Page 12

Eleven

Real Plan

T ristan tried to teleport, but his strength failed him. He attempted again and failed. He wasn’t as weak as the lightning strikes usually left him, but he still wasn’t strong enough to reach for his powers.

He kept trying, but failure was all he was met with.

Was this how it was all going to end? Him being the victim of Merissa’s vengeance against his parents? Again?

What would it cost him this time? His very life?

“Why suddenly silent, nephew?” Merissa’s smug voice grated in his ears. “I expected you to shout at me and put up a fight the moment you realized this was a trap.”

Tristan met her gaze fiercely. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing he was afraid. “Well, I’m surprised it took you time to come clean.”

Merissa snorted, and she looked exactly like the version of her he had conjured up in his mind before. Cruel, vengeful, self-important, and heartless. Unlike the sweet-aunt act she had put up until a few minutes ago.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Tristan. We both know you hoped—you believed —I could lift your curse, and then you could have your happily ever after with your angel girl.” Her face twisted into a nasty sneer. “The girl my son loved. And you stole her away just like your mother did your father from me.”

Tristan stifled a laugh. “What?”

“You lied when you said you never interfered in their relationship, but that was exactly what you did since her dad’s funeral,” Merissa continued. “You inserted yourself into her life, caused her to distance herself from my Judy until she finally broke up with him and moved on with you.”

Everyone in the room who saw into his memories knew that it was a fat lie. Merissa was obviously trying to paint Tristan in a bad light in front of Jude. When he looked around at the boy and saw the stormy look in his eyes that was directed at him, Tristan confirmed this.

“You are lying.” Tristan glanced back at Merissa. “Do you even realize why Alexa—”

“Uh, uh, uh, you poisoned her mind against him,” Merissa cut him off loudly. “It wasn’t the revelation of them being stepsiblings that caused the breakup; it was you if your memories say anything.”

Tristan turned to Jude. “She is lying.”

Jude’s eyes flared. “Like I’d believe you over my own mother!”

“The mother who left you to live a luxurious life on another continent?” Tristan retorted, snorting. “Open your eyes, Jude. She’s turning you against me!”

“Like I was ever on your side,” Jude spat. “Get over it, man. You’re screwed!”

“Are you so blind as to think that Alexa ever loved you?” Tristan raised his voice, his blood now boiling. “What did you ever do for her? You never respected her and her choices! When she needed time to grieve her father, you forced yourself upon her with your selfish desires. You never once thought of what she wanted. And you have the gall to think that she loved you?”

Tristan had touched a nerve. Jude clenched his fists and stomped toward him, his face twisted with fury, but Merissa held out an arm to stop him.

“I’ve got this, Judy,” she told him in a calm voice. “Let Mommy deal with this.” When he didn’t back off, she added, in a softer tone, “Trust me.”

The idiot backed up, retreating to where he had been standing before.

Merissa turned back to Tristan, clasping her hands in front of her. “Now, where were we?”

“So, you’re going to kill me?”

“Kill you?” Merissa laughed. “Oh, you poor dear, if killing you would satisfy my thirst for vengeance, I would’ve done it nineteen years ago!”

Nineteen years. The two words reignited the fire of hatred inside Tristan. “You killed my mother, you witch! Didn’t you have enough then? Haven’t you ruined my life already?”

“Who said this has anything to do with you, Tristan dear?” Merissa crooned, crouching down to draw level with him. “You are nothing but an unfortunate soul born to your father—the victim of my vengeance, to make him pay for what he did to me. This has been all about getting back at him.” Then, as an afterthought, she added hastily, “And of course, it became about you too when you decided to mess with my son’s love life.” She rose back to her feet. “Besides, I didn’t kill your mom. She killed herself.”

“How dare you…” Tristan seethed.

“Because I told her not to touch you or stand near you when you got the direct strikes,” Merissa answered casually. “It’s not my fault she decided to throw herself at you when you were struck and killed herself like a stupid girl. I told her you would be fine despite getting stricken. Oh, but no, she had to play the mama heroine and the martyr—”

Tristan let out a cry of rage and lunged at her, but he was blocked by an invisible wall. He stepped back in disbelief and reached out his hand. He felt it again—an unseen wall. His gaze trailed down, and he realized it was formed by the white circle.

