by Tom Hansen
Nancy turned to Edna, who had been sitting back watching everyone. Nancy felt bad seeing her best friend sitting on the periphery of the action.
“Thank you for pulling me out of that building. I wasn’t myself.”
Edna gave her a big bear hug. “You would have done the same for me.”
Nancy fought back a tear. “I’m sorry for putting you in so much danger. I should have never let Anca in and I should have run when Linda told me so.”
Edna released the hug and held Nancy at arm’s length. “Now you listen here, girl. We have been through a lot and I have barreled blindly into situations I shouldn’t, but you were always there to back me up. I’m the one hell-bent on living life to the fullest, remember? You have nothing to be ashamed of. Peter is alive and free from Anca’s grasp. We’re all okay.”
Nancy’s throbbing shoulder reminded her that not everything was okay, but Edna did have a point. Still, Nancy needed to learn so much about these new powers so she didn’t put her friends in harm’s way again.
“Thank you.” It was all she could muster. She barely kept her emotions in check.
“And my best friend is a witch! How cool is that?” Edna’s eyes sparkled like a kid in a candy store. “Now I’m going to get out of here. I could really use my own bed. I think I’ll be sleeping for a couple days, given how crazy the last few were. Call you when I wake up?”
The next morning Nancy stood at the entrance to the terminal. She hugged Peter and bade him a good and safe trip.
“Call me when you land and let me know when you plan on coming back. You are always welcome to stay with me.”
“Thank you.” Peter turned and started up the ramp, then stopped and turned back.
“That book,” he said in hushed tones.
Nancy tensed. “What about it?”
“It dangerous. I don’t think I have to tell you about that, but I felt like I needed to say it.”
She smiled. “Of course it is. I have Ushageeta at hand to help me with it.”
Peter smiled then rolled the tips of his fingers together in what seemed like serious contemplation.
“What is it?” Nancy inquired.
"I don’t think you should tell Ushageeta about it, at least not yet. Anca got that book from someone in, well, I don’t know who he is, but Anca was terrified of him. She borrowed it, but he’s been asking for it back and she refused. Right now the only ones who know you have it are us. If word got out that you had it, he would hunt you down.”
Nancy nodded. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
“Oh and speaking of the book. Behind that secret door you said no one else knew about?"
"Yes."
"I left you something that might be the key to opening the book. I didn't want to tell you before, but now, with Anca …" He glanced at the security lines as if making sure no one was eavesdropping. "I didn’t think it was safe enough to leave with the book. But please be careful. I don’t think it should be opened.”
Nancy put her hand on his shoulder and smiled warmly. “You will be late. Go see your family.”
After stopping by the diner for a quick breakfast, Nancy arrived back at her home a little over an hour after watching Peter’s plane take off.
Her house felt larger and emptier. She thought about how much had changed in just one week.
She stood in the parlor for a time before running her hand over the arm of one of her Queen Anne chairs. If anything, they seemed cleaner than she had kept them. Ushageeta did not tell her how she had made all the blood disappear, and Nancy did not really want to know.
She thought about the key upstairs and toyed with going to find it, but stopped herself just as her hand rested on the baluster of her stairs. No, the key would wait. Despite her incessant curiosity, she would heed the advice of her elders, or youngsters in this matter. Prudence seemed to be the name of the game here.
That should have put Nancy’s mind at ease, but it didn't, at least not fully. If that book was as dangerous as everyone kept telling her, it might be best to just leave it hidden.
She began to brew some tea and grabbed the copy of The Notebook Richard had been reading. She sat down in the library facing the empty fireplace.
She barely made it through the first chapter before she fell asleep, dreaming of faeries flittering around her shoulder.
Epilogue
Dragon looked up at the knock on his office door.
"Martin, come in, I was just looking at something."
“What is it, boss?”
Dragon spun the piece of paper around and showed him a picture of a couple of women in a crowd.
"Do you recognize these two, Martin?”
"Uh yes, boss, I do. We spoke to them in the car a while back."
"That's right, and afterward I asked you to track them down."
“We did, but we lost them, sir." He was nervous. Dragon understood that nervousness, and smiled to help calm the dumb troll’s nerves.
"That's quite alright there, Martin, quite alright. We have a small problem and a big problem on our hands now, though."
"What is the small problem?"
