Alexandra's Riddle (Northwest Magic Book 1)

by Elisa Keyston

  * * *

  Cass followed Matthew over to the large pole tent, nestled among some trees near the creek. She could hear the sound of music coming from inside, drowning out the sounds of the carnival as they drew closer. A portable picket fence was set up around the pole tent, allowing for outdoor seating in the pleasant evening breeze beside the running water. As they passed one of the picnic tables inside the fence on their way to the entrance, Cass heard a cheery voice call out her name. She turned her head and saw Darcy waving at her. She sat at a table with an older man and woman that Cass assumed must be her parents. Her father had snowy white hair, but her mother’s hair was dark like Darcy’s, with just a few threads of silver running through it. Her mother sat in a black self-propelled wheelchair with bright blue trim, a matching blue floral backpack hanging from its handles.

  She and Matthew waved back at her before entering the pole tent. Strings of lights crisscrossing over their heads gave the tent a cheery golden glow, enhanced by the setting sun streaming in through the cut-out windows in the canvas walls. Tall black speakers amplified the sounds of the band playing across from the entrance, a hipster folk trio playing a fiddle, a small bongo drum set, and a mandolin.

  “Kind of loud in here,” Matthew commented, leaning toward Cass and raising his voice.

  “Do you want to sit on the patio?” Cass yelled back.

  Matthew nodded. “I’ll get us drinks. Do you have a preference?”

  “Cider is good if they have it. I’ll find us a table.”

  Cass pushed through one of the side flaps out to the fenced-off area where they’d seen Darcy. The patio area was so full that Cass thought they might be out of luck, but then she noticed an upturned barrel with a square piece of plywood set across it, just large enough for two people to sit. She hurried over, sitting on one of the stools and setting her purse on the one beside it to claim the seats.

  A moment later she was joined at the table by Darcy, her gap-toothed grin wide. “Hey,” she said, shoving Cass’s purse across the plywood tabletop and perching on the edge of Matthew’s stool. “How’s the date going?”

  Cass rolled her eyes. “It’s not a date.”

  “Mm-hmm. Sure.”

  “Seriously,” Cass said in a low voice. “We’ve been babysitting Lily Kowalski for most of the day.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Darcy replied, her voice rising in a disbelieving squeak.

  “Nope. You didn’t expect her parents to actually spend a day with her, did you?”

  Darcy sighed. “I suppose not. So where is she now?”

  “She went off with another little girl and her family,” Cass said, hoping the worry she still felt wasn’t overly apparent in her voice or on her face. “Amelia Reynolds.”

  “Oh, they live on my street!” Darcy said cheerfully. “They’re nice. I wish I could get them to come to events at the library more. Community outreach is a you-know-what.” She shook her head, then gave Cass a sly grin. “So, you’re technically not Lily-sitting anymore. There’s still time to turn this non-date around, you know.” When Cass squirmed uncomfortably, Darcy laughed. “Fine, fine, I’ll lay off. I wanted to tell you—my dad and I found some stuff about your aunt’s property.”

  Cass sat up straight, her eyes widening. “Really?”

  “Yup. We still have a couple boxes to go through to make sure there’s nothing else, and then I’ll bring it all to you at work next week. Are you scheduled on Monday?”

  “No, I’m off on Monday,” said Cass.

  “It’ll have to be Wednesday, then—I’m off on Tuesday.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice, and added, “I don’t know what you were looking for, but there’s some crazy stuff in some of those articles. Your aunt’s property has quite the storied history.”

  Goosebumps rippled across Cass’s arms. You don’t know the half of it, she thought.

  “Hey, Darcy,” Matthew said just then, approaching the table with two mason jars full of amber liquid. “How’s it going?”

  “Good, good. I won’t keep you two, I just had a work question for Cass,” Darcy said quickly.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to join us?” He looked around for another stool, but there were none to be had.

  “Seriously, I’m sure. We’re going to be heading out soon,” Darcy replied, gesturing to where her parents were still sitting with her thumb. “Have a good night, you two!” She gave them a little wave and squeezed away between the tables.

