Too Near the Edge
“Careful, Lilah!” Charlie shouted from somewhere behind me. “One misstep and you’ll go over the edge.”
I smiled to myself as I trudged up the mud-slicked path, which was barely as wide as my feet were long. I paused for a split second, gazing down the grassy hillside directly below my left shoulder; inches from the side of my left foot, the earth declined steeply below the thick, yellowing grass to a gray patch of rocks in a turquoise sea.
“Over the edge,” I mused. “Such a nice euphemism for ‘fall to your death.’”
“Wait up, Lilah. You’re going too fast!”
I shook my head and kept going. Going too fast, huh? I’d heard that before. I smirked at my own dirty mind. Several times in the last month. Even on the last night we’d shared a bed before leaving the States for this trip to Ireland.
This was my mission for Professor Drusilla St. Augustine, not his. She’d thought it would be a nice vacation for the two of us, given we’d been lovers for a while and with her blessing. Everybody knew what a nice guy Charlie was.
Combining work and pleasure, if you will. Dru had said the words with a secretive smile, so I knew something was up. Then, when we stopped to get our fake passports and temporary identities, I’d overheard Dru and Charlie talking about the Cliffs of Moher, the ends of the Earth, and going down on one knee. I’d blustered in on them a second before they caught me. Then I had to pretend to be both nervous and excited about a little down time, mixed with retrieving an artifact that wouldn’t kill me like the last few might have.
Charlie had planned the whole trip: sleep in a twelfth-century castle converted into a four-star hotel just outside of Dublin, meet the senator—former senator? ex-senator?—on the four-hundred-foot cliffs of the island of Howth on the second day, and take a day trip to the small Darbyshire Memorial Scholar’s Library between Trinity College and St. Patrick’s Cathedral to get The Lost Teachings of Dead Monks authenticated on the third afternoon. For the fourth day, Charlie had planned a side trip to the ancient Hill of Tara and the tomb at Newgrange. The fifth day had been set aside for pub crawls and seeing the town of Dublin. On the sixth day, we were to visit the Cliffs of Moher together, driving cross country to the ends of the Earth and staring out over the Atlantic Ocean into the magical mist to where the city of Cill Stuifín and one thousand men had been lost in County Clare, in the Year of our Lord 804, according to the Irish annals.
On the seventh day of our trip to Ireland, rather than rest, we were to pick up The Lost Teachings from the private library and take it back to Florida to Dru who, for reasons I could not understand, had refused to authenticate the artifact herself. Something about her worst fears.
“Aww, Lilah. Slow down!” Charlie’s voice grew farther behind me as I picked up my pace on the slippery ledge. He was whining now. He had that tendency when he didn’t get what he wanted.
Funny thing. He had followed me around like a puppy dog for months, trying to get my attention. Then, after my serious romantic disappointment with a physics professor at Florida University, Charlie showed me that he had been there for me all along—bright, happy, nonthreatening. Not trying to kill me. He didn’t tell me he was a good guy but rather, he showed me. Though it took a little warming up to him, I eventually fell for him and fell hard. I could barely believe it. With my history with men, it didn’t seem like I deserved a good guy. Not after all the things I had done. But Charlie was different from Ford and Jakin, and I came to love him for that.
Charlie had rushed our relationship in the beginning. Then, in the past month, when we both seemed to be on the same page, he had suddenly slowed down. We had become so close over the autumn and through the holidays. And yet, now, toward the end of February, the realization that we had become more distant since New Year’s Day hit me between the eyes—and in my gut. Maybe that’s why I had the urge to walk so fast now, to leave him behind, because I had no idea where I stood with him. On New Year’s Eve, we had talked about moving in together in March. Now March was only a week away, and he hadn’t mentioned it again. Maybe it was just cold feet, in preparation for this… going down on one knee at the Cliffs of Moher. We still fucked like bunnies, but we didn’t talk like we used to. He was hiding something, something my heart told me was bad news for me.