Dragon produced another picture, taken from the same location in the city, of a burning building, completely engulfed in flames with a large crowd huddled around it.
"That’s the building! I was there."
"Yes, you were, Martin. Yes, you were, and while you and your idiot brother failed to notice the two women we met in the street a few nights ago, I had someone else taking pictures, so at least we know what they look like and we can start looking around for them. There aren't that many witches in this town. We should be able to make it well known that we are very interested in finding out who they are."
"Uh, boss, you said there was a bigger problem?"
"The bigger problem is this." He tapped the picture of the building in flames. "We've been all over the wreckage and we can't find the book."
"The book?"
"Yes, I know you know what book I’m talking about, because that book used to sit right over there."
Dragon pointed to the corner with a long, bony arm.
On the top of the slanted wooden stand was a large rectangular portion that stood out, lacking the sheen that the rest of the stand, particularly the sides, had.
“We need that book back. Will you help me find it?”
“Yes, boss, of course.”
Dragon nodded a moment, eying his subordinate up and down. “We also have an even bigger problem.”
Martin shifted in his seat. “What’s that?”
“We didn’t find Anca’s or the theran’s remains. I want you to keep an eye out, you hear me?”
Martin nodded, a stricken look on his face.
“Good, Martin. Now go eat some food. You will feel happier once you have eaten.”
Dragon sighed as soon as the door closed. He leaned back in his chair as far as it would allow him and ran his fingers through his hair. Martin was dumb, but loyal. The other one he wasn’t so sure about. He preferred loyalty to brains, but the two were inseparable.
He got up, stretching his back. He hated sitting at desks. He was not cut out for this life, pushing paper and keeping appointments. What use was sitting down when you could accomplish so much more standing up?
He walked around his desk, thumping the empty spot twice with his knuckles where the Book of Endless Shadow once lay. He would get it back, that wasn’t a concern at this point. He just hoped he would obtain it before the Tael made their annual visit.
He locked his door then jiggled the handle to ensure it was truly secure.
He added a magical lock for good measure and turned around to the wall behind his desk.
A wave of his hand caused a doorway to materialize in front of him, nearly as wide as his desk. The darkness on the other side of the threshold sucked in the light from the office, causing it to vanish into the depths.
Dragon took a step into the room beyond before stopping, removing his coa
t, and rolling up his sleeves. No sense them getting dirty.
As he placed the coat on the back of his chair, he heard a whimper from behind.
He turned around and cracked his knuckles. The popping sound echoing off the stone walls in the inky blackness. A rustle in the darkness, a slight movement. The sound of metal on metal clinking. It was all music to his ears.
In the distance, he could just barely make out the hunched over disfigured form of a human. He smiled and took a step into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust.
The form took more shape, allowing him to see the cuts on the skin and the blistery burns all around. The figure huddled in the corner, naked, hairless, shaking.
The room was cold, too cold for comfort, but Dragon didn’t mind. In just a minute, it would be quite warm.
He took a few more steps in, hands off to the side, glowing with red heat. “I miss these little meetings of ours. You ready to feel the burn?”
Afterword
Thank you for taking a chance on me! I know there are a lot of us out there, an endless sea of self-published authors, and you chose me.
As a thank you, I wrote a short story that sheds light on the backstory of Linda and Anca, and I would like to give it to you. This story is not available for purchase, as I only want to share it with those who loved A Moonlit Task.
Sign up for my newsletter. Visit www.scarhoof.com/splashes and I will send you the free short story “Splashes of Wine” If you wish to know about any of my upcoming works, please consider signing up to my mailing list. I will always respect your privacy and you can unsubscribe at any time with one click.
Did you leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads? If so, tell me about it! Contact info is on my About the Author page at the end of the book, or email me [email protected].
I love reading reviews of my books and you will have my eternal gratitude! Reviews help new authors like myself be found by other readers.
Thank you so much for your support! I’m already hard at work for the next book in Nancy’s story and I can’t wait to share it with you!
About A Moonlit Task
“Red for the Chevy, Yellow for the shop,” Linda Hamada muttered to herself as she stepped from her tiny herb shop into the alleyway.
The original opening for this book’s first draft changed significantly since I wrote those first words.
