Chapter Club: The Shadowrunner Chapter 35
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The Shadowrunner
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Last Time
Luke is the chief police officer in a small Arizona town called Abeja
His daughter, Lucy, has magical abilities that she is keeping secret from her parents.
A Texan named Silvia Montes was murdered not far from Luke’s house. Lucy both met Silvia prior to her murder and saw the murderer on the night of the crime. She has come to call the murderer a dragon
The situation is being monitored by Abigail Morrison, an agent of a shadowy government organization
Lucy discovered an old notebook buried behind her school with information about the dragon. Luke and Jenni read the book and discovered that the dragon is a man wielding the power of the avatar of hunger
That night, the dragon attacked the Alden’s home, killing Jenni before Lucy could drive it away
Lucy was in the bathroom of a building Dad had called a “funeral home.” She didn’t know why it was called that. No one lived here. The nice woman she had met just worked here. And everyone else? They were just visiting until they went to the cemetery.
The fluorescent bulbs hummed above her, emitting a bluish light on the bathroom. There were two brown stalls behind her, and the minuscule tiles beneath her feet were white speckled with black. She had been staring into the mirror over the single porcelain sink, but her gaze had sunk to her distorted reflection in the faucet.
She had cried on the drive over. She had cried more times than she could count for the last four days. She had cried when both sets of grandparents had arrived. She had cried when her aunts and uncles and cousins had arrived. She had cried when her parents’ friends had arrived. She had cried herself to sleep.
She was still crying, but it was soft. Not the hard, red sobbing that had taken her over when Mom stopped breathing. Despite all of Grandma Alden’s hard work curling her hair that afternoon, she knew her puffy eyes made her look ugly.
The door creaked open and Dad’s voice came through the door.
“Lucy? Are you in here?”
She hadn’t spoken in four days. Whenever she opened her mouth she felt as if a giant vacuum inside her was sucking all the air out of the room. When she ate, she only opened her mouth for the shortest amount of time possible, trying to conserve what she could of the solidness inside.
Dad’s vision had recovered some during the last couple of days. That was good. He said that he could see shapes and was starting to see more colors. He probably saw her, because he pushed the door the rest of the way open.
He had cried too, but only once in front of her. It had been after Mom stopped breathing. They had cried and cried, lying like two ribbons over Mom’s body until the police arrived. Some neighbors had heard the gunshots.
She knew he had cried more than that. She heard him through his bedroom door and saw his own puffy, red eyes just as frequently as she saw her own. But he was trying to keep her from seeing him cry.
Dad knelt down beside her picked her up. “Do you want to go outside?”
She nodded and the two of them went out the funeral home’s front door to the concrete steps just outside. There were flower bushes that had lost all their leaves. The parking lot was full, and the air was filled with the sound of cars on the busy road behind the building.
Mom’s ghost lights were in her room, bottled in old canning jars she had taken from the pantry. She knew what colors they were now: green, gold, and white. She had touched each of them too. They were all memories. The green light was of a camping trip Mom had taken with Grandpa when she was Lucy’s age and she had caught her first fish. The white was when she got her wedding dress.
The gold was of Lucy when she was first born.
Dad hadn’t touched them yet. He hadn’t asked her where they were either. He didn’t even mention them when the paramedics arrived. She had seen the bullet hole, just over Mom’s left hip. She knew it hadn’t been an accident. Maybe Mom had been afraid of turning into something like Owen, and made sure that she didn’t.
Dad had asked her if Lucy blamed him. She had cried in response, and she hadn’t been able to stop for a long time. She didn’t blame him, but she knew that he blamed himself.
She blamed herself too. She hadn’t been able to save Mom. Lucy had left her and gone to save Dad. Nightmares had reminded her of that more times than she could count. And when those images became familiar, she had started imagining what would have happened if she hadn’t. Then Dad would be in that coffin and Mom would be here with her. No matter what she had done, she would have lost one of them.
She wondered if she would have chosen differently had she known the choice would have such dire consequences. The thought was too large for her to think about for long. She could have gotten lost in it.
Lucy wondered what Dad would say to her. He had said so many things, as if he could fill up the void inside her by pouring words into it. He had told her it wasn’t her fault. He had said that at least twice every day. She couldn’t look at him when he said it.
From his spot leaning on the railing next to the steps, Dad asked. “Lucy, do you know what happens next?”
Lucy nodded. She had seen it in TV shows and movies. After today there would be a funeral. They would close the shiny wooden box Mom was in and they would lower it into the ground. And that would be it. She would never see Mom again.
Walking back over to her dad, Lucy grabbed his hand.
“I want to go see Mom.”
He nodded and the two of them walked back inside.
On the morning of the funeral, Luke awoke to find that his vision had sharpened a bit more in the night. He rose and went to the bedroom, uncomfortable with the sensation of sleeping in that bed by himself. There had been many times over the past years where either he or Jenni had been out working while the other slept. But he had always known that she would come back. Not anymore.
He flipped on the light in the closet, and was surprised to find that he could make out the colors of Jenni’s clothes. They had taken on a holy aura over the past four days and he hadn’t dared to touch them. There was some primitive part of him that feared something would kill him if he touched those sacred clothes. As much as he didn’t want to live without Jenni, he wanted Lucy to have a father more.