  When she was gone, Matthew turned back to Cass and gave her a conspiratorial grin. “Is it rude that I’m sort of relieved?” he whispered, sliding Cass’s cider over to her across the plywood tabletop. “I mean, Darcy is nice. I just was hoping we could finally get some one-on-one time, you know what I mean?”

  Cass couldn’t respond. Those words made her heart leap clear into her throat, cutting off access to her vocal cords. Stop it, Cass, her mind warned. Seriously, stop it—

  Her face burning, she took a long sip of her cider and chose to ignore her inner voice of reason for the evening. The cider tasted good, sweet without being too sweet.

  “So, how are you settling in so far? Are you liking Riddle?” Matthew asked, and Cass felt herself relax at the change of subject.

  “It’s definitely different than I expected,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “I guess I’m not used to small-town living.”

  Matthew laughed. “You kind of give off that vibe. Where did you live before?”

  “Most recently San Jose, in California. But I’ve lived all over the place. Mostly the West Coast since college, but before that my family lived in Chicago.”

  “You move a lot?”

  “Yeah,” Cass admitted. “I can never seem to stay in one place for more than a year or so. Aunt Alexandra used to say I had itchy feet.”

  Matthew laughed. “So, what about Riddle? You think you’ll stay here awhile? Or are your feet already getting itchy?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Cass said noncommittally. “But how about you? You haven’t been here that long yourself. How are you liking Riddle?”

  “It’s a nice little town,” Matthew said. “I mean, I’ve only been here two months, so things could change. But I have a good feeling about it so far. I’m definitely a small-town guy, though. The town I grew up in wasn’t that much bigger than Riddle. I think the biggest city I’ve lived in is Eugene, and that’s not exactly a metropolis.”

  “Have you always lived in Oregon?” Cass asked.

  “I’m technically from Washington, but Foreston—the town where my family lives—is just over the Columbia River, so not that far off.”

  “Foreston,” Cass repeated. “That name sounds familiar.”

  “It was one of the towns affected by the fire in the Gorge a couple years ago,” Matthew said.

  “That’s right. I heard about it on the news. Was your family okay?”

  Matthew nodded. “Luckily, the fire only brushed the outskirts of our town. We were worried about my parents’ house for a while there, but it turned out okay. The hollow tree protected us,” he said with a laugh.

  “The hollow tree?” asked Cass.

  Matthew colored and shook his head. “It’s nothing. Just a dumb superstition in my town.” He hesitated, as if weighing whether to say more; but just then, movement out of the corner of her eye caught Cass’s attention, and she looked away from Matthew. In the low branches extending over the patio, Cass noticed a couple fae scurrying. Wood sprites by the look of it. They had long, narrow heads the gray-brown color of bark, with soft mottling around the cheeks and noses. Cass would have looked away, except she noticed a third fae with them—Green.

  What is he up to now?

  “Um—so, how’s Tucker taking the move?” she stammered, trying to keep her distraction from showing. She’d just given Lily a lecture on not reacting to Green, and here she was doing the same thing. She knew better than this.

  “I think he likes it better here,” Matthew said. “We lived i
n an apartment in Eugene, so he didn’t have a yard. I’d have to walk him in the morning, then run home while the kids were at lunch to let him out, and then walk him a couple more times in the afternoon and evening. That got old real quick, I’m telling you. But I was able to rent a house here, so he at least has a yard to run around in and burn off his energy.” He rolled his eyes and added, “Hopefully he doesn’t drive the neighbors too insane when he runs around in circles barking at the sky.”

  Cass laughed, imagining the giant Doberman galloping around Matthew’s backyard, his ears flopping about him, trying not to trip over his own paws.

  Her laughter was interrupted by an acorn dropping down from the tree directly onto Matthew’s head—with a bit more force than that of gravity alone.

  Matthew flinched, blinking as the acorn bounced down onto the table in front of him, then looked up at the tree. “What the heck?” he said.

