Okay I hope the formatting is okay this time... First I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to do this Ms. Ferrara, I really appreciate! I already queried you, but quite a few things have changed... ^ QUERY Dear (agent name) (personal tidbit learned from research plus title, genre, and word count) Heartreaders, people with the rare ability to sense and manipulate the emotions of others, have been disappearing around the world. Sparked by this mystery and her older brother’s enrollment in the international, flying Gallian Skies Academy, eighteen-year-old Reina Hartinger abandons her duties to the family shrine in her backwards village of Umeri to follow him. Leaving behind only a letter to her unsuspecting parents, Reina heads off to the airship academy to live the life of adventure she has always dreamt of. After sneaking on a secret recon mission into the headquarters of Steelheart, an anti-heartreader cult, Reina gains new comrades: a fist-fighting friend who is the yang to Reina’s yin; a grumpy pilot with a Napoleon complex; the academy’s top fighter with a few secrets of his own; a charming heartreader who deals with all the racket;…and an angry older brother with a nice, long lecture in store for her. As they come closer to solving the mystery behind the heartreaders’ disappearances, the mission becomes a little more than reconnaissance…and Reina discovers that the kidnappings are only a small piece of the problem. (author bio)

First Page

Chapter One Some Unexpected Luggage

“Aren’t your parents going to be worried about you all the way up in that school, Miss Reina?” the village caravan driver asked conversationally.
*They might be…if they knew, the anxiety-ridden passenger wanted to reply,* but instead said, “Oh, they’ll have my little sister to take care of things. You know Michiya.”
“Of course, of course.” In the stifling, backwards village of Umeri, everyone knew everyone.
Whenever she felt a bought of nerves, Reina Hartinger reminded herself of the stagnant future awaiting her back home and the opportunities approaching as she abandoned her home village—her home continent—to take to the skies.  Forsaking her life as the future keeper of the family inn and shrine with only a letter left behind, Reina felt guilty…for not feeling guilty. Instead she felt rejuvenated. The Reina who dreamt of journeying through the world like the valiant heroines in her favorite books was reborn as she left her dreary village to follow her older brother to the Gallian Skies Academy above.
*You won’t be too mad at me, right, Kohei?* she could only hope sheepishly. *But maybe you’ll be shocked more than anything.* That thought brought a smile to her face. If she were a heroine in a novel, this sort of tryst would be rather “out of character.”
For better, for worse, she was off to the airship port for the academy’s autumn enrollers. 
*And, if these kidnappings keep happening when I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time*, Reina pondered matter-of-factly,  *until death do us part*