Cass stared at her, dumbstruck. Lily’s words felt like a physical blow. “Fine,” she said slowly, standing and walking over to the solarium door. “Obviously you know more about this than I do. So you won’t need lessons from me anymore, will you?”
Lily stood silent, her eyes locked on Cass. “Are you kicking me out?” she asked at last.
“I’m just saying you obviously don’t need help from me.”
Lily stared at her a moment longer. “You’re going to leave, aren’t you?”
Cass bristled. “Are you reading my thoughts again?”
“I don’t have to,” Lily spat. “Anyone could see what you’re thinking. Don’t you care at all about what’s going to happen to the woods if you leave?”
Cass squared her shoulders. “Not really.”
Lily’s mouth opened, but no response came. She stared at Cass a moment longer, then squeezed her eyes shut and shoved past her through the solarium door, down the steps into the backyard, disappearing between the trees.
Cass watched her, struggling to keep from calling out to Lily to come back. It was too late for that. None of this could be fixed. Cass had broken it beyond repair.
All I wanted was to keep him safe, she thought. But that was a lie, wasn’t it? She was only trying to protect herself. Her own feelings. To keep her own heart from breaking again, the way it had when Jeremy had hurled his poisonous words at her. She’d spent five years telling herself she was unlovable. She believed she was unlovable. She still believed it. One of these days, Matthew would realize that, and she knew with absolute conviction that when Matthew broke her heart, it would be a thousand times worse than when Jeremy had done it.
Her eyes came back into focus as she noticed movement in the trees. She thought for an instant that Lily had come back, but then she saw the flash of chartreuse between the branches. And she remembered the glimmer she’d caught out of the corner of her eye just before she fell on the trail.
“Did you trip me earlier?” she asked, glaring at Green as he watched her from the trees. “Trying to get another reaction?”
“I don’t know you anymore,” Green said, ignoring her question.
Cass rolled her eyes. “You never knew me to begin with.”
“I thought I did,” Green replied, his voice quiet and lilting like a mourning dove. “What happened to you? What happened to the girl you used to be?”
Cass’s skin prickled at his words. She ran a hand over her bare arms, chilled in the cool evening air. “Life happened,” she said.
Green shook his head sadly. “You’re the cause of your own misery.” With that, he disappeared into the trees.
“I know,” Cass whispered to the empty air.
Cass’s cardigan was folded neatly on the mat on the front porch. Matthew’s truck was nowhere to be seen. She sighed as she picked the sweater up and reached for the doorknob, but paused when something blue fluttered out of the folds of fabric in her hand. Her stomach turned as she recognized it as a tarot card. Slowly she crouched, picking the card up from the floor.
The illustration showed a bright yellow orb in the sky, two dogs—or maybe wolves?—baying at it. The caption beneath it read The Moon.
The sight of this new card reminded her of the other card she’d found weeks ago, the one on the servant’s stairs. She’d forgotten all about it. She’d never asked Emma about its meaning; there had been so much else on her mind, what with learning that Lily had the Sight and that Aunt Alexandra had been teaching her, that Cass had just shoved it into her nightstand drawer with the other two cards.
She went into the house, where she was greeted by Onyx screaming for his dinner. After dishing up a saucer of wet food for him, she went up to her room and pulled the stack of cards out, laying them on her bed and adding the newest one to the set. She didn’t want to call Emma. Em was too good at reading Cass’s emotions. She’d immediately want to know what was wrong, and she’d immediately figure out that it had something to do with Matthew McCarthy, and she’d probably give Cass the same lecture that she’d just been given by a nine-year-old child.
Instead, Cass pulled her phone out of her pocket and did a quick Google search. She started with the card she’d found tonight, The Moon.
The Moon reflects your fears, read the first website she encountered. Oftentimes these fears stem from something that occurred in the past, a traumatic experience you are afraid of reliving. The Moon frequently appears during a time of uncertainty. It urges you not to make a hasty decision, particularly one based on fear.
