Jax went for Luka like a racehorse out of the gate, arms locking around his waist as he drove him down onto the Director’s carpet. He got in one satisfying punch before he was blasted backward into the wall. When he hit, his breath whooshed out of him.
Wiping away a bead of blood that dripped from a cut near his eye, Luka eyed Jax with a pained expression. “She’s dead?”
Pain at his heart, gripping his heart, his lungs, everything in a vise. “You were supposed to be watching her.” He threw out his hand and let loose the fireball he’d hidden in his palm.
Before Luka could do a thing, the fire iced into a frozen ball. It thunked to the carpet. Jax was launched into the air by an invisible force, slamming into the wall, suspended against it. His feet kicked without hope of getting free. He glared at the Director.
Clare returned her hand to her side. Her face was the perfect blank mask as she said, “Explain.”
Luka shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, ignoring her. “I was watching her,” he bit out. “But I’m not your lapdog and it’s obvious your gang member wasn’t coming after her—especially since WFY relinquished her claim to a wish.”
No, he needed someone to blame, needed a target. Like Charlie, if he couldn’t fight something, what was there left to do?
He couldn’t say good-bye.
“Any reason why she was in Massachusetts, Jax?” Clare stared at him.
“What the hell does it matter?” Jax slashed out with his feet, knocking his head back against the wall. “She’s dying.”
“Dying?” Luka’s head shot up like a dog that had just scented something. “She isn’t dead yet?”
Bleakness washed over Jax’s soul as he finally gave in. “She might as well be.”
Clare glanced away, and the invisible hands holding him dropped. Jax slid to the floor, thumping to the ground. He didn’t move.
“She thinks Genies, their wishes, are corrupt.” He stared at the carpet. “She was on her way back from seeing a woman whose life was destroyed by a Genie. Jared.”
“Jared.” Clare’s voice was arctic. Jax glanced up just as she angled her head toward Luka. “I thought we’d heard from the last of his victims ten years ago.”
“What?” Jax was slowly becoming encased by numbing cotton wool, losing the will to care.
Luka pierced him with a look. “WFY knows about Jared. He did his ‘deals’ for years before his assistant finally came forward. Didn’t you ever wonder why he suddenly resigned? Why he was pensioned off without ceremony?”
“We compensated all of his victims, wiped the files, but there’s obviously been a leak if Ms. Donahue found out.” Clare walked around her desk and made a note on her pad of paper. “I’ll have Gregor see to it.”
Jax kept the fact that he’d stolen files to himself. “So it was all for nothing. She pushed herself to prove to me that Genies aren’t completely good, and killed herself trying.”
“Nobody’s completely good, Jax.” Luka ran a hand across his face. His stubble washed away like dirt under a shimmer of magic. “Why do you think we have an internal investigations department? When you have power, you have to know where to draw the line.”
Jax stared dully at his Handler. He didn’t really care. “Why did you send me away from her?”
“Your feelings for her were affecting your job. We had to do something to calm you down.”
“I don’t . . .” He inhaled. “I don’t even care anymore.”
“Jax, listen to me.” Luka stepped forward, one hand half-raised. “Charlie isn’t dead yet?”
“Why do you keep asking?” Jax’s blood simmered again, thirsty for a fight. “Do you enjoy rubbing salt into the wound? Not everything’s a joke, Luc.”
“I’m not . . . Never mind.” Luka shook his head. His eyes gleamed silver. “If she’s not dead, there’s hope.”
“I need a miracle.” Jax pressed his lips together. He didn’t know what to do, what to be. He just wanted to wake from this nightmare. His heart punctured, oozing blood as the image of Charlie in the hospital bed floated across his mind in slow, detailed motion.
“It’s a shame you already used your own wish from the Partners.” When Jax glared at him, Luka lifted a shoulder. He perched on the arm of the white couch, hands resting between his legs. “I’m just saying, their magic is the strongest in the world. And a pure wish, a selfless wish, could have tremendous power.”
Jax blinked at him. An idea rose in his mind, sharp in its ability to drag hope across his heart. His stomach twisted. If this didn’t work . . .
It wasn’t as though Charlie would be worse off if it didn’t.
Jax pulled his eyes away from the floor and stared back at Luka. His voice was tense with pain as he said, “If she dies, I quit.”
He flashed out.
* * *
“Damn it.” Luka swore. His gut remained in knots from Jax’s torn-open expression. He’d never seen somebody look so devastated. “Just when I think there’s nobody left, another damn victim pops up like a weasel.”
“Luka.”
“I mean, how far did the guy get? His victims are still cropping up—you’d think he wouldn’t be able to get to that many people. Corrupting that many wishes.”
