Free By Magic Alone by Tracy Madison

something?” Please, please let that be the case.
    “Wh-What?” Verda asked, nearly spilling tea in her shock. “What’s that, dear?”
    “The roses, Verda. I noticed the scent last night, and again just now, but I haven’t seen flowers anywhere.” I came off like an idiot. I knew it, but so what? “What is it from?”
    “Oh, the roses?” Excitement pitched Verda’s voice higher. “You can smell them?”
    “Yes! How could I not?”
    Verda exhaled a breath—if I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn in relief. She jiggled in her seat and mirth danced in her eyes. “Well, that’s something, isn’t it? You can smell the flowers!” Leaping to her feet, she grabbed my hands and squeezed. “Isn’t this wonderful?”
    I wouldn’t go quite that far. “Um. Sure. I suppose.” I pulled out of her grip. “But where
are the
roses?”
    “Oh, they’re not real.” Calmer now, she stared at me a few seconds longer. Her lips did that twitchy, almost-a-grin-but-not-quite thing. “Exactly as you said. Special furnace filters. We started using them to . . . ah . . . cover the nasty odor of exhaust fumes that come in from the street.” She winked. “Forgive my excitement, Julia. I wasn’t sure if they were working.”
    There it was. The perfectly sane and reasonable explanation I wanted to hear. So why didn’t I believe her? “I see. Well, that’s good. That they’re doing the trick, I mean.”
    She cleared her throat. “You’ve been so sweet to stay here with me, but I’m feeling so much better now.”
    Yay! Escape. “Oh, it was nothing.” I pushed away from the table. “Glad to help.”
    She gestured for me to follow and then scurried out of thebreak room. She moved fast. When I caught up with her, she was already dragging documents out of the file cabinet in the lobby.
    “As an apology for delaying you for so long, and to make up for your . . . um . . . inability to leave, I’m offering you a free membership to my services,” she said, continuing to stack papers at an alarming rate. “I’m very good at what I do. We’ll find you your soul mate, mark my words.”
    “No! That is so not necessary,” my voice rang out—too loudly, so I lowered it. “I’m fine, and—no offense—but I consider soul mates to be nothing more than a fairy tale. I don’t believe in either, so really—”
    She waved away my arguments. “It doesn’t matter what you believe. Besides, we’ll cover all of this later, after you’ve filled everything out.”
    “Um, excuse me? It does so matter what I believe.”
    Verda’s shoulders quaked in silent laughter. Tilting her chin up, she looked directly at me. “But don’t you see? You came to me. I didn’t come to you. That’s reason enough for me to help you.” Whisking the many papers together, she shoved them in a manila envelope, along with a book of some sort. “You are a special girl, Julia. You deserve a special partner. Let me use my abilities and Magical Matchups to find that partner for you. What do you say?”
    I hesitated. This was difficult to pass up. Here she was, offering me everything that had led me here to begin with. But after spending the morning with her, that inner moral voice of mine screamed louder than ever. Finally, I shrugged. “I—I don’t know.”
    Razor-sharp eyes bored into me. “I don’t take ‘no’ easily. All of this will be much easier on you if nod your head and agree.”
    And this was the point I should have walked—no, run—away. But in her hands was the information that might help me save my company. I
had
been stuck here for hours and scared out of my wits. Right? Besides which, I had the sinking feeling that no matter what I said, she’d find a way to convince me otherwise. Or maybe I was using that as an excuse. Regardless, I found myself nodding in agreement. “If you insist.”
    “Oh, I do!” She passed me the thick envelope and then patted my cheek. “I know you’re late for work, dear. So why don’t