“Aw, Jesus Christ! Lilah, please!”
I stopped in my tracks, not just because his voice had cracked with pleading, but because the intermittent February rain had so badly spoiled the dirt path on the cliff’s edge. My left foot slipped, and I leaned hard toward the right, grabbing hold of a prickly green plant with a purplish flower. I wasn’t sure if it was heather—I didn’t know what heather looked like. It was more like rosemary or some scrubby herb that grew low to the rocks.
I planted my right foot, sturdy in my old, comfy hiking boots, in the edge of the spindly shrubs for traction. My heart pounded in my ears as I took several calming breaths. A year ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. Since I was ten years old, I’d had a death wish, but this year was different. This year, I had something to live for. It was Charlie who’d brought me into the light, who’d helped me find my purpose, who had convinced me to become one of Dru’s select crew of protectors of the world’s most dangerous books.
I glanced over my left shoulder at Charlie, who was huffing and puffing up the hill. He was wearing a thin rain jacket and sweater that were already too warm for his level of exertion. His blondish-brown hair was sweaty and clamped to his forehead, his cheeks red, his chest heaving. Charlie was athletic enough, but I was better. Poor guy could never quite keep up with me, whether on the hillside or between the sheets. He tried, though. I’d give him that.
“A senator—” Charlie almost wheezed, he was breathing so hard. “The senator,” he tried again, finally catching up to me on the ledge and stopping when he saw the slick mud and my skidding track in it. “He’s an old man. How did he manage this?”
“He’s an old man in perfect health and a positive attitude. Didn’t you do your research?”
“Of course, I did my research. Unlike you, I’m a librarian by trade. You’re just a….”
“Go ahead and say it,” I teased. “Just a soldier? Just a mercenary?”
He frowned. “I didn’t mean it that way. You know I didn’t. It’s just that….”
“That for as much as I love books, I have no real desire to be a librarian?”
Or, in the case of Drusilla St. Augustine’s mysterious purposes, a warrior librarian. Charlie was an ordinary—if not extraordinary—librarian. He was a keeper of books and trivia and number-two pencils, not a high priest of some dead god or one of the warriors who protected their sacred libraries.
I shrugged. “Go ahead and say it. You’re not hurting my feelings. I’m not educated as a librarian. We both know it’s true. Doesn’t mean I don’t have mad respect for those of you who are. I just don’t feel I can claim it for myself without the framed certificate to go with it.”
The St. Augustine Special Collections Library at Florida University needed not only a protector who could retrieve and deliver artifacts; it also needed a real librarian with a degree in library science. That’s what Charlie was. He was Drusilla St. Augustine’s gift to me. In more ways than just professionally.
I smiled at Charlie to let him know that everything was all right and that I wasn’t mad at him. Not really.
“We should keep going,” I said. “We don’t know how long this path is so narrow. Or if there’s another insane jogger coming down the hill right now and not enough room for all three of us on this path.”
We’d met several Portuguese-speaking students in heavy rain gear farther downhill next to the historic W. B. Yeats House, but there the path had been an actual street. Later, we’d encountered two joggers wearing fluorescent yellow shirts where the path narrowed to the width of two people. Who was to say what was farther up the hill? Or how perilous the path would become?
I took a few steps forward along the muddy ridge, careful to walk in a herringbone pattern for maximum grip. Charlie grunted behind me, following in my booted footsteps and obliterating each one with his own.
Finally, the steep incline to my right leveled out to a field of small, prickly shrubs. To my left, the sharp descent evened out to level rocks and scant patches of grass. The view in front of me took me by surprise, and I stopped abruptly.
Charlie bumped into me, his erection hitting me blatantly in the lower back. He guffawed and took a step backward.
I shook it off. That’s what I got, I supposed, for walking uphill in front of him in skintight jeans that left little to the imagination.
