Synopsis
When everyone’s playing mind games, someone has to lose.
Jenna is the most powerful mind-user anyone’s ever seen. Alyssa is a talented young Explorer sent to spy on her. They’re not supposed to be friends. But when it becomes obvious that Jenna’s life is in danger, Alyssa’s feelings for the girl who’s supposed to be her arch-enemy get complicated. As time for Jenna runs out, Alyssa needs to decide who she’s going to betray — her own people, or her new friend?
Packed with intrigue and action, Mind Games will keep you guessing until the last page. It’s a coming-of-age tale filled with the confused feelings of young love, wrapped in a fast-paced YA sci-fi / fantasy adventure.
Excerpt: Chapter 11
“ — warning, but I don’t want your help,” I heard Jenna say angrily when I stepped outside the library. The library was a brick, colonial-style building, with white columns lining an arched entryway. Around the corner of the building, just past the handicap ramp, I could see the back of the young man’s leather jacket and his cascade of black hair. Jenna was out of my line of sight, but in her apparent distress, her voice carried easily. I leaned into one of the tall white columns, prepared to disappear behind it should either of them walk around the corner.
I strained to hear the young man’s response.
“But Matriarch — ” he said.
“Don’t ‘Matriarch’ me, Billy. You can tell everyone — including Jalios, if you see him — that I’m staying out of this.”
Billy took a few steps forward, disappearing from view. “Matriarch, please. If what I heard from Charles’s spies is true, then your life is in danger. We only want to protect you.”
“Why? You don’t even know if I’m the last Qanad.”
“I saw what you did in Baltimore. I know.”
“You don’t. Do you know who my mom is? Who my dad is? ’Cause I sure don’t. And the more I’m around you people, the less I think I want to know. But want to know what I do know? I know I made friends with this Talented lady, Martha, and the next thing I hear, she’s got men in black SUVs following her around.”
“Who?” the young man asked, his pitch rising in alarm.
“Even if I knew who they were, why would I tell you? So far, all the Talented I’ve met fall into one of three categories — some of you plan to use me, some of you plan to kill me, and everyone else… being around me puts them in danger or gets them dead. So just — just leave me alone, okay?”
Maybe if I’d been trained for military missions instead of ethnographic ones, I would’ve seen a flash of movement or heard Jenna’s footsteps.
Instead, I didn’t hear or see anything, so my face, leaned out around the white column, was the first thing she saw when she rounded the building.