“Yeah, well, she’s not here anymore,” Cass snapped. A sharp pang jabbed in her chest as she said it, and hot tears pricked behind her eyes. She blinked them away. There was no point sugar-coating it. Aunt Alexandra was gone, and it wasn’t going to do her any good to ignore the fact. “And it’s not like she left an instruction booklet. This is my house now, and I’m not going to sleep well at night if there are all sorts of weird little creatures in here.”
As if on cue, Onyx strutted into the room and looked at Cass suspiciously. Befitting his name, he was pure black, with long, silky fur. She held out her fingers for him to sniff, but he turned his nose up and flounced under the plush armchair next to the fireplace. That relationship was off to a good start.
“Well, what’s the rest of the house like?” asked Emma.
Cass shrugged, though Emma couldn’t see her. “Cluttered, from what I could tell. I didn’t go through the whole house yet, though. Some of the rooms upstairs were locked, and so was the door to that tower thing. I’m going to have to look around for the keys, or else get the locks changed.”
“So you don’t even know what’s in there? Creepy. For all you know, there could be, like, dead bodies or something.”
“Real reassuring, Em.” Cass tossed the last book in her stack onto the giveaway pile and stood up shakily, her legs stiff from sitting on the floor for the last half hour. One stack down. Only about a million more to go. “Look, I probably ought to get going. I’ve got a huge mess to deal with, plus I still need to get groceries and stuff.”
“All right. But keep me posted if you see anything else, okay?”
Cass rolled her eyes but agreed, and Emma hung up. Cass brushed off the knees of her jeans and looked around the room. It seemed even messier now than it had before she started. She squeezed her eyes closed to keep from feeling overwhelmed.
Aunt Alexandra, why did you leave me with all this? she thought. But she knew the answer. It hadn’t been a surprise. She’d told Cass she was planning on leaving her the house for years. “You are the only one I trust with my things, Cassie,” she’d often said on the phone, a tone of gentle exasperation in her voice. “Your father doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know. You know. You’re the only one who will know what to do with this house.”
No, the bigger surprise had been that Alexandra had passed at all. She’d gone quietly in her sleep at the age of ninety-four, which was a blessing but also a shock. Despite her age, she’d been healthy and strong. She’d seemed eternal. Cass had spent the last several weeks cursing herself that she’d never gotten around to visiting her again. It had been years since the last time she’d seen her, though they talked on the phone every week. When Alexandra was younger, they used to travel together—visiting far-off cities and exotic locations, just the two of them. Seeing the world and its secrets in a way that only they could. But eventually, Alexandra had become content to remain in her big old house in the woods, while Cass wanted to keep wandering.
Or running, maybe.
Cass sighed and left the book room behind, heading into the kitchen to assess the food situation. It looked like someone—probably Connie—had come through already and removed all the perishables. All that was left was some dried pasta and a few cans that looked as though they’d been sitting in Alexandra’s pantry for about as long as she’d lived there.
Onyx trailing a safe distance behind her, Cass grabbed her purse and car keys and started out the kitchen door. She hesitated for a moment as the cat watched her with bright green eyes. “Are you an outdoor kitty or an indoor kitty?” she asked.
Onyx made a noise that sounded like “Myah.”
Cass smirked. “Sorry, didn’t catch that. I think I’d better leave you inside just in case.” She closed and locked the door.
She could feel eyes following her as she wound her way along the side of the house back to the front drive where her car was parked. The yard was dotted with clumps of trees that had been there so long they’d started to grow into each other, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see faces among the needles, peering around the leaves. Green, bronze, brown and gold; squat and round, with bulbous noses; long and narrow with pointed ears that protruded through mossy tufts of hair. There had to be a dozen different species of fae in there. The air was heavy with their magic, and it made her skin crawl.
“It’s an infestation,” she grumbled, avoiding looking at the creatures directly.