He put on his navy-colored dress uniform. After waking and dressing Lucy, he coaxed her to eat a small meal before his parents came to drive to the funeral home. When they got there, Luke entered the room where the coffin was sitting. It was finished with walnut. He, Lucy, and Jenni’s parents had picked it to honor the walnut tree next to the house where she had grown up.
Luke hadn’t been able to see her well. He had anguished at the thought of his last glimpse of her being the tired woman he had left to go back to work.
As he stared at the rose-colored figure in the casket, something clicked. Maybe something in his brain had figured out how to make sense of light again. Maybe his eyes finished rebuilding their ruined architecture. Whatever it was, Jenni’s face, serene and beautiful, emerged from the fog and he saw her one more time.
After the funeral, and after all the relatives had gone home, Luke found himself sitting in the front room, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. Lucy had gone back to her room, leaving him alone with his thoughts and his grief.
He had replayed the scene over and over in his head, berating himself for leaving her and trying to lure the shadow away. If he had just stood by her, maybe Lucy’s light would have been able to protect both of them.
Lucy.
She had been the one to send them away after all the good he could do. Her power had dwarfed anything he could expect from a pistol. But it hadn’t been enough to save her mom.
He grimaced. That was his fault too. If he had been more open to the idea of letting her learn about her power, she might have been able to defend herself, defend Jenni.
But how would she have done it, he wondered. The only one who knew anything about hunting shadowrunners was dead. All that was left was the book and the journal.
Luke rose and walked to the kitchen where a cardboard box was sitting on the counter. He had asked Muna to bring him some things from the office in an effort to distract him. It hadn’t worked.
Pressed against the side of the box was the journal. He extracted it from the rest of the items and flipped to the entry where Silvia had first mentioned Lucy and continued reading.
I asked Pejito if the girl had been touched by the shard. While I probably could have guessed, I wanted to check. Sure enough, she’s been touched by the Luminescence. Too bad I don’t have an oracle around here. I would love to ask if the shadow runner will attack her. I settled on asking Pejito if he can sense her. While I couldn’t, I’m not sure what kind of shadowrunner we’re dealing with here. Pejito confirmed that she wasn’t a target, but that information has an expiration date. She won’t be invisible forever.
Her fears had come true. Luke was sure that the shadowrunner that had attacked them was the same that had killed Silvia.
His blood boiled. Before, he had wanted to see justice done for the woman he had never known, murdered on the streets of his city. Now, he wanted vengeance.
Even if I get the runner before he notices her, leaving her to her own devices won’t be an option. If she’s been touched, then something will happen that will scare her. Maybe another runner. Maybe she’ll hurt something. Either way, she’ll need someone to guide her.
Pejito says I would make a great teacher. I’m not so sure.
Luke frowned. Had she been planning to arrive on their doorstep and become some kind of tutor for Lucy? Or had she thought she would abduct her, convince her that they were going on a fun adventure full of magic? Just how had she thought she was going to teach her?
But she hadn’t been able to. The shadowrunner had made sure of that.
Luke’s heart stilled. If that monster had been able to kill someone who actually understood how it all worked, how could he expect Lucy to succeed where she had failed? He had every confidence in her, but believing she could do well in school was not the same as beating a murder at his own game.
He swallowed. If there had been two of them, maybe they could have stopped the runner before the situation had spiraled out of control. Maybe they wouldn’t be dealing with the runner and Morrison.
Luke closed the journal and set it on the couch. He blamed himself for leaving Jenni. He had blamed himself for trying too hard to shelter Lucy. If something didn’t change, who knew who else would end up dead?
He walked up the stairs to Lucy’s room and knocked. Nudging the door open, he found her kneeling on the shelf in front of the window. The glass was still covered in packaging from the workers who had replaced what the monster had broken.
“I’ve been thinking about something, Lucy,” he said as he sat down next to her. She didn’t look at him, so he continued. “You have a very special talent, and I haven’t been very good at helping you develop it.”
“I don’t want to use my ghost light any more,” Lucy replied, continuing to stare out the window.
Relief and fear ran through him like twin streams of water and magma. Their collision left him disoriented, unsure of which feeling he should embrace.
“Why not?”
“The dragon was going to take one of you. I don’t want to choose like that again.”
Luke found that he couldn’t breathe. He hadn’t realized that was how she had interpreted the attack, didn’t know that she felt like she had had to choose which parent to save and which parent to let die.
He didn’t know what he could say to that. What other nine-year-old had felt what she had? Certainly none of her friends at school. Hell, he doubted any of her teachers had felt it either.
“I’ve had to make choices like you had to,” he said. Lucy turned to look at him. “A year or two ago, there was a man who started shooting people in his apartment complex. He kept people in his room and threatened to kill them if we did anything to him. I had to choose if I was going to shoot him, or let him shoot other people.”
“You had to choose between a bad person and good people,” Lucy replied. “I had to choose between two good people.”
“I know, sweetie. I know. You had to make a decision that no one should have to, especially a little girl.” He thought for a moment, wondering if he had the strength to say what he was about to say. He didn’t want her to bear this guilt. He wanted her to blame him just as much as he blamed himself. But if their roles had been flipped, he didn’t think he would have started thinking that way very quickly. And he didn’t know when the shadowrunner would strike next. “But if you hadn’t made that choice, and if you hadn’t had the special power to make that choice, we would all be gone.”
Lucy’s gaze dropped and then she turned back to the window. Luke waited, hoping that he had made the right decision.
“You want me to learn how to use my ghost light better,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I know how I can do it.”
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