CAGI Entry #77

Title: FINGERS CROSSED

Genre: YA Fantasy

Word Count: 58,000

Query:

The Wiccan Rede counsels witches to harm ye none, do what ye will. But that isn't stopping the man who's been challenging the most powerful Wiccans to duels of magic. The loser of a duel loses their mind. It's what happened to sixteen year old Shay Maverick's mother, who's now missing and wandering the streets, deranged and helpless.

The search to find her mother and figure out who attacked her is being led by a secret Wiccan crime organization called the Rede Consulate. And lucky Shay gets partnered with the most infuriating boy she's ever met. 

Mason Kress, Mak, is all charm and arrogance and her eyes are starting to hurt from rolling them at him.  He has a ridiculous notion that if Shay get's too close she won't be able to resist him. But he's sadly mistaken if he thinks he'll have any effect on her, and Shay's determined to keep their relationship all business. Civil, but only barely.

What they need to focus on is the man who's been causing havoc with Duellos. He's escalated to murder and he doesn't seem to be afraid of the Law of Three, your deeds coming back to you threefold. He's committing crimes without remorse or fear...and in Shay's quest to find her mother, she's headed right for him.

I have a Bachelors degree in English Literature, I’ve recently written freelance articles published by Metro-Parent magazine and various parenting websites, I’m an active member of SCBWI, and my first short story has been accepted for online publication by Ascent Aspirations literary magazine.

First 250:

Shay Maverick was so sick of shoving pills down her throat she wanted to throw the little cup right back into the nurse’s face. Medicine never worked, anyway.

“I swallowed them,” I said. I’m Shay Maverick. Unfortunately for my throat.

Nurse Hillsy did her obligatory check of my mouth, under my tongue and both sides as though I was able to hide four different pills in some secret lair behind my lips.

“I told you,” I said, shrugging.

She looked at me from under her glasses like she could see into my soul, and didn’t like what she saw very much. Her curly gray hair shook around her face, and it was so dry 

and frizzy it almost crackled when it moved. Thankfully she didn’t have time to distrust me all day, so she nudged my arm letting me know I was dismissed.

I trudged down the hallway back to my room, away from the noise of the television and the other raggedy teenage girls talking and standing in line for their medications. Westbrook Psychiatric Hospital was home sweet home, and the crazies here were my only friends in the world now.

My fuzzy purple slippers made my feet slip noiselessly down the white linoleum, but some of the nurses and orderlies turned to watch me anyway as I walked down the hallway. I knew what they were thinking. They were feeling sorry for the poor suicidal girl. Usually, I ‘acted out’ as they put it, refusing to take pills, calling my psychiatrist a lazy quack.