The front lawn was littered with dry needles and pieces of pinecone that crunched under her shoes. She kept her gaze on her feet, stubbornly ignoring the prying eyes in the trees. As she walked, she noticed a glint of color among the greens and browns. She paused, wrinkling her nose, and crouched to examine it more closely. A card, covered in a blue plaid pattern. It was longer than a regular playing card. She picked it up and flipped it over. A tarot card. It looked like one of Emma’s. Cass didn’t know much about tarot. Like everything else supernatural, she tried to avoid it as much as she could. This card had a picture of a man in vaguely medieval-looking clothing, like a minstrel, or maybe a jester. He was holding a white flower in his left hand, and in his right was a long stick with a pack or something attached to it. It reminded Cass of old cartoons, when characters would run away from home carrying a knapsack on a stick. A small white dog yapped at the man’s feet. The two of them looked very happy—even though they were about to blunder right off the edge of a cliff. The text underneath the picture read: The Fool.
“Well, that’s interesting,” she said aloud. She straightened, then froze. She felt something. Someone was watching her. Not the fae—a person. Human. She looked around warily. There was a rustle, and then the sound of a branch snapping. She turned just in time to catch a glimpse of black hair disappearing behind a tree trunk, and the swish of a skirt. A girl?
“Excuse me?” Cass called. No one responded. She sighed and took a few steps closer to the patch of trees. “Hey, sorry, this is private property,” she said.
Still no answer. Then the leaves rustled again, and a little green creature shimmied its way down the tree trunk, planting its feet firmly on a gnarled root. Cass had never seen a creature quite like this one before. She didn’t recognize its species. It was bigger than the other fae she’d seen, with a long, pointed nose and pronounced cheekbones. The top of its head was covered with leaves, which could have been a hat or the creature’s own hair.
It folded its arms and looked at Cass appraisingly, unflinchingly. Its stare seemed to be a challenge—one that Cass didn’t feel like rising to.
“Okay, whatever,” she said, turning back to her car and unlocking the door. “Have it your way.”
She tossed the tarot card onto the passenger seat next to her purse. Something about it made her feel uneasy, but for some reason, she was reluctant to throw it away. It didn’t look like it had been outside long—it was pretty clean, and relatively new-looking. Probably not one of Aunt Alexandra’s; Cass knew she had a few decks, but they were all much older than this. Had that strange girl dropped it?
She looked around for the intruder as she pulled her car down the driveway, but there was no sign of her. She must have retreated deeper into Alexandra’s property. According to the surveyor’s records her aunt’s lawyer had shown her, Alexandra’s property encompassed almost a hundred acres of winding forest land. A few houses dotted the perimeter—maybe it had been one of the neighbors. Although it was strange that she’d run away instead of introducing herself…
“This whole freaking place is weird,” Cass said aloud, turning from her driveway onto the narrow logging road that led into town. To her left, she could see Connie’s ranch-style home peeking out between the trees. A mailbox adorned with cheery painted flowers sat next to the driveway.
She struggled to remember if the presence of the fae had been this strong when she’d last visited this house. She’d probably only been ten or eleven at that time. Twenty years had dulled her memory, and she found that when she thought about it, she
could only remember snatches—the purple paint on the big Victorian house had stood out in her mind, and the smell of the kitchen. Alexandra showing her photos from her last visit to Budapest. But most of the details had faded away with time.
It wasn’t unusual for fae to turn up in large quantities in wooded areas, she reminded herself. She just wasn’t used to it anymore, having spent so much time in large cities. Like it did with most wildlife, modernity did a good job of crowding the supernatural out.
“The sooner I can get out of here and back to the city, the better,” Cass grumbled, flipping on her blinker and turning onto Main Street.
Something that she did remember from her last visit, and which still seemed to be true, was that there wasn’t a real supermarket in Riddle—just a tiny general store next to the post office. But she didn’t feel like driving to Myrtle Creek, where the closest Safeway was located, so Riddle Grocery would have to do.
It hadn’t changed much in twenty years. Cass suspected that it hadn’t changed much in forty years, to be honest. It was a small wood-frame building with weathered gray siding. There was a huge Pepsi logo next to the sign over the door, and a hand-painted board in the window reading, “Proudly serving Pepsi products!”
