Free Never Again by Michele Bardsley

herself from a bad situation. Bad people. She learned to believe she has no worth. So, when someone is kind to her . . . ” She trailed off and looked at him.
    Gray felt like Ember had punched him in the stomach. Lucy had expected him to be a jerk, even though some small part of her had hoped he would be different from everyone else who’d rejected and shamed her.
    “You were nice to her,” he said softly, “and she couldn’t handle it.”
    “Opposite game,” Ember murmured. “She need some time to figure out how to right her world.” She looked at him, one dark eye visible through the single purple lens of her weird glasses. “Maybe she not the only one.”
    “Maybe,” agreed Gray.
    “Well, then!” Ember broke into a broad smile and patted his arm. “You stayin’ for some tea, Guardian? I got just dey ting for you.”
    “I’ll come back,” he promised. “Right now, I have an errand to run.”
    “ ’Course you do. That’s her booth. Maybe she leave something behind.” Ember slipped her hand out the crook of his arm, gave him one last pat, and turned away. He watched her go through a swinging door marked KITCHEN ENTRANCE, and then she was gone.
    Gray examined the booth. He knelt on the right side, where Lucy’s presence felt strongest, and bent low to see if she’d left anything he could use to create a tracking spell. Despite his detailed investigation, he found nothing, not even a thread from her robe or lint from her duffel.
    “Shit.” He backed out of the booth and looked down at the table. It was still wet from . . . oh . Lucy had left something behind all right.
    Her tears.
     
    “Stupid,” said Lucinda as the rain pelted her. The wind was getting in on the beat-the-witch action, too, slicing at her like machetes. As she trudged down the gravel shoulder of the road, her threadbare tennis shoes soaked, her robe failing to keep off the sluicing water, her body chilled and shivering, she berated herself again.
    Stupid. So freaking stupid.
    She shouldn’t have left the warmth and safety of neutral ground—especially with people like that old bat from the café and that moron in the hot rod gunning for her. Her time with Bernard taught her to trust her instincts . . . at least when it came to sensing an attack. Instincts honed as she’d wandered around for the last three months, tracking down anyone who might help her. Goddess! When she thought about all those times she let Bernard— No .
    Maybe she’d been a fool. But she couldn’t blame anyone but herself for putting up with Bernard. And for what? Security? Yeah, that had worked out well. Pretty clothes, luxurious surroundings, exotic trips . . . she’d handed over her dignity and self-esteem for baubles. There was only slight satisfaction in realizing she’d literally been under a spell, too. Compulsory magic worked best with the already willing.
    The Rackmore whore.
    Nice how that rhymed. Made it just roll off the tongue.
    Lucinda redirected her thoughts. The past was the past. Over, over, over .
    She pulled the robe tighter around her, but the clasp had broken, so it was a useless gesture. She’d enjoyed its dry warmth, at least for the first thirty seconds of her walk. In no time at all, the rain had pummeled her clothing into wet submission.
    The nanosecond Ember handed over the fresh-fromthe-dryer robe and excused herself to the kitchen, Lucinda bolted. She felt bad that she hadn’t stayed long enough to have tea, but Ember’s kindness felt strange—like finding a plate of chocolate-chip cookies after falling into a pit of vipers.
    Besides, she didn’t want to bring any misfortune to the tea shop.
    It was hard not to think of herself as a plague, even though she knew her curse couldn’t infect others. One of the simplest laws of magic was that like attracted like. It was why witches and wizards were taught since birth about keeping the balance. Granted, cursed people had little choice in what they attracted, but there were