The chilly wind blew the hood of my black jacket away from my face as I took in the view. The path continued up and around the hillside, though not so dangerously close to the cliffs. Around the bend ahead, however, was a sharp cliff with sea and rocks below and the white dot of a person sitting in the middle of a circular open area. For a moment, sunlight broke through the mist and lit up both the person in white and the yellow flowering shrubs on the hillside between us.
Charlie wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pointed to the two islands in the distance—the Eye of Ireland, the first defense against the Vikings when bonfires were lit to warn people in the countryside, and the Isle of Lambeth, where two lovers had forsaken all else to grow old together.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he whispered in my ear, nuzzling the crumpled hood away. “Beautiful and romantic.” He tickled my earlobe, and I pushed his jaw away with my shoulder.
“We’re here on business,” I reminded him. “Once we get back to our hotel room, then it’s all play.”
He faked a loud sigh and dropped his arms from my shoulders.
“Anyway,” I continued, “you’re looking in the wrong place.” I nodded toward the far-off cliff and the waiting man.
“The senator?” Charlie whispered. “Nah, can’t be. He’s, like what, ninety?”
“Not quite. Maybe the artifact he’s had with him for the last half-century or so had some great health tips.”
I trudged forward and Charlie followed. By the time we tracked the path around the bend and stepped up onto the higher, dry ground of the clearing atop the cliff, I was sure that the man in white was, indeed, the senator. He sat cross-legged in front of us, heels on his limber thighs, with his eyes closed. His forehead was barely lined and peaceful, between two thick patches of white hair. His back was to the turquoise sea, and centered between his knees was a large, brown satchel. I recognized him from the photos and news stories that Dru had given us to study on the flight to Dublin.
“Please take a seat,” he said without opening his eyes. “Both of you.”
Charlie and I exchanged glances.
I cleared my throat. “Senator?”
His eyes popped open, bright and blue and full of life. “No longer. Now sit. Both of you.”
I lowered myself to the hard ground and found a flat boulder level with the dirt for my seat. Charlie sat near me, a few feet away, so that the three of us formed an unintentional triangle that buzzed with energy. I matched the old man’s posture, ankle-to-thigh, ankle-to-thigh. Charlie tried, but was less successful, and settled on having his ankles crossed loosely in front of him.
“You two are emissaries from the woman who calls herself Drusilla St. Augustine?”
An oddly phrased question, but I nodded.
“Yes, sir,” Charlie said from beside me.
The old man studied Charlie, then me. I couldn’t get over how pale and sparkling his blue eyes were. Maybe he had found the secret to immortality among The Lost Teachings of Dead Monks. Then he fixated on me as if he knew that Charlie was only along for the ride. “What were her instructions to you?”
I fought the urge to look over at Charlie, but the old man’s gaze wouldn’t let me go. “To meet you here at midmorning.”
“And?”
“And to collect an artifact from you.”
“And?”
“We’re to take it to the Scholar’s Library in Dublin for authentication and then back to Professor St. Augustine for permanent residency in the Ninth Gate of the Special Collections Library.”
The old man seemed to look right through me. “Ninth Gate, huh? The most secure level.”
“Yes,” I murmured, wondering how he knew. I glanced quickly at Charlie, who was aware of only the first four gates and not the increasingly secure internal library SCIFs, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, but Charlie had been distracted by a bird overhead and didn’t notice the secret spilled in front of him.
The old man didn’t move except to speak. “Appropriate. This is probably one of the most dangerous books in the world.” He glanced down at the satchel in front of him, then moved one hand to touch the brass lock on its front. “What else did the woman who calls herself Drusilla St. Augustine tell you to do?”
I shrugged. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“She told you not to authenticate it, but did she tell you not to open it? Not to look at it? Not to try to read it?”
“Yes, sir,” Charlie, suddenly paying attention again, offered before I could stop him. “She told us.”
“Did she tell you why?”
Charlie and I shook our heads in unison.