“Luka.”
“That man died, Clare. After he got his dream car. And Jared enjoyed it.” Luka bared his teeth, manifesting a glass of whiskey. He tossed it back. “The jewelry heist? Pure luck she didn’t get shot. The Genie was a sadist, and we let him have his pick of prey. Thank God we’ve never had one like him over here. That we know of,” he added darkly.
“Handler Luka.” Clare’s tone was warning.
“You know Jax stole the files, right? I’ll have him put them back before the Partners find out and reprimand him.” He rubbed his jaw. “Can’t believe he stole files for her. Must be love.”
Clare rapped her knuckles on the desk. “Luc.”
“Blondie?” His eyebrows rose in question.
“I know what you’re doing.”
Luka sighed and combed a hand through his hair. He rubbed his eyebrow. “It’s his only chance, Clare.”
“They won’t thank you for it.”
“Let me handle them.” Luka folded his arms across his chest. “Jax deserves to be happy.”
She descended into her chair and folded her hands together. “You sound like a sloppy fool.”
“It’s just good business. A happy employee is a productive employee.”
Her eyebrows rose, but she kept her thoughts on the matter to herself. With one caveat. “What were you saying about Jared’s corrupted wishes, Handler?”
His smile was bland. “Nothing, Director. We know nothing.”
* * *
Jax ended the call to Kate as Lisette hurried over to him in her heels. The click-clack pounded in his head as he looked at her in question. “Well?”
“It’s a go. The producer thinks it’ll bring in a huge crowd.”
“It had better. It’s my only shot.”
Lisette’s face crumpled in sympathy, and she ran a hand down Jax’s arm. He was still in the suit he’d worn to the interview however many hours ago. His system was screwed up from travel, his mouth was dry, his heart was on the brink of bursting, and sickness churned in his stomach from hope.
“How is she?” Lisette tilted her head, looking as though she actually gave a damn.
“Alive.” Jax looked around as the audience began to pour in. His throat burned. “How long till showtime?”
“Twenty minutes.” At his look, she pressed her lips together. “It’s the shortest time we can get rolling in.” And considering the network was doing him a favor by throwing a special show together at the last minute, a damn miracle.
Jax ignored the curious glances of the audience and ran a shaking hand down his face. “Fine.” He dropped onto the couch, waving away the clucking makeup artist. Jax knew he must look like a bum. His eyes when he’d last checked were red with exhaustion and fear, his face gaunt, his lips chapped, and his hair was standing on end from the amount of times he’d shoved a hand through it. He didn’t give a shit. All he wanted was to get this plan rolling.
His leg jiggled as he pressed a hand to his burning eyes.
Kate had said Charlie was holding on. She’d said she thought Charlie was holding on to say good-bye to him. Tears had crowded her voice.
Never, Jax vowed. He would never stop fighting. And he prayed neither would Charlie.
Twenty minutes later, he swallowed as Lisette faced the camera. Her hair was perfectly coiled into a bun, her makeup as subdued as her expression as she began to talk. “Good evening. It’s a sad topic we open this special broadcast with tonight. You may have heard that Charlie Donahue, Jax Michaels’s girlfriend, crashed her car on the way back from visiting friends this morning. As we speak, she’s holding on to life with the thinnest of threads.” Lisette paused. For once, the atmosphere in the studio was grim, rippling with undertones of death. Jax stared at everybody in the audience, his hands gripping together so tightly his knuckles split again. Blood smeared his skin.
“Jax is here with us tonight.” She turned to him. “Jax?”
“Thank you, Lisette.” His voice was rough and quiet as he stood and walked with grim determination to the exact center of the stage. Lights beamed down on him as he shoved his hands in his pockets. Silence thrummed with tension as he wet his lips.
“I know none of you know Charlie. I know that everybody at any given time has lost or is losing somebody that they love. I know that.” Jax let his eyes sweep over every face that he could see before he settled on the camera’s steady light. “I love Charlie more than my own life. She’s the finer half of my soul, the confidante, the lover. My lover.” He swallowed. “I have always felt something missing from my life, but never knew what until Charlie turned me down. Without her . . .” His throat closed until he almost couldn’t breathe. “Without her, life is a meaningless watercolor faded to gray.”
The audience murmured, someone quietly crying in the back.
“I’ve come to ask, to plead, to beg the Partners of WFY to grant her her life back.” Jax scrubbed his hands over his face. “It’s against the rules of the contract, against anything they’ve ever done before. But I am begging: please. Take from me, restore the balance however you can. But I beg you.” He stared through the camera at the Partners, wherever they might be. “I wish for Charlie to have her life back.”
There was no sound as he spun and walked off the stage.