Seventeen-year-old Raina Brandt has never fit in. A physical disability means she's bullied at school by popular kids like Hector, and only her two best friends, Jess and Sy, seem to understand her. But despite this, Raina thinks she's got life all figured out. Until, one day, a shopping trip for lip gloss turns into a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions. Everyone around her seems to have developed weird magical powers. Well, everyone but her. Jess can appear anywhere, Hector can read minds- and Sy, well, Sy's gone missing.
Raina would give anything for things to go back to the way they were and a mysterious and handsome stranger offers her just that, as long as she does something for him in return. But things aren't quite what they seem, especially when Raina discovers she's even more powerful than she could have ever imagined.
Now, it's up to Raina to figure out how to exist in a new world of uncertainty and decide where her loyalties lie. Hanging in the balance is the life of her friend and possibly the fate of magic itself.
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COMPLETE. Rated PG-13 for mature themes in later chapters. There will be trigger warnings at the top of any chapter that might include anything triggering. Swearing is in most chapters. Please consider this your warning for that. The completed novel is about 50k words and is a standalone, though I may write a sequel with the same characters.
COMPLETE (FINALLY!) STANDALONE STORY
Magic. Forbidden by law, possessed by witches, and the reason a carpenter's daughter is imprisoned in her own home.
When escaping the house for a few hours of freedom goes horribly wrong, Misa Carpenter unwittingly captures the attention of a man she comes to despise.
He wants her for the magic she never knew she had. Instead of an arrest that could lead to her execution, he proposes a bargain that would set her free from the prison she called home, a bargain she can't refuse.
Having no other choice, Misa is plunged into the dangerous world of witches in search of the most powerful and dangerous of them all. The task is deceptively easy. Find the witch and eliminate her. All Misa wants to do is fulfill her end of the bargain so she could finally be free.
But things aren't always so simple. Learning magic to blend in forces Misa to confront her greatest fears, and as she grows to understand the man who flipped her world upside down, she realises she might have quite literally gotten much more than what she bargained for.
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Rated 16+ for swearing, depictions of psychological and physical abuse (by the villain), and mild sexual content