“Good. Let’s leave it at that. What else did she tell you to do?”
Charlie leaned forward. “I… sir, I don’t understand.”
He shot Charlie a dismissive look as if the librarian couldn’t possibly be a threat, then zeroed in on me. “You’re here to kill me, aren’t you? All I ask is that you make it quick.”
“To kill… Senator, I mean, sir… I mean, no!”
“I’m to die here today. That much I know. So if not you, then who? Were you followed?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m sure of it. But why would you think that?”
“A priest of Daegan once told me that I would be conceived here, and I would die here exactly seventy-six years later. Seventy-six years ago, this night, on this very hillside, is where the lightning spark of this incarnation came to life. When that priest gave me this artifact and taught me how to use it, he told me I would achieve monumental success in my lifetime, but it was up to me whether to use it for myself or for others. He also told me that I could not escape my fate here today. All I could do was choose how to meet it. I could lock myself in a room on the other side of the world, but something or someone would still bring me back to this very spot to die sometime before midnight.”
“This priest,” I blurted out, “was his name Jakin Crutchfield?”
I didn’t have to look at Charlie. I could feel the heat of his glare on me. He knew I still had feelings for Jakin, but it didn’t matter anymore. I’d made a commitment to Charlie, and I tamped down those old feelings that had been cultivated by one of the Daeganean priesthood spells. What I’d felt for Jakin wasn’t real. Or maybe it had been real to me, but it had all been a manipulation. Jakin was sorry now, but I wasn’t interested in what he had to offer. Charlie, on the other hand, was a good man, better than I deserved.
“This man’s name was not Jakin. He was my much younger roommate at University and the best friend I ever had.”
“Maybe he’s the one who plans to….” I sensed the wall of offense instantly between us.
The old man shook his head. “Not him. I’m sure of it.”
“But how can you be—”
“Because he’s dead.” The wall between him and my empathic senses faded, and I knew that his friend’s death was tinged with heartbreak.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Charlie said, always the properly-mannered gentleman. He was good with social graces where I was a bull in a china shop.
“So it’s not the two of you who will escort me to my end?”
“No, sir. Of course not.” Charlie glanced at me. “It’s not, is it?”
“No, Charlie. It’s not. We’re not here to kill the senator.”
“Former senator,” the old man corrected.
“This book,” Charlie said, changing the subject. “What exactly is so special about it?”
“You mean, what makes it so dangerous? If you know how to use it, you can have anything and everything you want.”
“Then, um….” I wasn’t sure how to ask. “Why didn’t you ever run for President? You were considered to be one of the best leaders in the United States. By both major parties, and that’s a miracle if you ask me.”
The corners of his lips quivered into a smile. “That’s one thing I could never be. Or, at least, if I could have, I didn’t believe it to be so. And so, I never tried.”
“But why not?”
“First of all, because I didn’t believe it, so the book would have made sure it didn’t happen. And second, I was born here in Ireland. I wasn’t a natural-born citizen, so I could never be the President. Though I suppose that if I’d believed I could have been, the book would’ve helped me find a way.”
“What do you mean that if you didn’t believe it, the book would make sure it didn’t happen?” Charlie asked.
“Exactly that. It’s a book of universal law. The Law of Attraction, to be specific. Over the last few decades, plenty has been written about the Law of Attraction and manifesting your deepest desires. Even over the last century. Before that, the concept belonged to witches and monks. The understanding of meditation, prayer, and magic. The monks believed that they were connecting to God through this book, to talk to Him and to receive the answers to their prayers. That’s why it’s called The Lost Teachings of Dead Monks. But it goes much farther back than that. The monks have had it for only the last thousand years. The Priesthood of Daegan acquired it fifty years ago. Or reacquired it.”
“But if you know how to use the book,” Charlie ventured, “you can get anything you want. Not just once, but again and again?”