Nancy Moon originally began as a thought experiment: What would Nancy Drew be like as a Grandmother? I didn’t know what a Cozy Mystery was back then, I just thought it might be cool to have an older protagonist. I normally read fantasy, and too often it’s a young farm boy that gets swept up in some epic plot. Lately it’s barely been about young kick-ass women in their 20’s that seem to have all the skills of the latest Hollywood action movie. I wanted something different, something unique.
I wrote the first version of A Moonlit Task in 2014 for NaNoWriMo, a worldwide yearly movement for authors to write a novel in one month. I completed the minimum 50,000 words in the month of November, and went on to complete the manuscript in December of that year.
I put the story away for a month or two, and pulled it back out early in 2015. By then I had spent months critiquing other people’s stories from my writing group, and I also had done a beta read for one member’s book. Those hours spent critiquing other people’s writing allowed me to begin seeing the mistakes I was making in my own writing. I had grown quite a bit since I had first came up with the outline for this book, and looking at my raw manuscript again I knew I could do better.
Starting in March of 2015, I re-wrote this book from scratch. Once completed, I began the arduous process of editing. I submitted a few chapters to my writing group and went through the entire manuscript by myself, cutting scenes, and adding new ones. Taking feedback and consulting my original draft to see what I did differently and in the end I combined my favorite part of both drafts to create my finished manuscript.
That took almost a year, off and on. Time for beta readers.
Spring of 2016 I sent off a call to friends, family, and co-workers to get beta readers. Thirty generous souls agreed to read my mess of a book. Two months later, I received an overwhelming amount of feedback and would need a lot of time to get through it all. I started sifting. All summer long I worked and worked, refining my story based on the feedback.
I then sent the book off to a copy editor to correct grammar and punctuation and began working on cover designs. The first concept blew me away. After a little back and forth, we found the perfect model and after only three revisions, we had the final cover.
That is how Nancy went from my head to yours. It’s been a couple years now, which I have to say, isn’t too bad, especially for my first book. I’m already working on the next book in the series so we will definitely be seeing Nancy and Edna real soon.
I hope you enjoy this story. It’s very dear to my heart. An unlikely hero, Nancy represents the pent up demand for someone older than their twenties to save the world. This is not your Grandmother’s Cozy Mystery. Buckle up because Nancy’s world is going to get turned upside down.
-Tom Hansen
February 2017
Acknowledgments
Publishing a book is not a solo affair. I had to come up with the concept, write the outline, and put in the work to write and edit. But that’s only a small part of the process. So many people helped with this book coming to market.
I have to give thanks:
To my dear wife: Jennifer. You loved this story from the first concept and have been a constant cheerleader for Nancy, Edna, and me. The only reason I didn’t give up was because I knew how much you wanted this story to come out.
To my writing group: Aeon, Amber, DeAnna, Lisa, and Tara. Your bi-weekly feedback and sage advice took me from being a wanna-be to a will-be. You are the reason I’m an author and not a writer. You helped me navigate the tricky waters of writing Nancy as a believable woman. I couldn’t have done it without you!
To my Beta Readers: all twenty of you. I received way more feedback than I originally thought I would have to go through, but this book is significantly better for it. My antagonist was a megalomaniac Bond villain before you helped me. You found endless typos, blocking issues, and inconsistencies. It was a lot of work fixing everything but I couldn’t have done it without your feedback.
To my Copy Editor: Claire. You are a lifesaver. You made me not look like a fool with horrible grammar and punctuation, but you also did it in an unbelievable short amount of time. You even edited your own acknowledgement!
To my Cover Designer: Deranged Doctor Designs. Your first cover concept looked like a work of art and after only three revisions and a little hunting around for just the right model for my concept of Nancy, we had it. You guys do amazing work and have bent over backwards for me to work around my timeline in order to get this book out the door.
To everyone else: Various friends, family members, authors, and the writing communities that I trolled over the last six years have given me the knowledge, confidence, and gumption to plow forward into the scary world of self publishing.
To my readers: You are taking a chance on an unknown author. I hope I do not let you down.
-Tom Hansen
February 2017
About the Author
Tom Hansen lives in Arizona with his lovely wife, four teenage children, and two cats. Systems Engineer by day, and writer by night, he also finds time to run a gaming channel on YouTube.
A Moonlit Task is his first published novel and he has many more stories left in his aging noggin to release to the world.
For more information:
@scarhoof
scarhoof
www.scarhoof.com
[email protected]
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