QK Agent Round: I Found a Magic Stone in Paris

Title: Mist

Entry Nickname: I found a magic stone in Paris

Word count: 90K

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy


Query


When sixteen-year-old Deirdre Walsh arrives in Paris to spend the summer at her grandfather’s, she intends to enjoy the city like a native, even though she’ll have to fight grandpa on everything from curfews to the rip in her jeans.

But when he tells her about a stone of infinite power he’s been hiding and how she teethed on said stone as a baby, making her the only one able to wield it, playing tourist is no longer high on her list. The stone is faerie-made and the fey have descended upon Paris to reclaim it and take revenge on humans for stealing it from them. After Deirdre’s grandfather suffers a heart attack and goes into a coma before he can reveal the stone’s whereabouts, she sets off to find it, hoping its magic will revive him. She meets bad boy Sean and mild-mannered neighbor Luc—both bent on helping her navigate her way through Paris. That is until Luc lures her to a faerie ball and Sean turns out to be a spy for the fey.

The fey kidnap Deirdre’s grandfather from his hospital bed and issue an ultimatum. If Deirdre doesn’t relinquish the stone to them by midnight, they’ll murder him along with thousands of innocent civilians. Her grandfather is no longer the only one she needs to save. In a city where trust is a lost currency and alliances come with a price, all she has is herself and the stone—if the dark magic it’s made of doesn't destroy her first.


First Page


I slid my passport through the window. The customs agent did not crack a smile as he began his interrogation. I stared back, scrambling to recall the few words of French I’d hung on to since eighth grade.

“Alors, mademoiselle?” he prodded. He didn’t look like the patient type.

I pulled out a phrase book from my pocket. I had studied it during the flight from New York, but now I couldn’t remember a single word. I felt my cheeks go red as I flipped through the pages.

“’Ow long are you ‘ere for, Mees Derrdrr Walsh?” he said, sounding both exasperated and blasé.

“Deirdre. My name is pronounced DEER-dra,” I corrected. I was used to it; people butchered my name all the time.

He wasn’t amused.

“Two months. I’m here for two months,” I added, embarrassed.

“Where weel you be staying?”

“With my grandfather, in Paris.”

A door behind him opened, and a security officer entered the glass booth. The man was tall, all arms and legs, with hair so pale it looked white under the overhead lights. He whispered something in his colleague’s ear, bringing my interrogation to an end. The agent nodded, his gaze drifting past me as if he hadn’t been talking to me for the last two minutes. “Au suivant,” he called. The woman next in line walked up to the window.

The officer grabbed my passport. “Come with me, Miss,” he said in an accent I knew wasn’t French but one I couldn’t place either.