars, two cars, two little tufts of weeds sticking out from cracks in the sidewalk.

  “I thank for this.” The thief bent over Nadia and patted her down. “Call it payment for your mother’s treasonous calls to Atlanta.”

  It was only when she heard the jangle of her own car keys—a tangled mass of metal, where the kitschy, gift shop keyrings of famous monuments were crammed together—that Nadia realized what else was going on. The bitch was stealing Nick’s Chevy.

  Miles yelled something she couldn’t make out. She couldn’t see him, but she heard the pounding of running feet and muffled, incomprehensible shouts that made her feel as though she were underwater. Then there was the squeal of tires and the thud of something against metal. A fleshy thud.

  Chapter Twelve

  With the sharp, pounding pain in her head, Nadia’s surroundings wafted in and out of focus. She blinked as a shape appeared above her.

  “Are you . . . a ghost? Did you die already?” she asked.

  “You’re not that lucky.” Miles extended a hand to her. “See? I’m solid. No ghosts here.”

  She reached out hesitantly. “Huh. Solid.” She paused. “And sweaty. So sweaty.”

  “Funny way of saying thanks. You want me to leave you there or what?” Miles grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet, then dragged her arm around his shoulder to prop her up against the blue BMW.

  Nadia side-eyed him, somewhat touched by the gesture. He could’ve left her there at any moment and saved himself from the chaos.