It was the girl. Tom Kowalski’s daughter. Possibly the figure she’d seen in the woods her first day in Riddle.
And definitely the girl from her dream last night.
The girl stopped in her tracks at the sight of Cass behind the front desk. They stared at each other for a moment before Cass found her voice and asked, “Can I help you?”
The girl looked down at her feet. “Um, is Ms. Hudson not working today?”
“I’m back here, Lily!” Darcy called before Cass could respond. The girl’s face lit up at the sound of her voice. She started forward, then glanced at Cass. “Um, excuse me,” she murmured before scooting between two rows of bookcases and disappearing into the children’s corner.
Cass could hear them talking a little from her post at the front desk. Lily must be a frequent patron of the library, because she and Darcy seemed to have an easy rapport. The little girl asked Darcy if there was anything she could help with for the party, and Darcy told her she could tape up the stack of paper decorations she’d brought.
Finally, after a few minutes’ quiet, Cass decided to leave her post and took the shelving cart over to the stacks. From where she stood, she could see Darcy tying off cellophane prize bags while Lily diligently pulled strips of masking tape and rolled them, placing them on the back of paper printouts of cartoon characters that Darcy had cut out. Tying off one last bag, Darcy looked up and caught Cass’s eye over the top of the shelves.
“You’re doing a great job. I’ll be right back,” Darcy said to Lily before leaving the children’s corner to come over to where Cass stood.
“She’s been here almost every day this summer,” Darcy explained in a low voice. “I’ve been letting her help out just to keep her occupied. She’s a really sweet girl, very sensitive, and I don’t think she gets a lot of attention at home, if you know what I mean.”
Cass frowned. “I think I met her yesterday, sort of. She was with her dad. He owns the property north of my aunt’s. He came over to”—she paused, not wanting to go into too much detail—“introduce himself.”
Darcy’s eyes widened a little. “That’s right! Is it true you’re living in the Russo house? I mean, I saw your last name on the staff list, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.”
“Yeah, Alexandra Russo was my great-aunt,” Cass said. “You call it the Russo house?” She chuckled wryly at the thought. A name like that made it sound like something out of a horror movie. Although, based on the things that had been happening since Cass arrived, maybe that wasn’t that far off base.
Darcy nodded. “Technically, it’s listed in the registry of historical places as the Porter house, but Alexandra Russo owned it for so long that we’ve all been calling it that for years.” She paused. “Mr. Kowalski… he didn’t say anything to you about buying it, did he?”
Cass shifted uncomfortably, turning back to the shelving cart. Why was everyone around here so obsessed with what she was going to do with that house?
“I’m sorry, it’s none of my business,” Darcy said quickly. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s okay,” Cass said with a shrug.
“It’s just…” Darcy turned to the children’s corner, where Lily was sticking more tape on the back of a paper cutout. She didn’t appear to be listening, but Darcy frowned and ushered Cass further into the stacks. “It’s just that Mr. Kowalski… hasn’t lived in Riddle for very long. And he’s not… necessarily… particularly popular among the people who live here. Don’t get me wrong!” she added quickly when Cass rolled her eyes. “I know what you’re thinking—typical small-town resistance to newcomers. But it really isn’t that, Cass, honestly. It’s… it’s just him.”
Cass felt a ripple down her back, and she stiffened. That feeling again. “What about him?” she asked.
Darcy began to pick at the sleeve of her cardigan. This must be a habit of hers, Cass realized, because there was a hole worn into the cuff. “He started off on the wrong foot as soon as he got here. My dad’s on the board at the chamber of commerce. Their meetings are open to the public, and they have this thing where if you want to have the floor, you throw a buck in the jar.” She colored at Cass’s quirked eyebrow and quickly explained, “That helps fund the programs they do in the community, it’s not just a money grab. Anyway, they’ll usually wind up with, like, ten or fifteen bucks per meeting at the most. But right after Mr. Kowalski moved here, he went to the meeting and sat there for most of it without saying anything. Then at the end, when they asked if there was any more business before they adjourned, he stood up and he threw a hundred dollar bill in the jar. And he said, ‘Starting today, things are going to change around here.’”
Cass’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?” Any charitable feelings she’d been beginning to have toward him vanished. What sort of person would move to a new town and tell the residents that he was going to change their home? His ego must be a force of nature.
Darcy nodded. “It put a lot of people’s backs up. Riddle isn’t”—she frowned, seeming to struggle to come up with the right way to phrase it—“as prosperous as it used to be. Hasn’t been for years, not since the tin mine closed and our government betters decimated the timber industry. But we’re a tight-knit town. We’re a community. Some stranger coming in and saying he wants to change everything…”
“Yeah,” Cass said, exhaling and looking back over in the direction of the children’s corner. “I’ve never been much of a community person, but even I can see how that would tick people off.” She glanced back at Darcy. “But what does that have to do with my aunt’s—my—property?”
“He’s been trying to get his hands on that land for as long as he’s been here,” Darcy said. “He’s a real estate developer. He’s got stuff going up all over the county. High-end housing developments. You know, the ones with a giant house on a tiny lot that sells for half a million dollars. He’s had plans drawn up for what he’d do to your aunt’s property for a long time now. With that many acres, he could probably cram in five or six hundred houses.”
Cass choked on nothing again. “Five or six hundred?” she spurted. “He’s insane! This town already only has a thousand people living in it. Where does he think he’s going to get the people to buy the houses?”
“He markets to Californians. That’s where he came from originally, apparently. He’s hoping to get people who are relocating, retiring to Oregon to get away from the cost of living down there. There’s quite a bit of that going on right now.”
Cass shook her head. “I can’t believe that many people would want to come here. I mean—” She broke off, not sure if her words would be offensive to Darcy.
“No, it’s okay,” Darcy said with a shrug. “I know what you mean. It’s in the middle of nowhere. But there’s the casino nearby, and Crater Lake not far off, and there’ve been so many new vineyards and wineries and craft breweries opening up. He thinks there’s a possibility to transform Riddle into a destination. But…” She trailed off, silent for a moment before finally saying, quietly, “It would be quite a transformation for the people who live here.”
Cass remembered the way Darcy had said she didn’t want to leave Riddle earlier, an odd sensation tugging at her heartstrings. It was difficult for Cass to imagine anyone being so tied to one place that they’d feel so strongly about it. But Darcy’s feelings were clear on her face. She loved this town. She was protective of it.
“Wouldn’t the city council have to approve that?” Cass asked.
Darcy smirked. “Hey, money talks. And Mr. Kowalski has a lot of money. Besides, the idea of Riddle becoming more… upscale, I guess, has appeal to a lot of people. Not everyone. But the people on the city council, anyway. After all, think of all that extra money from property taxes.” She sighed. “Besides, as they’re constantly reminding us, there’s a housing shortage in Oregon. People are coming here from all over the place. They have to go somewhere. The house prices have been driven up so much they’re barely affordable for regular Orego
nians.”
“Yeah, but how does building houses with a starting price point of half a million dollars address that?”
Darcy shrugged but didn’t answer, instead taking a book off the shelving cart and turning it over in her hands. “I’d better go finish setting up.” She set the book back down before looking at Cass. “Don’t take it out on Lily, though, huh? She’s a good kid. She has nothing to do with any of this. She’s already got it rough enough without people in town taking the circumstances of her birth out on her.”
“Do people do that?” Cass asked.
Darcy nodded grimly, her mouth a thin line, before leaving Cass alone with the shelving cart and her thoughts.
Cass sighed. She didn’t like this. But what was she supposed to do about it? Even if she didn’t sell to Kowalski, what was to prevent whomever wound up buying the house from turning around and selling it to him two months later, anyway? This was out of her hands. What happened to Riddle was not her problem. Like Darcy said, this was happening all over Oregon—all over the country, honestly. There was no sense getting worked up about it. She couldn’t change it.
From the children’s corner, she could hear the sound of Lily’s voice, asking a question of Darcy that Cass couldn’t quite make out. She felt for the girl, too, if what Darcy said about the way people in town treated her was true. No wonder she spent so much time at the library.
But that got Cass wondering—what did she do with the rest of her time? Wander the woods around Alexandra’s house, maybe? It would make sense, especially if she didn’t have a lot of friends. Cass probably would have done the same thing at that age if her Sight hadn’t made her avoid all greenbelts like the plague. She wondered for a brief moment what her own childhood would have been like if she’d been normal, if seeing things no one else could see hadn’t gotten her labeled a freak so early on. But Cass couldn’t really picture herself ever having been Miss Popularity, Sight or no. She wasn’t cut out for fitting in. One more thing she and Lily had in common.
She pulled another book off the shelving cart, kneeling on the floor to replace it on a lower shelf. Now more than ever, Cass was convinced Lily was the one she’d seen in the woods yesterday. But had she been the one who left the tarot card for Cass to find? If so, why?
And if not Lily… then who?
Darcy took her lunch early, so as to be back in time for the children’s party at one o’clock. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” she asked Cass, withdrawing her purse from the cubby behind the front desk where they’d both stowed their belongings this morning and rummaging through it for her keys.
“No problem,” Cass said. There were only a few patrons in the library at the moment—a couple people sitting at the computers, an older man reading a newspaper, a woman browsing the romance section, and Lily, still sitting quietly in the children’s corner.
“Right,” Darcy said, pulling out a set of keys with a pink plush bear keychain attached to them. “I’ll be back in a jiffy, then.”
Darcy hurried out the front door, leaving Cass sitting at the desk. Cass sighed. First weeks were always the hardest; she was sure there were things that needed doing, but Darcy hadn’t had time to give her much training today, so apart from shelving and checking patrons out, there wasn’t a lot for Cass to do with herself.
Eventually the woman browsing the romance section came to the front, giving Cass an awkward smile before bringing her stack of books to the self-checkout kiosk. Cass watched her for a moment before letting out a sigh and getting to her feet. Maybe there were some shelves in need of tidying.
She walked up and down the rows of shelves, looking for any books that seemed out of place, straightening books that had been set back crookedly and righting a handful that some wiseacre had stuck back on the shelf pages-out, spine-in. When she made it to the children’s corner, she chanced a glance over at Lily Kowalski, who was sitting at one of the tables with a piece of paper and a box of colored crayons. Open in front of her was a large hardcover book with full-page illustrations. Cass paused, looking more carefully at the book. She recognized it: Faeries by Brian Froud. Aunt Alexandra had given her a copy when she was young so she could learn the names of the different species of fae she encountered. Lily had the book open to an illustration of a pixy crouching on a mushroom cap. It appeared Lily was using the painting as a model for her own drawing, but her picture looked different. Even from this distance, it was familiar to Cass.
Before Cass could move away, the girl glanced up from her drawing, catching Cass’s eye. Cass smiled awkwardly. “Hey,” she said. “You like faeries?”
The little girl flushed. “Yeah,” she murmured. “I guess.” She moved her arm, covering the drawing.
Cass smiled again and turned away. She could be wrong, but… she could have sworn she recognized the creature Lily was drawing.
One with pointy features and a green face.
* * *
Darcy came racing back through the library doors at five minutes to one, shoveling the last of a burger and a handful of fries into her mouth.
“It’s a good thing you made it,” Cass said in a tight, low voice as Darcy practically hurled her purse back into its cubby. “There are a lot of kids back there, and I have no clue what to do with them.” When the first few kids had come in, she’d sent them automatically to the children’s corner, but she’d quickly realized that was a mistake. Unfortunately, by then the damage had already been done. Darcy hadn’t been kidding when she said that Lily was not the most popular girl in town. She’d still been working on her drawing when the first two kids, a sister and brother who appeared to be twins, had arrived for the party. Though she’d quickly thrown her arm over the top of it the way she had when she’d noticed Cass looking, she hadn’t been fast enough to distract the other children.
“Drawing more of your imaginary friends?” the boy had asked, a sneer audible in his voice.
“No,” Lily had replied softly. “I just thought the pictures in this book were pretty.”
“Prettier than what you could draw, I’m sure,” the girl had said, picking up the Brian Froud book and flipping through it. “Oh, ew!” she’d cried, aghast. “They’re all naked!”
“Not all of them,” Lily had quietly protested, her face beet red.
But the siblings paid no mind. The boy had quickly snatched the book out of his sister’s hands and begun gawking at one of the more sensual of the painted fae. “Gross,” he’d said after a moment, as if to justify himself.
Cass had rolled her eyes. Yeah, I’ll just bet it’s gross. That’s why you can’t look away, huh, kid? Meanwhile, Lily had wordlessly crumpled her drawing into her fist and stood up. She’d walked over to the blue recycling bin next to the front desk, avoiding Cass’s eyes as she tossed her drawing inside. Another group of kids came through the doors then, pushing past Lily without so much as a glance and hurrying to the children’s corner to join the twins in gawking at the Froud book. Lily had trudged back over and grabbed her backpack, moving to the table farthest away from the other kids, and that’s where she still sat when Darcy burst back in.
“Okay, all set,” Darcy said now, whirling away from the desk.
“Not quite,” Cass said, gesturing with her finger to her chin.
“Oh!” Darcy cried, hurrying back to her purse to grab a tissue to wipe her face with. “And you’d better take your lunch, too.”
“Uh,” Cass said, glancing at the noisy crowd of kids in the children’s corner, “shouldn’t I stay to assist any patrons that come in while you’re busy with that?”
Darcy waved her off. “No, no, it’s fine. The last thing I need is to get in trouble with Randy for not giving you your state-mandated lunch on time. Once I get them started on their crafts, I can leave them if someone comes in.”
Cass found herself staring at Lily again. She knew the kids would lay off her when Darcy was back there, but as soon as Darcy left them unsupervised it would start again. But there was nothing she could
do about it. She didn’t know this girl from a load of hay, anyway.
Still, she couldn’t help the way her heart had gone out to Lily when that kid had taunted her about her “imaginary friends.” Cass had heard that sentence so many times as a child that she’d lost count. But did it mean the same thing to Lily as it had to Cass? It could just be a coincidence, but the drawing had Cass wondering if maybe there was another reason Lily had been poking around the woods besides just childish boredom.
As Darcy bustled back to the children’s corner, Cass surreptitiously stooped, withdrawing the crumpled drawing from the recycling bin. She wanted to get a better look at it to see if her suspicions had been correct—but not here, where Lily or the other kids might see. She tucked the paper into her pocket and then grabbed her purse and lunch from the cubby behind the desk. Not knowing where the fast food restaurants around here were to be found, she had packed a lunch for herself in a brown paper sack. But she wasn’t going to eat it in here, with all the kids and the noise. It was a sunny day, and she’d seen upon arriving this morning that the Riddle City Park sprawled along next to the library building. There were sure to be some picnic tables she could sit at to eat her lunch.
She left the library, looking around. To the east of the library stood the police station and, across a small stub street, the town community center. Further to the south were a set of tennis courts, and then, uncomfortably close to the courts, the town’s wastewater treatment plant. Cass decided to go west, moving away from the plant along a trail that bisected the park’s green grass. At the end of the path she could see a body of water, and as she drew closer, she saw a sign indicating that this was Cow Creek. A running trail snaked along parallel to the banks of the creek, and a few worn benches were bolted to the ground beside it. She sank onto one, setting her purse and bag lunch on the seat beside her. She breathed out, closing her eyes and enjoying the moment of quiet… Or, mostly quiet. Just audible over the burble of the running water was the light, tinkling sound of laughter—laughter of the non-human variety. A pair of water sprites were playing in the creek not far from where Cass was sitting. She sighed and opened her eyes, reaching for the paper sack. There really was no escaping these things here, was there?
Alexandra's Riddle (Northwest Magic Book 1) Page 5
