Chapter Club: The Shadowrunner Chapter 13
Happy first Friday of the new year! I hope the holidays were restful and enjoyable for you. I’m excited to bring you another excerpt from The Shadowrunner.
Want to start from the beginning? You can find Chapter 1 here!
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 the night of the crime. She has come to call the murderer a dragon
Lucy’s mom, Jenni, knows that Lucy met Silvia and that the two were able to see Lucy’s “imaginary friend” a wisp of light that made Lucy laugh when she touched it
Lucy was surprised to find her mom waiting for her outside of school again. The rest of the kids were running to the bus, their laughter drifting up in the golden afternoon sunlight.
“Hi Mom! You’re here again,” Lucy said.
“Hi sweetie! I figured I would come home early to spend time with you for the next little bit.”
Lucy sensed that there was an unspoken reason for her mother’s behavior. And she guessed that it had something to do with the dragon. She hadn’t told Mom all the details of the time the dragon had hunted her in the back yard, but Mom was smart. She would have known that her fears didn’t come from nowhere.
The fact that Mom wanted to protect her eased her mind some. But that also meant there was something she needed protecting from. And as she had realized yesterday, Mom probably couldn’t protect her from the dragon.
As they drove home, Mom asked her, “How was school?”
“It was good,” she replied as they walked to the car. “I read a book about sharks today.”
“Oh yeah? And what did you learn about sharks?”
“I learned that if you’re scuba diving and you see a shadow really far away, you can tell if its a shark if its tail moves like this.” She waved her hand side to side. “But if its tail moves like this,” she waved her hand up and down. “Then it’s a whale.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind the next time I’m in the ocean,” Mom said.
Telling Mom about what she had learned brightened her day somewhat, but she still found it more difficult to be happy than she had just a few days ago. The world seemed darker now, with the dragon in it.
When the car doors were shut and they were driving home, Lucy asked, “are you going to be waiting for me outside of school from now on?”
“For the next little while,” Mom replied.
“You could wait in the car if you wanted to. If I know to look for you, I can come find you.”
Mom chuckled. “Maybe we should plan on that. Then I could stay warm in the car!”
Lucy laughed too. It was a small laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.
They spent the rest of the ride in silence, except for the few times that her mom asked her a question. Lucy answered honestly, but her mind kept going back to the dragon.
When they pulled into the driveway of their house, Lucy exited the car and ran into the house. After putting her shoes in their cubby in the laundry room, she hung her backpack on the hook across from the kitchen table and bounded up the stairs. Arriving at her room, she pushed the door shut and went to the window. She watched the road outside and listened to the house. She wondered if her mom would come and get her to start on her homework.
But she didn’t. Lucy didn’t hear the sound of her walking up the stairs, so she must have stayed downstairs for now. That left her looking at the neighborhood as people came home from school and work and the sun went down.
The dragon would be out tonight. She was sure of it, though not in any way she could explain. It felt like knowing how to walk, it was that deep within her brain.
Thinking of her brain brought her attention to a something at the back of her mind that was refusing to go away. She had first noticed it in the car ride home, but had been thinking about other things. Now that she focused on it, she could tell what it was. It felt like someone was watching her.
She glanced at the door, expecting to find her mom standing there, but the door was closed. She then looked at her closet. Was there something in there?
Lucy thought about going to ask her mom. That was what she would have done before, anyway. But now she remembered how little Mom could do in the face of the dragon. If there was something in her closet like it, she had to take care of it herself.
She lifted her right hand and scrunched her nose, trying to focus even though she was nervous. Today, it was purple. She kept her nose scrunched as she walked to the closet door, one small step at a time. When she stood in front of it, she stopped, feeling her fear rising. It felt like when she had jumped off the diving board at the pool this last summer. Her dad had said that she needed to take a deep breath and just jump.
Lucy took a deep breath in, then slid the door open with her left hand, pushing her ghost light into the space as she did so. The closet glowed with purple light, revealing everything as she had left it this morning.
She let the ghost light fade away. So there wasn’t anything in her closet, but the feeling was still there. No one was watching her though; it must have meant something else.
Lucy stood in front of her bedroom door, considering her room. There hadn’t been anything in her closet, but if there had been, she wasn’t sure what she would have done. She realized that it would have been even worse if she ran into the dragon, because then she wouldn’t know how to protect her mom and dad. So she had to practice.
Lucy lifted her hand and scrunched her nose, again summoning the ghost light. Now it didn’t have any particular color. It looked white to her. The realization reminded her that it was kind of fun that her ghost light changed color every once and a while.
She had pushed the light out of her hand and into the closet, something she had never done before. She did know that she could turn on the ghost light far away from her if she wanted to. All that it took was focusing on another location. Maybe she could move it the same way. She would start by practicing that.
Lucy focused on the ghost light, willing it to inch out of her hand and start floating toward the window. Slowly at first, it drifted out of her hand. But as she focused more and more, the wisp picked up speed until it was moving about as fast as a toy car.
Her gaze suddenly caught on the window and she panicked at the thought of the ghost light flying out of the house. The light winked out as her focus wavered, leaving her alone in her room.
Lucy summoned her ghost light again, the white light now a little gray. She didn’t know what that meant. This time when she sent the light forward, it moved more quickly and accelerated much faster. When she knew the light would hit the window, Lucy pulled back on the wisp with her concentration and it slowed to a stop, just a few inches in front of the glass.
She smiled. She could go even faster.
This time, she thought about pulling the light back toward her. Now it was zipping across the room, fast as a baseball. When it landed in her hand, she smiled. It was the first time that she had felt excited in the past few days. This was something new and strange. What else could she do with her light?
This time, when she summoned it, the ghost light glowed yellow. It reminded her of the color of her ghost friend. She edged her light out in front of her and then focused on bringing the light around in a circle. At first, the circle was only small. As it grew larger, Lucy felt the increased need for focus. It was as if the numbers she was adding in her mind didn’t want to be added. But she was getting good at mental math and she felt her concentration overcoming the resistance she felt.
Within moments, Lucy’s ghost light was making circles as big as she was tall in front of her. Her vision blurred due to her concentration on the light as it moved. When Lucy let the ghost light fade away, her head hurt. So did her nose from all the scrunching. But she felt proud. She imagined what her mom would have said if she were watching. Maybe she would have clapped. Whatever she said, she would have been proud too.
Lucy looked back at the closed door. Her mom didn’t know about the light, so she couldn’t be proud of what Lucy was doing. Lucy was tempted then to run downstairs and tell her mom everything about the ghost light, but she didn’t. Instead, she opened the door, walked slowly down the stairs to the kitchen, and asked, “Can I have a glass of water?”
Mom said, “Of course, sweetie. Are you feeling alright?” And brought her a glass.
As coolness moved through her head and throat, she remembered why she couldn’t tell her parents yet. If they found out, they would tell her not to do it anymore, and then she wouldn’t be able to protect them.
She wouldn’t tell them now, so they wouldn’t be proud of her yet. But when she protected them from the dragon, they would know. They would be proud of her then.
I hope you enjoyed this sneak-peak of The Shadowrunner. What did you think? Let me know in the comments below!