He was officially trapped now.

Merissa laughed. “Seriously, Tristan, blame your dear mother who rests in peace. If she hadn’t been so stupid, you would’ve still had her. And that baby sister.”

Tristan was fuming now.

“You still wonder what it would’ve been like if she hadn’t died, don’t you? What if you had a little sister to spoil, and other—”

“Enough!”

“—younger siblings? Actually, I’m glad you didn’t have them—that your dad never had them, the happiness he dreamt with my little co—”

“I said, enough !” Tristan bellowed.

Merissa smiled, looking satisfied that she had riled him up. “Fine. No more talking. We’ll get straight to work.”

Terror seized him. If she wasn’t going to kill him, what was she going to do with him? He thought of Alexa; and the promises he made to her.

His thoughts might’ve been visible on his face because Merissa said, “Oh, stop looking at me like I’m going to kill you, nephew. I told you there’s no fun in that.”

“Then what are you going to do to me?”

Merissa drew level with him again, and her eyes glinted menacingly. “How about… make you forget about your trip here and that you’d die in your twenty-fourth year?”

Tristan’s breath hitched. “You can’t do that…”

Merissa straightened herself and laughed. “Oh, actually, I can. I can also make your dad forget about it too, so it will come as such a shock to him when the time comes. Imagine that; nothing as sweet as revenge by breaking his heart in return.”

Tristan stared at her in disbelief. “You’re so blinded by revenge, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I’m not quite finished yet,” she continued, a smirk on her lips. “You will not only forget those two things, but your precious Alexa too.”

“No.” Tristan felt his heart stop. “No!”

“ Yes ,” she countered in a coaxing voice. “You know what, she makes you happy . And I hate that. You deserve to wallow in your solitude until the day you die.”

“You cannot make me forget her!” Tristan seethed, angry tears pricking his eyes. “You can make me forget this and about my impending death, but you cannot make me forget her! You will not take her from me, you monstrous woman!”

“Oh, I will, and I will give her back to my son.” Merissa rolled her eyes. “Not even true love can stop it.”

“Oh, please. What do you know about love?” Tristan scoffed. “Alexa will always find me, and even if I don’t remember her then, one look at her will be all it takes for me to fall in love with her all over again. I don’t need my memories to love her. That is love.”

Merissa gasped dramatically, widening her eyes. “Oh, spoiler alert! Your Alexa won’t remember you either.”

Tristan’s heart jumped in terror, but he refused to cower away from her threats. “We will always find our way back to each other!”

“Oh, will you?” Merissa challenged him back. “You’re forgetting that it took you twenty-one years to meet her despite your dad being friends with hers.”

Her words struck him speechless, taking him back to the night Alexa had told him the same thing. He had refused to agree with her then—his possessed self had. But now, he realized she had been right; every word she’d said then made sense, but he had been too possessed to see that.

Was this fate’s way of making him see that she had been right?

Everything he’d denied her that night was coming back at him. Was this a punishment?

Tristan would beg on his knees to anyone—even Alexa’s Jesus—to forgive him and set this right. To bring them back together again. He’d do anything, but he couldn’t lose her.

His curse wasn’t going to break. He would die in his twenty-fourth year. He’d never have that future he planned with her.

“Accepting your fate?”

Tristan ignored Merissa and focused on his teleportation power. He drew strength from the thought of Alexa, everything he wanted to do with her in the brief time he’d have before the curse took his life.

He thought of her smile, her laugh, the way she always looked at him, her ‘I love you’s , her kisses and hugs… and at last, what she had told him that day he tried to compel her to forget him, believing that’d keep her safe.

“One day, just like how we met at the bridge, there will come a time when you and I meet again. Yes, I might not remember having feelings for you then, but I assure you, Tristan Knight, one look at you will be all it takes for me to fall in love with you all over again.”

His heart swelled. I love you, Lexa. He closed his eyes.

Then, he tried to teleport.

It didn’t work.

He tried again, and again, but nothing happened.

