Alexandra's Riddle (Northwest Magic Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Author's Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  There's More to Come!

  Also by Elisa Keyston

  Other Books from Caleo Press and Animus Ferrum Publishing

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  ALEXANDRA’S RIDDLE: A Northwest Magic Novel

  Copyright © 2019 by Elisa Keyston.

  Published by Caleo Press.

  www.caleopress.com

  Cover design by Najla Qamber Designs.

  www.najlaqamberdesigns.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, brands, trademarks, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.

  Riddle is a real town located in Douglas County, Oregon. Living in Oregon myself, I can’t count the times I’ve passed the “Riddle, Next Exit” sign on the freeway and imagined what sort of magic might take place in a town with such a curious name. I hope the citizens of Riddle don’t mind that I borrowed their hometown for the setting of my book!

  I tried to keep the setting as true to life as possible, but due to plot constraints, there were some things I had to take liberties with. As one example, the Riddle Public Library closed due to lack of funding in April of 2017, and subsequently reopened in June with an all-volunteer staff—there are no paid librarians like Cass and Darcy. I hope readers will pardon this inaccuracy, as well as the myriad others that I’m sure riddle (sorry, I couldn’t resist) this book. Please remember that this is a work of fiction, and that all the characters and situations are products of my own imagination.

  If you would like to help support the real Riddle Library and ensure it remains open for future generations to enjoy, please visit their website at RiddleLibrary.org.

  Cass frowned, shielding her eyes against the glare of the late-summer sun as she peered up at the house before her. The looming Queen Anne Victorian looked more weathered than it had the last time she’d seen it—the siding was peeling, and the vibrant lavender-and-white paint she remembered so vividly from her childhood had faded to a dull gray—but it still looked majestic, standing there nestled between firs and pines and oaks so ancient that their trunks were too massive for a person to get their arms around.

  She sighed, running her fingers through her perpetually-tangled hair. It wasn’t a bad house, really. Despite the paint and the thick blanket of needles and moss on the roof, the home had been well maintained. Nothing a little T.L.C. couldn’t take care of.

  No, the biggest problem—for Cass, at least—was that the house was immense. Far too large for one person to have to deal with. The main part of the house was three stories tall if you counted the finished attic; and, of course, there was also the turret with its observatory and the glass-walled solarium on the south end of the house. How Aunt Alexandra had managed to maintain a home of this magnitude, Cass had no idea.

  Under her breath, she muttered, “I didn’t sign up for this.” Then she pulled the keys that her great-aunt’s attorney had given her out of her jeans pocket and moved to unlock the front door.

  As she stood there jiggling the keys in the lock, struggling to force the stiff deadbolt to turn, a familiar sensation prickled across her skin, leaving a wave of gooseflesh in its wake. That ominous, crawling feeling in the pit of her stomach that she knew all too well. She paused, staring at the keys in her hand without really seeing them. “Now what?” she murmured.

  As if in response, a cheery voice from behind her called, “Yoo-hoo! Are you Cassandra?”

  Cass turned her head to see a middle-aged woman with a perky blonde perm about twenty-five years out of style waving exuberantly. Not exactly your typical harbinger of doom, Cass thought wryly. But then again, her premonitory feelings had never exactly been predictable—as contradictory as that seemed.

  “Uh, it’s Cass,” she corrected as the woman bustled across the overgrown yard and up the steps onto the porch. “But yeah.”

  “Wonderful. We’ve been expecting you. My name’s Connie Fischer, I live across the street.” She stuck out her hand expectantly. Cass stared at her for a minute, her own hands full of doorknob and keys; but when Connie didn’t seem to get the message, Cass gave up on the lock and reached to shake her hand.

  Connie had jewel-encrusted rings on every finger. They scraped across Cass’s palm, and the charms on her bracelet jangled as she pumped Cass’s arm up and down with just as much intensity as you’d expect from a Connie with hair that pert. Cass had never been much of a jewelry-wearer, apart from a small, old-fashioned skeleton key on a tarnished silver chain that she wore around her neck. That had been a gift from Aunt Alexandra, years ago. Alexandra had worn even more jewelry than Connie—long-chained necklaces, bangles, huge hoop earrings so heavy that they’d stretched her earlobes practically to her shoulders. Once, when Cass was visiting as a little girl, she’d come across the key in Alexandra’s jewelry box while playing dress-up. It was so different from any of the other pieces her great-aunt owned, so simple in comparison to her ornate jewels; but Cass had thought it was brimming with adventure and mystery. She’d longed to explore every corner of the old Victorian house until she found the door that the key unlocked.

  Alexandra had been so amused by Cass’s devotion to the plain key necklace that she’d told Cass she could keep it. Cass had worn it ever since, even though she knew logically that it was probably just the key to an old china cabinet or maybe a dusty chest of linens.

  She felt a pang now at the memory. Even into her nineties, Alexandra had had so much life in her. It still felt impossible that she could be gone.