“Guess I’d better not think about buying a Coca-Cola,” Cass said to herself, pulling the white wooden door open.
Inside, it looked just like a regular grocery store, albeit on a smaller scale. As soon as she stepped through the door, she realized she’d made a tactical error, coming to the grocery store on an empty stomach. The smell of warm food wafted toward her from the deli, and suddenly she found she could think of nothing else but fried chicken and potato wedges.
“Priorities, Cass,” she told herself, grabbing a small shopping cart with a squeaking wheel from beside the front door. “Get your groceries first. Then you can hit the deli.”
She pushed past the front lanes, such as they were—just a couple counters with cash registers and a lone cashier who smiled and nodded as she went by—and headed for the refrigerated section. She’d need milk, butter, eggs… and it couldn’t hurt to buy some TV dinners. Okay, several TV dinners. Or, as she preferred to think of them, Meals For One. As she turned into the frozen foods aisle, her eye caught on something sitting atop one of the freezers. A large plush dog, white with floppy brown ears and a splotch of brown over one of its plastic eyes. There was a piece of paper around its neck, laminated and printed with the words, “Congratulations! You found the White-and-Brown Dog! Now go to the library and tell the librarian where you found me.”
Cass raised an eyebrow. One of her soon-to-be colleagues at the Riddle Library must be responsible for this—they must have been running some kind of summer scavenger hunt program for the local kids. She felt her stomach twist slightly with nerves. She’d worked at various libraries over the years, but generally large systems in bigger cities. Her last job had been at the San Jose Public Library. She’d been ready for a change when she’d gotten the news about Aunt Alexandra—though she tended to thrive in urban environments, the California Bay Area was a bit much even for her—but she still wasn’t sure this change was really what she had in mind. She’d thought it was a long shot when she contacted the Douglas County library system to see if they needed a short-term librarian, and had been shocked when they informed her that there was an open slot right there at the Riddle branch library. It had seemed too good to be true, and now Cass found herself wondering if maybe it was. This was a small town, and she was sure the other librarians must have lived in the community their whole lives. How would they react to having a stranger like Cass coming in out of nowhere?
She tossed a handful of Lean Cuisines into her cart and turned away from the White-and-Brown Dog and into the next aisle. This was another mistake—the junk food aisle. The shelves were lined with chips, cookies, and other packaged sweets of the partially-hydrogenated variety. Her stomach rumbled as her eye fell on a box of chocolate MoonPies on the top shelf. She hadn’t had them for years. They weren’t even her favorite snack, with their somewhat rubbery consistency, but right now they seemed like the perfect complement to that fried chicken and those potato wedges that she’d determined were going to be her late-lunch/early-dinner.
She stretched her hand up to grab for the box, but her fingertips just grazed it. Cass was of average height—usually tall enough to be able to reach the top shelf, but that typically relied on her wearing a set of shoes with thicker soles than these beat-up, flattened flip-flops she was wearing today. She frowned, looking around. Riddle Grocery didn’t seem to be particularly overstaffed. She supposed she could ask the cashier if he could come grab them for her, but by the same token, hadn’t she had enough human interaction for today?
She got up on her tiptoes, stretching once more for the MoonPies. Her fingers brushed the box again… just enough to make the box tip back and topple. Before she could react, the MoonPies had created a domino effect, knocking the boxes that were behind it over. She could just see the top of a box of cereal on the top shelf of the next aisle over wobble, and then it fell with a crash, bringing several other boxes down with it. A cry of surprise rang out from the next aisle.
Great. Just great. Someone had been here to catch her moment of epic poise.
She left her cart behind, hurrying over to the cereal aisle, calling out, “I’m so sorry”—but she broke off at the sight of the man standing in the middle of the aisle surrounded by a pile of fallen Cheerios, Frosted Flakes and Wheaties boxes. He looked to be about Cass’s age, thirty or so. Tall and muscular, but lean rather than broad, with honey-brown hair and eyes to match. Clean-shaven—a rarity among millennial men, Cass had found, and particularly in Oregon—wearing a fitted plaid button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearm, revealing lightly tanned skin and large, square hands.