He let out a cry of frustration and rose to his feet, causing Merissa and her friends to start and back away even though he couldn’t go beyond the circle.

“You are no match for our love, Merissa!” he bellowed at her. “You might be able to make us forget each other, but we will find our way back. Again and again!”

“Merissa, we’re wasting time,” one of her friends said in a bored tone. “We must do this while he’s still weak.”

“We need his blood,” said another.

“But we can’t approach him— look at him !”

They all looked at him like he had turned into some sort of wild animal.

“We’ll immobilize him,” Merissa said at last.

Tristan blanched. “What?”

He glanced around him. Everyone was nodding their approval. One of them spoke a strange language, and Tristan knew the second he couldn’t move. He could see, hear, and breathe—even feel as he fell to the floor like a stone statue and pain exploded everywhere in his body. But he couldn’t move, not even a finger, nor his eyelids.

When did he become a fictional character?

Oh, he’d been one all his life, hadn’t he?

A pair of brown shoes moved forward into his view and stopped right in front of him before the person crouched down and drew blood from Tristan’s hand. He realized this from the sharp pain slithering up his arm from the center of his palm. He couldn’t wince; he couldn’t make a single noise. This was much worse than how it looked in movies and books.

“What’s his blood for?” Tristan heard Jude ask, and he wanted nothing more than to jump up and throw a powerful punch to his face. One he had always wanted to gift Jude since he realized what a jerk he truly was to Alexa.

“It’s what’s going to help us wipe away your girl’s memory of him,” Merissa explained. “Once we spell the ashes—”

“Ashes? Ashes of what?” There was a slight tremor in his voice, and it seemed his mother didn’t miss it either.

She chuckled. “Don’t worry, Judy, we’re not burning anyone here. I meant ashes as in normal ashes. But once they’re spelled, what they’re capable of doing is extraordinary. We add a drop of his blood to the spelled ashes—it will dissolve on its own—and it’s ready. Then, all you need to do is blow a big pinch of these ashes at anyone whom you want to forget Tristan.”

The smugness in her voice was hard to ignore.

“That’s all?”

“That’s all,” Merissa agreed. “But the tricky part is that the spell wouldn’t function properly if Alexa happens upon a specific mention of Tristan that defies what the spell puts in her mind. Taking away her complete memory of him would damage her mind—I’m sure you don’t want a mentally unstable girlfriend. Such a spell itself is complicated. I haven’t mastered it yet. But this would do for us.

“She would only remember him as an ex-boyfriend without a face. The things he’d given her, say the car, would be replaced in her memory as gifted by someone else. Same when she sees photos of him and her, whether it’s on her phone or in a frame; she’d see someone else in his place. Say, her sister. Or no one at all. It depends, but I can guarantee you, my son, she’d never remember Tristan unless she’s exposed to something that defies the spell’s illusions in her mind. And when it does, the spell would start to wear off.”

“What should I do to prevent that?” Jude asked with urgency in his voice.

“That’s my boy,” Merissa said, a smile in her voice. “What I want you to do is find everyone I tell you to find and wipe their memories of Tristan; everyone who has seen him with Alexa. Everyone who knows they’re a pair.”

“That’d also mean wiping out the memory of everyone in the school.”

“Precisely. But to make that part easier, when you get to your school at the reopening, take a handful of the ashes and blow it around you. No one who sees you doing it will remember you did such a thing later. And the more one person knows about Tristan’s involvement with Alexa, expect them to fall into a deeper sleep.”

“They’ll all fall asleep then?” Jude sounded flabbergasted.

“If they had interacted with Tristan as Alexa’s boyfriend, yes,” Merissa explained. “And the more they had, the longer it’d take them to wake up from their sleep. Speaking of which, when you wipe away Alexa’s memory, make sure she’s in her house. She’ll take the longest to wake up.”

“She would wake up, right?”

“Of course, she would. Everyone would.”

“And she won’t remember me doing it to her?”

“No, dear. Any other questions?”

“Yes,” Jude said reluctantly. “I’m sure she has photos of him and other things that’d remind her of him. For one thing, her new car is his birthday gift to her.”