Cass swallowed and set the card aside, reaching for the one she’d found on the servants’ stairs. It was the Ace of Cups.
The Ace of Cups is a symbol of pure love. Love is in your heart, overflowing from within you. It’s time for you to give it freely. When the Ace of Cups appears in a reading, it oftentimes foretells of the beginning of a new relationship, be it a romantic one or a blossoming friendship.
The phone shook in Cass’s hand.
“If I were to leave you a card, it certainly wouldn’t be that one.” Green’s voice echoed in Cass’s head, high and reedy and mocking. Maybe he really did know her.
Tears were biting at her eyes again. Cass squeezed them shut and flung the phone down on her bed.
* * *
Cass spent the next two days cleaning and purging with extreme prejudice. She’d made her mind up: she was leaving. She’d shoved all those stupid cards into a drawer and vowed not to think of them again. She didn’t know what kind of life the person, creature, or entity who was leaving her the cards seemed to think she had, but she knew that it wasn’t for her, and certainly not now. She told the little voice in her head that was urging her to heed the advice of The Moon to shut up, and first thing Sunday morning, she’d called Mr. Kowalski.
“I’m not going to be ready to sign anything until all of my aunt’s affairs are settled,” she’d reminded him. But yes, she’d told him, once everything was taken care of, the house and the grounds were his.
Her stomach had immediately begun twisting itself into knots, and all day Sunday her skin erupted into gooseflesh at least once an hour. But she ignored it. The decision was made. The fae could shriek and complain and generally try to make her miserable all they wanted, but it wasn’t her problem. She knew as soon as she was out of Riddle and back in a nice, civilized urban setting, everything would be better. And she decided she’d about had enough of the West Coast. It was time to try somewhere else on for size. New York would probably be a good option. She seriously doubted she’d run into any supernatural creatures there.
She wouldn’t leave Riddle completely high and dry, of course. The idea had come to her in the night: the warren could still be protected. She just had to find it. Once that was done, she could add a provision to her sales contract that Kowalski would need to leave it and a small greenbelt around it untouched. If he tried to protest that, she would go to the Riddle City Council and request that they designate that area protected. Kowalski would still have plenty of room for his mammoth development. So what if he had to build four hundred and eighty houses instead of an even five hundred. He’d still be rolling in dough by the time they all sold.
It made total sense. A good compromise that would make everyone happy.
So why was she so miserable about it?
Monday morning she woke up feeling like she’d been run over by a bulldozer. She hadn’t slept so badly since the first night she’d been here. The nightmare about Lily and the warren replayed on a loop in her brain every time she managed to doze off. The dream was the same as it had always been, but somehow it felt worse, particularly after the argument she’d had with the girl. Just one more example of Cass ruining everything she touched.
She didn’t have work that day, so she spent the morning boxing up books and lugging them into the entryway to carry out to her car. Sometime around noon, when she staggered down the front steps, struggling under the weight of the first banker’s box full of hardbacks, she
heard a sound in the distance like a lawnmower.
Several hours later, Cass was sweating and exhausted and her sedan was packed as full of boxes as she could get it while still fitting in the driver’s seat herself. She leaned against the closed trunk, breathing out a sigh and wiping her brow. In the distance, the lawnmower was still running, though it was past three o’clock now. Someone with a big property must be manicuring their lawn. It sounded too far away to be the Fischers, though. Maybe the Kowalskis?
She looked up at the sound of a car and saw the white van of the post office driving away from the mailboxes on the opposite side of the street. She glanced around cautiously. No sign of Connie. Might as well grab the mail while it was safe. She’d done a good job of hiding from her nosy neighbor since Matthew’s arrival on Saturday, and she had no intention of breaking that streak.
She should have known that her luck wouldn’t hold out. Just as she reached her box, Connie came springing out of her front door like a jack-in-the-box. She’d probably been waiting at her front window for just this occasion.
