Chapter 1
Edward jerked his hands away from the page letting it
flutter to the floor, panting heavily with the sudden return to
reality. His adult feet were planted firmly on the floor in his study
but the feeling that he was falling still echoed in his stomach.
He was facing the fireplace, body shaking. Sweat beaded at his
forehead. He wiped it away and he battered knuckles on his right hand
throbbed when the raw skin came in contact with the salty perspiration.
They hadn’t fully healed from a previous fist fight with his bedpost
during some nightmare.
He turned away from the fire light, blinking it out of his eyes until
only the flickering ghosts of green remained. He’d been sitting at his
desk when he began reading. Why was he standing now, he wondered. It
felt like he’d awakened from a nightmare where instead of falling from
my bed, I’d fallen from the floor directly onto my feet. The sensation
was wildly unpleasant.
He flinched when a sharp thumping noise came from across the room,
still feeling the effects of being jolted from the memory. The roaring
noise that he’d heard from the ocean’s horizon was actually coming from
the far end of his study in the form of a steady tapping at his front
door.
He shook off the debilitated feeling, took a deep breath and forced
forced his limbs into motion, scooping up the torn piece of paper and
placing it onto the desk.
“Coming,” He said before lifting the metal bar from the door frame and unlocking it.
Alanna stood outside, water dripping from her cloak. The streets were drowning in a downpour.
He stepped to the side letting her take refuge from the rain, “You
would think that you’d have more sense than to come all the way out here
in a storm like this.”
She pulled the hood back and wiped the water-soaked hair from her eyes.
She was olive skinned and silver streaks stood out against her dark
brown hair, even with the water darkening them to a flat gray. Her cool,
intelligent violet eyes gazed up at me as if she could see straight
into my soul. She very well could have if he’d let her.
She was the granddaughter of his childhood next door neighbor, and his
oldest friend in the world. Her grandmother had raised her after the
death of her parents and he’d come to know her as a sort of sister in
suffering after tragedy struck in his own childhood. Granny B had taken
them all in and they lived happily together until their teens.
“Did I wake you?” She asked apologetically, tossing her dripping cloak on corner coat rack.
“No, I was reading.”
“Oh,” she nodded, brushing past him and taking a seat next to the
fireplace, “I’m sorry for dragging you out. I hope it wasn’t too much of
a shock.” She held her hands toward the fire for warmth.
“Completely unbearable. I should be very upset,” He said with a melodramatic smile.
She looked at him and smiled, rolling her eyes but she didn’t say much
more. She felt bad. He knew she did, even if he didn’t really mind
interruption. She was a natural empath and she took almost excessive
measures sometimes not to upset anyone. She was genuinely worried that
he’d somehow been hurt while being forced from the page.
Edward reassured her that there was nothing to worry about with a genuine pleasant smile. It seemed to do the trick.
“Isaac’s page again?” she asked. There was sympathy in her voice.
“Why are you here so late?” He asked, avoiding the question. “And in
this weather too. You’re likely to catch pneumonia. I know that I can be
charming but this really isn’t the way to go about getting my
attention!”
She smiled, “If I wanted attention I wouldn’t seek it from the criminal sort.”
“Hey! That hurts, you know,” he winced, grabbing a hand towel from a nearby shelf and playfully tossing it at her head.
She caught it, laughing, and pressed it to her neck first before attempting to dry her hair.
He walked around and took a seat behind his deck.
“So what’s the occasion?”
She stood and after a few final attempts to dry herself removed an
envelope from an inside pocket in her uniform. She walked over and
handed it to him.
A lion perched atop a pedestal of books, embroidered by a coat of arms
was stamped into the wax seal. He knew immediately that it was from the
Library. He gave her a puzzled look but she remained quiet. He glared at
the elegant printing of his name on the front for a moment before
breaking the seal and unfolding the letter inside.
To Mr. Edward Julius Mayfair.
It
has come to our attention that you have been sending letters to various
members of political importance in regard you loss in the petition for
personal effects belonging to one Isaac Christopher Mayfair. Recent
developments have lead us to believe you possess certain information
that we would be willing to barter for. In exchange, a number of
personal possessions will be made available to you as dictated by the
last will and testament of the deceased. The State Counsel requests your
presence at the Altamira East District Library for the conference.
Members of the public guard will be dispatched to your home in the
coming month to collect you. Details will be sent to you soon regarding
your appointment.
-Director Osbourn Le Guin
Edward whistled, “Signed by the director himself. What did I do this time?”
Alanna laughed, “I’m only the messenger. Officially, I am not allowed to disclose any information regarding your summons.”
“And unofficially?”
“Unofficially, I believe that they’re afraid that your snooping around
might be getting you closer to the investigation than they want you to
be.
“So? I’m not hurting them by writing a few letters.”
Her tone turned serious, “I believe that they may want to put a stop to
it. Edward, I’ve been hearing rumors that the investigators may be
coming to some sort of conclusion about his death.”
If there were any humor Edward’s my face before then, it was gone now.
“So, they’re finally going to stop dragging this out?” he asked. “Or
have they decided it's time to just lock me away forever?”
“No one really believes you did it, Edward,” She said, her calm exterior melting away at the signs of my frustration.
“No one?” He yelled, suddenly furious. He slammed my hands down on the
desk, standing as he did. “My job, my reputation, my entire social
standing in my own damn hometown gone completely to hell and no one
believes I did it?”
She jumped back at his sudden rise in volume.
“As if losing my brother wasn’t bad enough,” he yelled. “All I have to
show for it is a single page that I’d manage to tear from his Compendium
before the military dogs tore me away from his body. And they think I’m
just going to keep quiet about it?”
His fists shook and he realized that Alanna’s face had gone red. She
shrank away from him back into the chair in front of the fire. He could
see it in her eyes, the fury that he felt. He suddenly remembered what
he was doing. He’d dropped his emotional guard against her and she’d
been overwhelmed by the suddenness of it.He took a couple of deep
breaths and tried to calm down before speaking again. He couldn’t let my
feelings get the better of him, for her sake.
“Let’s agree to disagree on that matter,” I said. “Even if that’s true,
it’s still the Library. I don’t trust it.” He sank back into his chair,
shutting his emotions off and looked toward the window, brooding.
Alanna stared into the flickering fire. He glanced over at her. The
calm was returning. She closed her eyes and he could visibly see the
color leave her cheeks and her tension melt away into an almost soothing
expression.
A moment of silence passed.
“Sorry,” He muttered.
“It’s OK,” she said back with a short sigh.
Sudden emotional uproar takes its toll on on the body. A normal person
would feel fatigued after a shouting argument and he knew that for her
it had to be much worse.
He stood and went over to her, placing a hand on her shoulder
“It’s late,” He said. You take my bed. I’ll be fine by the fire.”
She leaned her head into his arm for a moment, taking a few more deep
breaths before nodding and standing. She turned and wrapped her arms
around him. He was startled by the sudden cold of the dampened towel she
still held pressing into his back but returned the embrace
“Damn them for sending you out in this weather,” he said.
“They didn’t. I wasn’t supposed to deliver the message to you until morning.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I couldn’t wait.”
“Thanks. It means a lot”
They stood like that for a little longer before she let go. She pawed
at her eyes a little, wiping away he hoped was water from her damp hair.
“Whatever it is you’re going to do,” she said, “you’ve got a month to do it.”
“I know,” He said, moving to clear a path between her and the bedroom.
“Are you sure I should stay?” She asked. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”
He smiled, “Please. You’re family.”
He noticed her smile faltered a bit but she quickly shook her head and it returned to normal.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just worried about you.”
“I’ll be fine,” He said. “Get some rest.”
He followed her to the bedroom and bid her goodnight, taking the towel
and tossing it into a basket before returning to the study. He returned
the Library’s letter to the envelope and tucked the page torn from
Isaac’s book into a leather bound journal in a drawer. Then he crept
over to the armchair Alanna had sat in by the fire and sank into it,
yawning.
He grimaced, noticing the chair was damp, but settled in anyway.
The Library wants me in for an official meeting, he thought. He
wondered what sort of card they had up their sleeves. A number of the
deceased's personal possessions will be made available to you the letter
had said. Isaac hadn’t left him anything of value in his will. He’d
read it with the Triad lawyers before the military deemed that
everything be put on hold until the case had been solved. They’d deemed
it all classified material evidence in an ongoing investigation, but he
still remembered what was written in that will.
Isaac had left nothing behind, no possessions, no fortune, no family
heirlooms, only a short speech about how he wished that he and Edward
had been closer. It had sounded more like a suicide note to Edward but
it wasn’t uncommon for military personnel to have a last will and
testament, even for someone as young as Isaac.
That still bothered him.
They’d had their fair share of differences for nearly a decade and had
hardly spoken after Isaac left for the military. It was mostly his
fault; he’d never been keen on him joining. But in the last two years
before Isaac’s death, they’d managed to move past their differences and
form a bond like the old days. The lawyer said that Isaac had revised
his Will the same year of his death. At that point he and Edward had
become rather close again and Edward couldn’t understand why he would
leave behind absolutely nothing behind. No photographs, no special
possessions, not even a handwritten letter. It was suspicious.
Yet the letter from the Library suggested that there were multiple items waiting to be claimed.
There was only one item that Edward could think of that would warrant
claiming anyway. Isaac’s actual final testament to the world. The one
thing that could put his suspicions to rest and allow him to move on.
Isaac’s Compendium. His death book.
Edward watched the flames dance in the fireplace until he fell asleep.
He dreamt of building sand castles on a beach in silence with a man who
looked exactly like him.
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