  “Your aunt was so beloved here in Riddle, Cassandra,” Connie said, as if she’d read Cass’s mind. “She kept to herself, but she was so sweet… given the opportunity. She’ll be sorely missed.” She brushed her hands off on her khaki pants, charm bracelet tinkling. “But now you’re here, and I’m so glad. Will you and your husband be moving into Alexandra’s home?”

  Cass sighed, turning back to the jammed deadbolt and bracing herself for this all-too-familiar turn in the conversation. “I’m not married, actually.”

  “Oh?” Connie’s voice had a loaded tone to it, one Cass had heard many times before—especially since she’d turned thirty. She could almost feel the wheels in Connie’s head turning, wondering what was “wrong” with her. Divorced? Antisocial? The product of overbearing parents who chased away any eligible bachelor with a shotgun?

  She wasn’t any of those things (well, maybe the antisocial part), but the truth wasn’t exactly something easily explained… or believed. It was easier to let people think what they wanted than even waste her breath on the truth.

  “Well, Riddle’s a small town, Cassandra,” Connie went on at last. “There aren’t too many eligible bache
lors around here. That are your age, anyway. People tend to marry a bit younger around here. I suppose there’s always Roseburg…”

  “I’m not looking,” Cass broke in, teeth clenched.

  “Oh,” Connie said again, a different tone in her voice now. “Well, never mind. Alexandra was a spinster, too. What matters is that you’re here now. And I do hope you’ll be planning on staying.”

  “Actually,” Cass said, shoving her hip against the door and twisting the key as hard as she could, “I was only planning on sticking around long enough to get all of Aunt Alexandra’s stuff sorted. Probably just a few months.”

  Connie’s brown eyebrows knitted over her green eyes. “That’s all? I heard you got a job over at the library.”

  Cass snorted. It really was true, what they said about news traveling fast in a small town. “Well, yeah,” she said. “A girl’s gotta eat. And, you know, pay down her crippling student loans. An MLIS doesn’t come for free.”

  “Oh, of course.” Connie’s face fell, and Cass quirked an eyebrow. Connie seemed a good deal more disappointed than she should have been for someone who’d never met Cass before. She really should have had no interest in where Cass lived or for how long.

  “It’s just that…” Connie trailed off, seeming to notice for the first time that Cass was having a hard time getting the door open. “Oh, you need to pull it toward you, dear. Like this.” She pushed Cass aside and yanked the door handle firmly. There was the scraping of metal and then the lock turned. When Cass stared, she shrugged. “I’ve been coming over here to feed Onyx since Alexandra passed.”

  Oh. Right. The cat. Cass suppressed the urge to heave a sigh. That was another bother. Cass liked cats, but the thing about pets was that they had a way of tying you down. She didn’t want to be one of those jerks who dumped her animals off at a shelter every time she was ready to move on. Better to not acquire them in the first place. She wondered if Connie would be willing to take Onyx when the time came.

  The door opened, and Cass stepped through it. The inside of the house smelled nostalgic, a homey combination of basil and old wood. Cass looked around the high-ceilinged entry hall, with its ancient silk wallpaper, the ornate pattern faded with age. A coat rack stood next to the front door, adorned with old-fashioned, long dress coats in rich burgundies and olive greens. Very Alexandra.

  “Do you need help carrying anything from your car, Cassandra?” Connie’s footsteps echoed off the woodblock as she followed Cass into the house.

  “It’s Cass. No, I just have a few suitcases, nothing major. I can manage.”

  “No furniture?”

  Cass laughed in exasperation, her tolerance for this busybody reaching its limit. “Why would I bring furniture? I’ve got a whole house full of it now.”

  Connie’s smile faltered, and Cass felt a slight twinge of guilt. Maybe she did need to work on that whole antisocial thing.

  “Of course,” said Connie. “Well, listen. I wanted to ask you one more thing, while we were in a more, you know, private setting.” Her words made the ominous feeling start crawling through Cass’s stomach again. “Have you gotten any offers for the house yet?”

  That wasn’t what Cass had been expecting. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, honestly, but that wasn’t it.

  “Uh, no,” she answered. “I just got here. I have to thin stuff out before I can think about listing it.”

  Connie nodded. “Well, when the time comes, I hope you’ll keep the good of the community in mind.”

  Cass blinked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s nothing to alarm you. You’ll get a better sense of my meaning the longer you’re here. But your great-aunt loved this house, Cassandra. She loved Riddle. I hope you’ll keep that in mind.”

  Cass felt completely lost at that point. “Mrs. Fischer, what are you even talking about?” she asked.

  “Never mind, never mind. You’ve got a busy day ahead of you, unpacking and everything. I’ll let you get to it. There’s food for Onyx in the kitchen. And don’t forget that the plants in the solarium will need watering. Feel free to drop by if you need anything. I’m just across the street.”

  “Wait, Mrs. Fischer—”

  But as quickly as she’d come, Connie bustled out the door and down the front drive. Cass stared after her retreating form. What had that been about?