Cass tried to avoid eye contact, pulling her mail quickly out of her aunt’s purple box. “Hi, Mrs. Fischer,” she said when Connie appeared beside her.
“I hope you’re happy,” Connie said.
This wasn’t the reaction Cass had been expecting. She’d anticipated a grilling about what Matthew McCarthy had been doing at her house all day Saturday, not immediate, outright antagonism.
“I’m sorry?” Cass said.
“How much did he give you?” Connie asked, her dark brows furrowed angrily over her green eyes.
Cass blinked. “How much did who—”
“Kowalski,” Connie snapped, her perm whipping around her face. “Your devil’s deal with Tom Kowalski.”
Cass grimaced. Word about that had already gone out? What had Kowalski done, called a town meeting to gloat about it? Considering the story Darcy had told Cass on her first day of work, maybe that wasn’t completely far-fetched…
“We haven’t signed any papers yet,” Cass said noncommittally, hoping her words would soothe her neighbor’s temper. But instead, Connie laughed derisively.
“Oh, is that so?” Connie scoffed.
“It is so,” Cass said through clenched teeth.
“Well, maybe you ought to remind Tom of that, then. Since his construction crew is down on the edge of your property ripping trees out.”
Cass stared at Connie, dumbfounded. “Excuse me?”
“Right down at the end of the road,” Connie said, thrusting her arm in the direction the lawnmower sound was coming from, her bracelets jangling. “They’ve been at it all day. And if you’re telling the truth that you haven’t signed anything yet, then you better go put a stop to it, because I know that several of those trees they pulled down are past your property line.”
Cass stared at her a moment longer, the noise she’d been hearing all morning ringing in her ears, her brain slowly processing that she wasn’t hearing a mower—she was hearing heavy machinery. She slammed her box closed and ran down the street as fast as her legs could carry her, a stack of mail clenched tightly in her right hand.
Sure enough, at the edge of where her property bordered the Kowalskis’, a giant yellow excavator was gripping a skinny pine between the teeth of its claw. As Cass stared in horror, the machine pulled the tree out like it was nothing more than a weed, its roots dropping dirt like a waterfall. The excavator dumped the pine onto a disturbingly large pile of already-felled trees.
Her stomach roiled. She had to squeeze her eyes shut and take several deep breaths through her nose to keep from heaving. She would never have expected the sight of felled trees to make her feel so sick, but something about it… it was like walking in on the scene of a massacre. The air smelled metallic, almost bloody. She could feel the anger and pain of the woods in the very air around her. The rage of the fae.
“Our retribution will be swift.”
“Stop!” Cass screamed to be heard over the sound of the machinery. The excavator, of course, did not stop. She noticed a man in a hard hat with a reflective vest standing near the tree line directing the driver of the machine, so she raced forward, nearly colliding with him as she skidded to a stop on the freshly turned earth.
The man in the hard hat looked at her in confusion, then gestured for the driver of the excavator to turn it off.
“What are you doing?” Cass yelled once it was quiet. The noise from the machinery still rang in her ears.
“Just doing some clearing for Cow Creek Development,” the man replied cheerfully.
“You’re on my land,” Cass protested, waving a clothing catalog and a stack of credit card solicitations in his face.
“I don’t think so,” said the man, his smile wavering.
“You are,” Cass replied firmly. “I haven’t signed any papers yet.”
“I understand that, ma’am, but according to Mr. Kowalski, these trees are over his property line. He wanted to get work started on the parcel he already owns.”
“He doesn’t own this,” Cass argued. “This is my property!”
“You’re going to need a surveyor to confirm that, ma’am,” said the worker, “and until then, I’m not authorized to stop work.”
Cass gawked at him. “So you’re just going to keep cutting trees down even though the ownership of this land is contested?”
“Orders are orders.”