It had been a long time since the sight of a man had made Cass lose her voice, but this one had definitely succeeded. She cleared her throat, hoping her face wasn’t too visibly red, and said again, “I’m so sorry.”
The man laughed, gentle creases forming around his warm eyes, and Cass found she needed to clear her throat again. “No worries,” he said. “That was an impressive avalanche. Do you need help with something?”
“No, no,” Cass said quickly. “It’s fine. Let me get these picked up.” She crouched, hurrying to gather all the cereal boxes up into her arms, taking more than she really could hold at once, causing her to drop a few with another loud crash. The man laughed again, moving to help her. Between the two of them, the cereal shelf was quickly righted, save one box of Cheerios Cass grabbed for herself.
“There. No harm done,” the man said with a grin, his bright white teeth practically sparkling in the fluorescent lighting overhead. Cass could only dream of such white teeth herself. She drank too much coffee and tea without brushing afterward, and never seemed to have any luck with over-the-counter whitening kits and toothpastes. “You’re sure you don’t need help getting anything?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Cass said, offering him a tight smile. The man nodded and she returned to her shopping cart, her heart racing. She tried to focus on getting the rest of her groceries, but she found she couldn’t concentrate—the store was too small, and she kept passing the honey-haired man in every aisle, her pulse quickening every time they passed each other. It really was ridiculous, the way he was making her react. What was she, fourteen? She’d seen handsome men before. Granted, it had been a long time since she’d seen one this handsome. But honestly.
After she passed the refrigerator of eggs three times without seeing them, she decided to give up. She had her milk and a box of Cheerios, that was good enough to get her through breakfast tomorrow. She’d come back to get the rest another time. Or maybe she would make the drive to Myrtle Creek and go to Safeway instead.
Brushing past the man yet again—trying her best not to look at him—she made her way to the far wall of the small store, where the deli was located. “What c
an I get you?” asked a friendly older man wearing a paper overseas cap and an apron.
“Could I get two fried chicken legs and a half-pound of potato wedges, please?” Cass said. She watched as the man wrapped the chicken in brown paper and scooped the potato wedges into a cardboard container, weighing them on a metal food scale. In the reflected glass of the deli counter, she saw movement behind her, and she turned to see the man from the cereal aisle push past. She thought for a dreaded moment that he was going to order from the deli, too, and her face grew hot at the thought of being in his proximity yet again. But he just smiled and moved away, disappearing back between the shelves.
It wasn’t until she made it to the cashier and started unloading her groceries and the two deli items onto the counter that she realized there was something extra in her cart: a box of chocolate MoonPies.
Cass looked around the store, but the man with the honey-brown hair was nowhere to be seen.
The honey-haired man didn’t leave Cass’s mind for the rest of the afternoon. He was firmly rooted in her subconscious as she sorted more books, taking care to keep a handkerchief between her fingers—still greasy from the chicken and potato wedges—and the books’ dusty spines. And he stayed there even after she gave up on book sorting for the day and went into the kitchen, where Onyx danced around her feet in anticipation of his dinner. Still full from her fried-food feast, she dished up a saucer of wet food for Onyx—who knew exactly where it should go, guiding her, screaming the whole way, over to a little mat in front of the cupboards beside the kitchen sink—and then sat at the table in the breakfast nook, gazing out at the darkening yard, trying not to think of the man from the grocery store… and failing miserably.
The box of MoonPies sat unopened on the kitchen counter behind her. It had been very thoughtful of him to grab them for her even though she’d told him not to bother. But his thoughtfulness just made it all the worse. Cass had promised herself long ago that she wasn’t going to let another man get under her skin. Not after what had happened the last time. And it had worked. For five years, it had worked. So why was this one guy affecting her so much?
Alexandra's Riddle (Northwest Magic Book 1) Page 2