  Cass followed his gaze and saw Green sitting between the two wood sprites as they laughed, a noise like the squeaking vocalization of a Western gray squirrel. Cass narrowed her eyes at him, and the fae gave her a sly, angular grin.

  “Squirrel fight?” Cass suggested weakly, looking back at Matthew.

  He snorted. “I can see that. ‘That’s my acorn!’” he mimicked in a high squeaky voice. “‘Nuh-uh! It’s mine! Take that!’ And then he throws it at him, misses, and the rest is history.”

  Cass couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Now it’s no one’s acorn, little morons,” she said once she caught her breath.

  Matthew shrugged. “Squirrels are definitely not known for their deductive reasoning skills.”

  As he spoke, a small clump of dried oak leaves dropped down on him. This didn’t have the force of the acorns, but Cass recognized the origin all the same. They fanned out as they fell, some landing on Matthew’s shoulders and in his hair, and a particularly large leaf dropping neatly into his mason jar of beer.

  “Oh, my gosh,” Cass hissed in exasperation.

  Matthew laughed, brushing the leaves off himself. “Man, those squirrels really have it in for me,” he said. He looked up at the tree and called, “I’m didn’t mean it! Squirrels are the smartest! You’ve got more gray cells than Hercule Poirot!”

  “Little brats ruined your drink,” Cass muttered, picking the leaf out of the amber liquid and pointedly not looking up even as she heard Green’s tinny hoots of laughter above her head.

  “It’s fine. It wasn’t all that great to begin with,” Matthew admitted.

  “Maybe we should sit somewhere else,” Cass suggested. “We could go inside. The squirrels can’t bother us there.”

  “Unless they chew a hole through the roof of the tent and drop down on us like little squirrel cat burglars,” Matthew said.

  Cass shook her head. “Please do not even say that in jest,” she replied, and Matthew chuckled.

  “Wouldn’t put it past them?”

  “Definitely not.” Especially not these “squirrels.” She shot one last glare at Green and picked up her cider, following Matthew back inside the pole tent.

  The hipster folk trio had changed their instruments, swapping the mandolin for a banjo and the bongo drums for a wooden kitchen chair which the drummer rhythmically hit with drumsticks along the top rail and in between the decorative wooden spokes that made up the chair back.

  “They have an interesting repertoire,” Cass commented as she and Matthew sat at an empty table. Inside the tent, actual tables had been set up in lieu of the upturned barrels, and small votive candles burned inside mason jars.

  “They do, but it has a cool sound,” Matthew replied.

  The music from the band was too loud to allow for conversation, but it felt comfortable, somehow, just sitting quietly together and watching the trio perform, the banjo player at one point setting down his instrument and grabbing an extra pair of drumsticks, he and the drummer banging out an intense rhythm on the wooden chair while the fiddler moved her bow across the strings at a frantic pace. Cass got so wrapped up in their performance that for two whole minutes, she almost forgot about Green altogether.

  She didn’t even notice the mason jar with the candle inside sliding closer to Matthew’s hand, resting in a gentle curl on the tabletop, until the hot glass connected with his skin. He let out a curse along with a hiss of pain, recoiling away from the candle.

  “Are you okay?” Cass asked, her eyes widening as she saw the flash of green disappear over the side of the table.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Matthew said, shaking his head dismissively. “I didn’t even see that thing. It’s my fault. Geez, I’m so clumsy tonight.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Cass said, glaring at the fae as he skittered between the feet of a middle-aged man walking by and disappeared out one of the tent’s side flaps. “Do you need ice?”

  “No, no,” Matthew said quickly. “I’m fine.”

  “Well, put your hand on this at least,” she said, sliding her half-empty cider over to him. It wasn’t as cool as it had been, but it was better than nothing. “And if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

  With purpose, she marched out the flap that Green had disappeared through. This door led back out into the main fair rather than the patio area. The sun had dipped low enough on the horizon to cast the park in semi-darkness, but it still only took a moment to locate the fae, sitting in the branches of a nearby tree.