  “Leave it to Aunt Alexandra to settle down in a town full of fruitcakes,” she grumbled under her breath.

  As she moved to shut the front door, a glint of sunlight reflected two green pinpricks in the corner. Cass narrowed her eyes. “Onyx? Kitty, kitty?”

  The creature stirred and Cass groaned. Definitely not a cat. So the premonition she’d had earlier hadn’t been because of Connie after all.

  “Just what I needed,” she said. “You’d think Aunt Alexandra would have done something to keep you guys out.” She grabbed a dusty umbrella out of the tall urn next to the coat rack and brandished it at the creature, shooing it toward the door.

  A small, almost human-like being, with bronze skin the color of autumn oak leaves, dashed out of the corner. A brownie. It ducked and jabbered at Cass in the sharp, guttural language she’d come to recognize over the years, even if she didn’t understand what any of the words meant. It sounded like a cross between squirrel chatter and the caw of a crow—some unfamiliar birdsong that those without Sight could dismiss as normal, mundane, even if they couldn’t place what animal was making it.

  Cass knew better. She’d been Seeing for far too long to trust anything unfamiliar in the forest.

  “Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to hear it,” she said, prodding the brownie along with the umbrella. “Get out and stay out.”

  She slammed the door and cursed in annoyance. Then she stormed through the maze of rooms toward the back of the house, where she remembered the kitchen being located. After banging her way through half a dozen cluttered cupboards, she found what she was looking for.

  The brownie was sitting among the fronds of a large, curling fern when Cass opened the front door again. It glared at her as she produced the metal colander and pointedly set it in the center of the top step. “That’ll fix you,” she said with a smirk. The brownie watched, scowling, as the purple door slammed. Then it slunk into the ferns.

  Cass leaned against the closed door, looking up at the pendant lamp with its Tiffany shade suspended from the entryway’s high ceiling. She’d been here all of ten minutes, and already she’d been inundated with nosy neighbors and a pest infestation of the magical variety. She didn’t even want to know what was waiting for her on the second floor, let alone the rest of this behemoth house.

  “Welcome to Riddle, Cass,” she said aloud, hearing the way her voice echoed off the cavernous ceiling and trying to ignore the premonitory goosebumps rippling across her skin. “Looks like you’re in for a fun time.”

  “You know, some people would like to have brownies around,” Cass’s friend Emma said. Her voice sounded tinny over the speakerphone, which was propped on top of a stack of boxes on the other side of the room. “They’re handy. I heard that if you leave them food, they’ll do chores around the house for you. If you hadn’t chased that one off, it would probably be helping you right now with… whatever it is you’re doing.”

  What Cass was doing was sitting in the middle of the floor in one of Aunt Alexandra’s seemingly endless book rooms, sorting through the dusty volumes that had been stacked haphazardly on the shelves. “I’d rather do it myself, thanks,” she said. “You forget, Em, I’ve seen these things. They have no concept of personal hygiene. The last thing I want is their grubby little hands washing my dishes or something.”

  “It’s so unfair,” said Emma, the faintest hint of a whine in her voice, “that you get to see these things and you don’t even care, while I’m sitting here dying for one genuine paranormal sighting and I get zilch.”

  Cass scrunched her nose, pulling a dusty volume out of the stack and squinting to read the
faded title on its spine. Soldiers of the Great War, Volume Three. There was no sign of volumes one or two anywhere in the room. She shook her head and tossed the book onto the giveaway pile. “Does it not occur to you that maybe if you could see the ‘paranormal’, you might not be as interested?”

  Emma gasped in horror. Perish the thought. After all, her profession was officially listed on her business cards as “seer”—next to “accountant,” of course. Her interest in the occult was more than just a passing phase. She did palm readings, tarot spreads and the like for extra cash, but the truth was that her abilities were based more on an uncanny knack for reading people’s expressions and intuiting what they needed to hear than any real premonitory gift.

  Cass had told her frequently that it was better that way. Knowing the future wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, especially if the future wasn’t so shiny. And in Cass’s experience, no one ever seemed to believe what she saw—or felt, as the case may be—anyway. Emma’s method was much more successful, but she never saw it that way. Her envy of Cass’s Sight was good-natured, but it was there all the same.

  “Regardless,” Emma said, steering the conversation back to the brownie in the entryway, “do you really think a colander will work to keep it out?”

  “It should. It’s a trick Aunt Alexandra picked up when she visited Greece.” Alexandra had been quite the world traveler in her youth, and Greece had always been one of her favorite places. She often said she would have loved to settle down there, but for some reason or other, she felt the need to stay here. Cass couldn’t imagine why. A sun-soaked island seemed a much better retirement spot than this decrepit old logging town.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” said Emma. “Your aunt also had the Sight, right? So she obviously knew they were there. She must have kept them around for a reason. If she hadn’t wanted them there, wouldn’t she have done something to keep them out?”