The Adventures of the Everyday Fangirl is happy to present this excerpt from the recently published Clue and The Shrine of the Widowed Bride by Wendie Nordgren.
Clue and The Shrine of the Widowed Bride
Yellow light filled the small cabin and then disappeared to be replaced with a soft red light that quickly vanished leaving the compartment in darkness until the next holoboard’s big display came into view. I stared vacantly out of the smudged window counting the signs that provided the only illumination in the inky night. The creaking of the train car on the elevated rails had frightened me the first time I had ridden on them. Now, none of it seemed to matter.
Before she had died, my mother had given to me her meager savings and made me promise to leave the Eris Space Station. I could still see her tired, haunted eyes as she looked up at me from atop the crisp white infirmary sheets. The dark bags under her eyes and her hollow cheeks were much more evident now that her face was clean of all of her make-up. Momma’s dry cracked lips had begun to bleed as she said, “Clue, listen to me. You have to promise. You know I did my best by you, but I don’t want you living the same life I did. I want you to get passage on a freighter and head to one of the Earth settlements on Cassini. It doesn’t matter where. Go to school. Make something of yourself.”
Her hands were cold on mine, and I could feel her bones through her thin soft skin. Momma had named me Clue because she had no idea which of the strangers passing through the space station had been my father. She didn’t know which of them had given her the wasting sickness either. “I promise, Momma.”
She had smiled at me. I had been looking into her dark brown, glassy eyes as she had gone. I hadn’t needed the beeping of the machines to tell me that.
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Clue and The Shrine of the Widowed Bride
However, a powerful Okami rules the city of Scorpius and may be Clue’s only hope if she is to survive long enough to uncover the mystery of her uncle’s demise.
Clue and The Shrine of the Widowed Bride, Clue Taylor Book 1, is available now. Learn more by visiting Goodreads or Amazon.
More about Wendie Nordgren can be found through the following:
