Alexandra's Riddle (Northwest Magic Book 1)

by Elisa Keyston

  “Thanks,” Matthew said when she handed him the mug. “Some warmth for the road. It’s chilly out there.”

  “Fall finally showed up,” Cass agreed.

  Matthew took a swallow of his coffee. “This house is huge. I can’t believe your aunt kept it up all by herself.”

  “Tell me about it,” Cass said. “I’ve been working on sorting out her estate, but it’s overwhelming.”

  “You probably have some brownies and household elves running around helping you, at least,” Matthew said.

  Cass felt her cheeks grow hot. “Uh, no,” she said. Not anymore, anyway.

  “Really? That surprises me. My sister Laney volunteers at the Paine Estate, and the fae there always help out with the chores. I guess I figured it would be the same everywhere with a warren. You know, an exchange—the caretaker watches over the woods, and the fae help the caretaker with their home. Or museum, in Laney’s case.”

  “Maybe it’s different everywhere,” Cass suggested. She didn’t want to tell him that she’d chased the brownies out on her first day here. It seemed his sisters had a drastically different philosophy on fae than she did. They seemed to be a lot more at ease with them, based on Matthew’s own comfortable acceptance. But his words did have her wondering: if Alexandra had accepted her role as caretaker, is that why she’d let the fae into her house? Sort of a mutual benefit?

  But she had to have known Cass would never accept a role like that for herself. Alexandra knew Cass couldn’t stand having fae too close to her; it was why she’d given her the tip about the colander. Had she just assumed Cass would outgrow her aversion to the supernatural? That had clearly been a mistake. And where did it leave Cass now?

  Cass was pulled from her thoughts by movement in her periphery. She looked up just in time to see Onyx stroll into the kitchen. Tucker, who had been standing next to Matthew with his chin resting on the table, looking mournfully around for a bit of food to snatch, froze. Onyx hesitated in the doorway, the long black fur on his tail silently puffing out. He stared at Tucker, his green eyes wide as saucers. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he strutted directly over to the newcomers.

  “Be nice, Tuck,” Matthew said, holding the dog’s collar.

  Tucker took a step back, but Matthew’s grip on his collar was firm. Completely unconcerned by the size of the canine before him, Onyx wrapped himself around the dog’s ankles. As Cass watched, Tucker began to tremble.

  Cass giggled in spite of herself. “He really is afraid,” she whispered.

  “I told you,” Matthew replied, grinning.

  Onyx rubbed himself against the dog’s legs a couple more times, then went over to Matthew and wrapped himself around his ankles for good measure.

  “Wow, you weren’t this lovey-dovey to me the first day I was here,” Cass said to the cat. Onyx shot a look at her that seemed to say, I wasn’t sure if you were going to throw me out on my ear the way you had the brownies. She flushed defensively before realizing how preposterous it was to be reacting to what she imagined her cat was thinking.

  As she watched him, Onyx turned his nose up and strolled over to his food dish by the sink. He took a few bites of kibble while Tucker cowered. Cass struggled to suppress her giggles once again when Tucker, still cowering, raised his front paw weakly to point at the cat, as if to say, Excuse me, there is a cat over there.

  After a couple mouthfuls, Onyx decided that he was bored with this interaction and vacated the kitchen once more. Tucker collapsed in a heap the second the cat disappeared.

  Cass burst out laughing, and Matthew laughed along with her.

  “I told you,” Matthew said, trying to catch his breath. “This dog is a marshmallow.”

  “You weren’t kidding! He’s, like, ten times Onyx’s size and he was scared stiff! Poor Puppy Tucker,” Cass cooed, reaching over to stroke the dog’s soft ears. “Life is rough, huh?” He looked at her with his sad brown eyes, as if in agreement.

  “Well, let’s get a move on before the cat comes back and Tucker goes catatonic,” Matthew said, downing the last of his coffee and standing up to set the mug in the sink. “Hopefully we won’t find anything too terrifying out there, such as—Heaven forbid—a raccoon. Or, worse, a deer. Tucker is petrified of deer. I think he thinks they’re bigger Dobermans, and he’s not sure whether they want him to join their pack or kick his butt.”

  Cass laughed once again. But this time her laughter brought with it a sense of foreboding that she couldn’t quite shake. “Hopefully we won’t find anything too terrifying out there.”

  “I know things you don’t know.”

  “These woods are anything but safe.”

  She refused to let her worry show. But she still found herself thinking, It will be a good day if the worst thing we find out there is a deer.

  * * *

  Matthew clipped Tucker’s leash back onto his collar and slung his hiking backpack over his shoulders once more as Cass opened the kitchen door and gestured him down the side steps into the yard. He looked around the overgrown garden with interest. They stopped at the edge of the yard where the various forest trails forked off.

  “Which way should we go?” Matthew asked. Tucker looked back and forth between them, his stub wagging gently beneath his flannel coat.

  “I already went down that one. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary,” Cass said, gesturing to the path that led to the rose garden and into the woods beyond. She shuddered at the memory of her first night in Riddle. She chose not to mention the faery ring that had bewitched her.

  “Okay, so should we just work from left to right?” Matthew suggested, pointing to the leftmost trail. “I’m guessing most of these will wrap around in a circle, so we’ll probably come back on one of these other paths.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Cass agreed.

  They made their way down the uneven path into the woods. The trees were beginning to turn in earnest now, reds and oranges and yellows seeping down from the tops of the trees like a bleeding watercolor. The colors stood in bright contrast against the snatches of pale gray sky peeking between the branches overhead.

  “So, how are your feet doing?” Matthew asked out of the blue. Cass looked at him in confusion and he laughed. “You know, that whole itchy thing. You sick of Riddle yet?”

  Cass considered this. Truth be told, she was actually less sick of this little town than she would have expected. When she’d arrived a few months ago, she’d been eager to get Alexandra’s belongings sorted quickly so as not to spend any more time here than was necessary. But it had been a couple weeks now since she’d done any purging in earnest. There was her job at the library, and her lessons with Lily after work and on weekends, and of course trying to solve the mystery of the warren… she didn’t have a lot of time. That was what she told herself, anyway; but if she was being honest, she’d have to admit that she didn’t feel overly enthused about getting it done quickly. The longer she was here, the harder it was for her to imagine not seeing Darcy every day, or Lily, or…

  Other people.

  She sighed. “Not just yet,” she said at last.

  “That’s good to hear,” Matthew replied cheerfully. “It’s rough being the new guy in a small town. It’s been kind of nice to have someone to go through the growing pains with.”

  Cass felt her face grow hot, warmth spreading across her cheeks out to her ears. She wasn’t sure how to answer, but fortunately Matthew kept talking so she didn’t have to.

  “You said before that you’ve moved a lot. Where all have you lived?” he asked.

  “All over the place, really. Up until sixth grade my family lived outside Dayton, Ohio. Then we moved to Chicago, and my parents still live there.”

  “Where’d you go to college?”

  “University of Illinois at Chicago for undergrad. Then I got my MLIS at the University of Washington in Seattle,” Cass said.

  “Is that when your West Coast wandering began?”

  “Yeah,” Cass
replied. “I’ve lived in San Diego, San Bernardino, Sacramento, San Jose… lots of S cities.”

  “Geez, you really can’t stay in one place, can you?” said Matthew. “What are you, the Littlest Hobo? Is there a voice that keeps on calling you?”

  Cass’s eyebrows rose. “Excuse me? The what now?”

  Matthew grinned. “You don’t know the Littlest Hobo? Canada’s answer to Lassie?”

  Cass laughed aloud. “I missed that one.”

  “My grandparents live in Saskatchewan,” Matthew explained, “so we used to watch it when we’d go visit them in the summer. My sisters and me. Much better show than Lassie. It’s got a German Shepherd instead of a Collie. White and black with reverse mask markings. We had a dog like that growing up—he was a Malamute mix—so when my sisters and I were little, we always pretended that the Hobo was Beau. That he kept on wandering until he found our family, and then he decided we were too cool to leave and decided to settle down.”

  He had a wistful expression on his face as he spoke, and Cass smiled at this glimpse at Matthew’s childhood.

  “Tell me more about your sisters,” she said after a moment. “What are they like?”

  “Annoying,” Matthew replied bluntly, making Cass laugh again. “No, seriously,” he protested. “They’re always rubbing it in that they have the Sight and I don’t. Even now that we’re adults. Do you know what it’s like to be bullied by your kid sisters?”

  “I wouldn’t, being an only child and all,” Cass teased. “But I can imagine it probably would be annoying.”

  Tucker stopped to mark a tree they were passing. He’d been doing that every fifty feet or so. “He needs to leave a trail in case we get lost. Then he can lead us home,” Matthew explained.

  “Ah,” said Cass.

  After a moment, Matthew said in a more serious tone, “Honestly, my sisters are pretty cool. I think you’d like them. My middle sister, Laney, is about a year and a half younger than me. Her Sight didn’t use to be as strong as Taryn’s, but it’s improved since the fire, bizarrely.”

  “Wait,” Cass said, looking at him in confusion. “What do you mean not as strong?”

  “Our grandma used to compare it to regular vision, right? Sometimes you have 20/20 vision, and sometimes you need glasses. Taryn’s got 20/20, and you seem to as well. But Laney… Growing up, Laney could see, but she said it was blurry. Like walking around without your glasses. Or your contacts, in my case.”

  “I didn’t know that was possible,” Cass confessed. “Although I didn’t know anyone else with the Sight until I moved here. Apart from my aunt.” She’d learned so much since she moved here, more than she ever could have expected. “But her vision changed?”

  “Yeah, a few years ago.”

  “During the forest fire?” Cass paused, remembering their conversation at the Fall Fest. “You said then that the hollow tree protected the town. Do you mean the warren?”

  “Yeah,” Matthew said. He ran a hand through his honey-brown hair self-consciously. “I felt like a class-A idiot when I blurted that out last week. But I guess that worked out, didn’t it?” Cass smiled back at him, and he went on, “Anyway, Laney volunteers at the museum. The Paine Estate, where the hollow tree is. Something happened during the fire. We were getting reports on the news that the flames were getting close to the museum grounds, and Laney went running out there like… well, like the impulsive redhead that she is. Like she was going to fight the fire all by herself. But maybe she did after all. I’ve never been able to get a straight answer out of her, but Paul said—oh, Paul’s her husband—anyway, he said it was like the warren called out to her that night. And after that, her Sight got clearer. Like the fae wanted to reward her or something.”

  “Wow,” Cass said. “Like a faery blessing?”

  “Yeah,” Matthew said. “So you’ve heard that term, too? I wasn’t sure if it was something our grandma made up.”

  “My aunt had a book about it,” Cass explained. “I found it when I was sorting out her library.”

  “Do you have one?” Matthew asked.

  Cass hesitated. “Have what?”

  “You know, a faery blessing.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it a blessing,” Cass admitted.

  Matthew let out a laugh that echoed off the trees. Tucker turned to look at him over his shoulder.

  “Can’t be that bad, can it?” Matthew asked when the laughter subsided.

  Cass shrugged. “It’s a bit of a mixed bag.”

  “Can’t be worse than Laney’s.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Cass arched her eyebrow. “What’s Laney’s, then?”

  “She’s a seamstress, and her mood affects her sewing. Not like the stitches come out bad if she’s cranky or something,” he added when Cass gave him a confused look. “More like… one time when I was in high school, I asked her to fix the trousers of my band uniform for me. She was so annoyed with me for asking her to do it that the next time I wore them, I fell down the bleachers and broke my leg.”

  Cass stopped in her tracks. “What?”

  Matthew nodded. “Yup. If she sews when she’s in a good mood, it will bring whoever wears the clothes or whatever good luck. But if she’s in a bad mood… you’re better off just chucking whatever it was into the incinerator.”

  Cass stood there blinking, trying to process what he’d just told her. And then she found herself once again wondering if these talents would be more accurately described as faery curses. “Well, what about Taryn?” she said at last.

  “Taryn’s isn’t too bad. She sometimes gets memories from objects she touches. I could see how that could get a little annoying, but it’s never seemed to bother her all that much. The fae must have liked her better than Laney when she was born, since her Sight was more clear, too.”

  Cass wasn’t sure if she’d consider that a plus, but Matthew seemed to.

  “But you don’t have any Sight at all?” she asked him.

  He shook his head glumly. “But I think—well, never mind. It’s probably silly.”

  “What?” Cass asked.

  He hesitated a moment, looking directly at Cass. His warm brown eyes locked with hers. “I don’t have the Sight, but I think I might have a blessing,” he said at last.

  “Really?” Cass said, trying to ignore the way the intensity of his gaze had melted her insides.

  “Yeah. Sometimes I… well, I get these feelings. That I need to go somewhere or do something. Overpowering feelings. Like an instinct of some kind, but stronger. That’s why I’ve always wondered…” He trailed off and then shrugged. “Never mind. It’s probably stupid.”

  Cass took a step closer to him, putting her hand on his shoulder. “It’s not stupid,” she said firmly. “I… That is, mine is… kind of similar.”

  He smiled tentatively at her. “Yeah?” he said, but to her relief he didn’t push it. He left it to her to decide whether she was going to share her own story with him.

  She was tempted, but she found she couldn’t quite bring herself to form the words. Not yet.

  “Yeah,” she said softly.

  He held her gaze a moment longer, a gentle smile teasing the corners of his lips. Then the two of them continued down the wooded trail together.

  * * *

  Around noon they stopped in a clearing between the trees to eat lunch. A fallen tree lay on the edge of a small meadow, the tall spring grass turned brown by the summer sun, the dried remnants of wildflowers peeking in clumps between the straw-colored blades. Cass and Matthew found a spot on the fat trunk of the fallen tree where orange mushrooms hadn’t yet begun to grow, and the two of them sat, Matthew slinging his backpack onto the ground and unzipping it. He pulled out a large empty Tupperware container, which he filled with cool, clear water from a Thermos. He placed that on the ground for Tucker to drink out of. The clouds had mostly burned off by now, and sun filled the clearing. Cass had stripped off her cardigan and Matthew had pulled off his own jacket as well as Tucker’s flannel c
oat. He pulled two paper sacks out of the backpack, handing one to Cass, and then shoved the sweater and jackets into the leftover space of his backpack.

  Cass peeked inside the paper sack and grinned. Matthew had packed a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, along with an apple and a small bag of Kettle chips.

  “Nothing wrong with the classics,” Matthew said, and Cass laughed.

  Tucker loomed over Cass as she ate her sandwich until she gave him her crusts. Then, once he realized there was nothing left for him, he began to snuffle around the log while Matthew pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened up the uView video app.

  “I’m surprised you can get a signal out here,” Cass said.

  “You’re not that far out of town,” Matthew replied distractedly. Then he turned his phone around for Cass to see. “Here. For your erudition.”

  Cass took the phone and pressed play on the video. It was the opening credits for The Littlest Hobo, the Canadian Lassie. Cass laughed as she watched the German Shepherd running across a field with a hunting rifle and flying in a hot air balloon.

  “That song is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day,” she said, handing Matthew his phone back.

  “You’re welcome,” Matthew said cheerfully.

  Cass laughed again, taking a bite out of her apple. After she swallowed, she asked, “So you said earlier that your grandma knows about the Sight. Does she have it, too?”

  “She did. She passed away a few years back.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Cass said.

  “No worries,” Matthew replied.

  “Was she the one who lived in Saskatchewan?”

  Matthew shook his head. “No, that’s my grandma on my mom’s side. She and my maternal grandpa are both still living. My paternal grandparents lived in Foreston, but they both passed while I was in college. They were quite a bit older than my mom’s parents. My dad was a change-of-life baby. It was rough on my sisters especially, though. Grams had always been someone they could turn to for advice about…” He trailed off and looked at her meaningfully.