“I’m sorry, are Kowalski’s orders a royal decree?” Cass snapped. When he just blinked at her, Cass rolled her eyes. “What happens if it turns out that the surveyor confirms that this is my property and all the trees have already been torn down?”
“Well, that’s above my pay grade,” said the man. “But I assume that in that case, you’d need to file suit for a cash settlement.”
“A cash settlement isn’t going to bring the trees back!” Cass protested.
The man shrugged at her. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about. The trees are coming down once you sell your property, anyway.”
Cass’s stomach churned again, even more violently than before. She squeezed her eyes shut once more as the man waved to the excavator and the horrible sound of machinery filled the air around her like the roar of a tsunami.
She started to walk back down to the sidewalk, but after a couple steps her knees buckled and she sank to the ground, her skin crawling like she had an army of ants climbing all over her, her stomach lurching and heaving. Her vision swam and clouded, and suddenly an image appeared in her mind, as clear as if she were looking at a video on her phone. Tom Kowalski sitting at a large, modern desk made of dark gray wood. The room he was in was brightly illuminated, monochrome apart from the blue sky through the picture window behind the desk. A utilitarian lamp glowed on the desk before him, like a spotlight on the atrocity playing out. He was gasping for breath, choking, clawing at his throat.
He couldn’t see the long, spindly fingers of the fae wrapped around his throat. Couldn’t see the sinister grins on their narrow, pointed faces as he struggled for air.
The vision cleared, and Cass jerked alert. The fistful of mail had dropped from her hands when her knees gave out and was currently splayed across the upturned earth like evidence from a crime scene, but she paid it no mind. Abandoning the papers, she ran back to the man in the hard hat.
“Where is Mr. Kowalski?” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
“What?”
“Where is he right now?” she screamed.
“I think he’s working from his home office today,” the man in the hard hat yelled back at her. She could tell by the expression he was giving her what he was thinking: that she was planning on tracking him down and chewing him out for encroaching on her property. And she definitely would be doing that—later.
First, she needed to save his life.
The Kowalski property was essentially the polar opposite of Alexandra’s. Though situated on several acres, there was hardly a tree to be seen—only nea
tly manicured hedges and blunt-topped arborvitaes forming a wall around the house. The home itself was a Mediterranean-style two-story faced in peach-colored stucco, with a red tile roof. The flat face of the building was broken up by huge windows that reflected the green lawn and blue sky back at Cass. She ran as fast as she could across the brick driveway and up the three steps to the front door.
She rang the doorbell, pressing the button down repeatedly as though that would make whoever was inside answer more quickly. For a panicked moment she feared that there was no one home but Mr. Kowalski, and if that were the case, it may be too late. But to her relief, after a minute the door swung open. A tiny, harried-looking woman with black hair cut in a sleek pixie style blinked up at Cass. “What?” she asked.
“Is Mr. Kowalski at home?” Cass asked, struggling for breath. She knew she must look and sound like a maniac, but there wasn’t time to worry about appearances right now.
“He’s busy,” the woman said, looking annoyed.
“This is an emergency. Where’s his office?” She pushed past the woman, who spluttered with outrage.
“Excuse you! You can’t just come barging your way into my house!”
My house, she said. So this must be Mrs. Kowalski. Darcy hadn’t been kidding about the age gap between Lily’s parents. She supposed this woman probably must be in her thirties, or close to it; but her looks and demeanor combined to make her seem younger. Practically like a college student.
“I’m sorry, but I need to see Mr. Kowalski immediately,” Cass said. “Where is his office?”
The woman simply sputtered some more. Cass didn’t have time for this. In her vision, the view through the picture window was definitely a ground floor vantage. It was hard to tell from the austere landscaping, but she assumed the office would probably be near the back of the house for privacy’s sake, and she dashed across the marbled entryway and down the closest hallway in search of it. A set of double doors stood at the end of the hall. Breathlessly, Cass flung them open.
Alexandra's Riddle (Northwest Magic Book 1) Page 15