  She barely paid any mind to the crowd of passersby other than giving a cursory glance to make sure no one was paying attention to her. Then she stormed over to the tree and put her hands on her hips. “What is wrong with you? Why are you picking on Matthew so much?” she demanded.

  Green spread his long-fingered hands and gave her an innocent look. “I was just trying to get a reaction,” he said.

  “Well, you got one. Are you happy now?”

  Green smiled deviously. “You’re not the one I was trying to get the reaction out of.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cass asked.

  But Green didn’t get a chance to answer. Behind Cass, Matthew cleared his throat.

  Cass whirled around, wild-eyed. “Matthew,” she stammered, “look, I know this probably looks crazy, me standing here yelling at a tree. But I can explain…” How she was going to explain, she had no idea, but she had to come up with something, fast.

  “Wait,” Matthew said, holding a hand up. Too late. She braced herself for what was inevitably coming next: “You don’t need to explain, but actually, I think I need to get going,” followed by weeks of awkward avoidance until she finally left town. If she was lucky, he might not tell the rest of the town she was insane, at least not until she was gone. Maybe it was for the best. After all, she was clearly getting in way over her head here. Matthew deciding to break it off now would probably be the best outcome for everyone. Then she could leave Riddle behind with no regrets.

  If only the thought of that didn’t sting so much.

  “Before you say anything else, can I ask you a question?” Matthew said, an odd tone in his voice, suddenly serious and almost shy. “I know this is going to sound crazy, and I understand if you never want to talk to me again after this and write me off as a total lunatic. But I have to know.”

  Cass stared at him, her head quirked in confusion. This conversation wasn’t going in the direction she’d expected. “What is it?”

  “You…” He hesitated, then blurted it out. “You don’t happen to see faeries, do you?”

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” Emma shrieked. “The grocery store guy knows about the fae?”

  Cass hadn’t been able to wait until the morning. It hadn’t mattered that it was after midnight on the east coast by the time Cass got home from the Fall Fest. She’d needed to talk to her best friend immediately. Still in a state of shock, she’d shoved the door open and sat right down on the foot of the stairs to call Emma. It was impossible. Matthew knew about the fae. Matthew believed in fae.

  When he’d asked her
that question outside the biergarten, she hadn’t been able to respond. She just stood there, silently opening and closing her mouth over and over, her mind such a whirl of confusion and disbelief that she was pretty sure that her brain had shut off everything except basic motor function. Finally, distantly, she processed the sound of Green in the tree behind her shrieking and whooping with laughter. No wonder the little monster had been following her all day, goading Matthew like that. He knew. He had to have known.

  “Have you tried asking him?”

  “Hang on,” Cass had finally managed to stammer out. “Are you telling me… are you saying you believe in fae?”

  “Never mind,” Matthew said quickly, starting to turn away. “I’m sorry, never mind. I can’t believe I said that—”

  “Wait!” Cass cried, rushing over and grabbing his hand to keep him from leaving. Matthew froze, glancing down at their clasped hands in surprise. Cass quickly let go, her face burning. “Don’t go,” she said softly. “I just… no one ever believes.”

  They stood a moment in silence, Matthew’s eyebrows raised halfway up his forehead. “So… it’s true? You can see them?”

  “I can,” Cass whispered. “Can you?”

  “I can’t, but my sisters can,” Matthew replied.

  Cass blinked at him in surprise. “Seriously?”

  “Yup.”

  She blinked again. “You can’t see them yourself, but you believed when your sisters said that they’re real?”

  He gave her an odd look. “Of course I did. Why shouldn’t I? They’re my sisters.”

  Cass had suddenly found that tears were biting behind her eyes. He’d believed his sisters that fae existed, even though he couldn’t see them himself. He believed Cass. Cass’s own parents had never believed that the fae were anything but her own imaginary game, something that was cute when she was a child but worrisome as she got older. She’d had to learn to hide, to keep secrets from her own parents, to keep them from trying to send her to a psychologist. Only Aunt Alexandra’s intervention on her behalf—and her warning to Cass to be more careful with whom she shared her secret—had kept them from thinking she was insane.