The old man nodded. “Every time. I hold my life as an exemplar for others. Except for the deaths of loved ones and an occasional slipup, I’ve had nothing but happiness. For the last fifty years, ever since my college roommate tracked me down and told me I could change the world for the better. Love, health, wealth, family, reputation, security. All of the things that make us human by the desire to possess or achieve them.”
“Wow!” Charlie’s voice cracked. He pounded the dirt beside him with one palm. “Wow. Just wow. This book is the secret to getting anything and everything you want?”
The old man seemed to lose fifty years on the spot. His face became alive with fire as he sprang to his feet, finger pointed downward into Charlie’s face.
“That,” he said, “is exactly what makes this book so dangerous. Can you imagine if it fell into the wrong hands?”
I could. It was the same question I asked myself, every time, when Dru sent me on some secret mission to retrieve a book or some other artifact.
Charlie’s face reddened. “I… I see what you mean—sir.” He scrambled to his knees, then stood up.
I rose as well. “Sir, is there anything else that you’d like to tell us about this book? Anything we need to know? Anything we should pass along to Professor St. Augustine?”
“No. You know all you need to know. Just promise me two things.” He squatted and picked up the satchel, rather than bending over cautiously like an old man with back problems, and then strode toward me. He held the satchel in front of him.
“Promise me,” he said.
“What would you like us to promise?”
“First, you must promise me that you will not read it.”
“We probably couldn’t read it anyway,” Charlie offered. “Not if it’s that old.”
“It’s in Latin. One of you could,” the senator said, looking at me as though he knew.
I cleared my throat. “I promise not to read the book.” I would count on Dru to tell me what it said, though I certainly wanted to take a look at it. I had been told there were ornate drawings to illustrate the borders of it, much like The Book of Kells a few miles away at Trinity College.
Charlie shrugged. “I can’t read Latin.”
“And the second promise you wish to extract from us?” I asked.
The senator looked at the satchel carefully in both hands and placed the wide leather strap over my shoulders. I took it from him, and he laid both hands on mine. “You must not let it out of your sight, except for it to be authenticated at the Darbyshire Library. You will wear it on your body at all times, and especially when you cross the ocean. You will take it directly to the woman who calls herself Drusilla St. Augustine. This was a promise I made to the priest, my closest friend, who gave it to me all those years ago. That when I was done with it, it would go to her.”
“For Professor St. Augustine to use?” I whispered. What would Dru want it for?
“No. Not to use, but for safekeeping. My friend trusted her with his life.” Ignoring Charlie, the old man gathered both of my hands tightly in his, the satchel between us. He stared into my eyes. “Promise me that you will never let this book fall into the hands of Secretary of State Jung. The younger one, not the mother.”
I tried to flinch away from him, but he held tight. I was certain I had never met Aoife Jung and certainly not the woman who had preceded her on the world stage, yet somehow, I had a vague memory of Aoife standing in the doorway of a room made of stone.
My blistered palms gripping chains hanging from the wall. My jaws clenching.
Naked flesh. Soaked with water.
An electrical current searing through my body.
I took a deep breath and relaxed my hands into the former senator’s grip. “No worries, sir. That will never happen. I swear it.”
He squeezed my hands, hard. Unexpectedly fierce, with more strength than I would ever have imagined, and then let go.
“I’m grateful,” he whispered. Not in an old man’s voice, but in one that was strong and reverent. “I’m grateful that I got to choose. I always had a choice. Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve had a choice. I realize that, but only just now.” He bent forward and pecked my cheek. “Now, off with you and your companion. Both of you.”
Neither Charlie nor I moved.
“Go on now.” He pointed at the trail we had come up, at a jogger in the distance. “Go on now. I need time alone.”
Slowly, Charlie and I turned and headed back toward the muddy path. I clutched the satchel to my chest as I navigated the narrow lane. The jogger, making his way around the bend expertly, stopped suddenly, waving his hands.
I turned to look back at the senator just in time to see him step off the edge of the cliff.
The scream I heard was my own.
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