“Like I said, son, you have nothing to worry about. The spell will take care of it for you, replacing Tristan with someone else in her memory. Probably her sister, because she’s the next person closest to the girl—isn’t she?”

“You’re forgetting the crucial part,” chimed in an older male voice.

“There’s a crucial part?” Jude parroted.

“It’s not crucial.” Merissa glared at the man. “She lost her faith when she lost her dad about half a year ago.”

“I don’t understand— her faith ?” Jude sounded baffled.

There was a long beat of silence before one of them answered him in a solemn voice, “The spell doesn’t work on true Christians.”

Jude let out a sarcastic laugh. “There’s an exception?”

“They’re… rather untouchable,” Merissa said in a reluctant voice.

“What do you mean by true Christians ? Are there false ones?”

“There are many types of Christians, Judy; even I’m not sure how many, but most are the same to us—except the ones who abide by the Word and Will of their God and follow His Ways. Our attempts have always failed on them.”

“So, you mean to say that’s going to be a problem?” Jude sounded appalled. “Alexa goes to church every Sunday, Mom. She’s the freaking worship leader there!”

“Calm down, Judy. Sunday Christians are nothing. They could have a wavering faith and still attend church every Sunday to uphold their image and put up quite a bit of a show. They’re not a threat to us. Our concern should only be the ones who are devoted to their God and their faith, ones who keep Him first in their lives…”

The rest of Merissa’s words were lost on Tristan. His heart had skipped a beat. He realized what he’d done.

If any of this was true, if putting God first truly kept someone safe, he had taken that away from Alexa.

He had made Alexa choose him . By giving her the fear of losing him forever, he had forced her to that conclusion.

Tristan felt a tickling sensation going down the corner of his eye and realized it was his tear.

He had doomed the two of them.

“How can you be certain?” Jude’s frustrated question snapped Tristan back to reality.

“Because I confirmed it in his memory.” Tristan felt Merissa’s gaze bore into the back of his head. After a beat of silence, she continued, “Oh, and we also need to wipe the memories of Alexa from everyone in Tristan’s little circle, who knows about the two of them.”

“Don’t tell me I need to draw—”

“No, we don’t need her blood for that. His will do for both,” Merissa said. “And there aren’t many people in his circle because the poor thing barely interacts with people outside his comfort zone. So, that should be easy for you.”

Jude blew out a breath. “Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“So, what happens when he dies in his twenty-fourth year?”

“What happens then?” Merissa asked with a laugh. But there was a catch in her voice.

“He would just die, right?”

“Forgotten and alone, yes,” Merissa said. But there was something she wasn’t saying. Tristan wanted to know it, but he couldn’t talk.

What would happen when he died? Tristan pondered hard. There was only one answer.

The spell would break. It was connected to him, bound with his blood, so of course, the spell on Alexa and everyone would break when he died. She would remember him then, but it would be too late.

Agony welled up inside him. He could see her in his mind; the devastation on her face, the heartbreak in her eyes. Tristan wanted to cry out his heart. If he could open his mouth now, the sound that would burst out of him would be the ugliest, inhuman sound he’d ever heard.

His heart split into two.

Why, why, why? Why him? Why Alexa? Why the two of them?

He didn’t know who other than him would hear the cries of his heart and soul, but he cried, hoping there was someone— anyone —who would hear it and do something to help him. He just wanted to go home with his memories and cherish Alexa with his love until his last breath.

Was that too much to ask?

Suddenly, Tristan thrashed. Familiar pain overtook his entire being, and he opened his mouth to cry out, but like always, no sound escaped him. He fell flat against the floor and his head lolled to the side to see Merissa standing over him with menacing eyes, her hands stretched out in front of her.

The pain dissipated, and Merissa crouched down at his side. He realized he could move now, but he was too weak to. Was she playing with him?

“Time to say goodbye to Alexa, dear nephew.” She held her hand in front of her mouth, ready to blow the contents in her palm toward him.

A stream of helpless tears escaped Tristan’s eyes. “Please,” he managed to rasp. “I’ll do anything.”

Merissa tilted her head to give him a strange look before she laughed. “You are no use to me other than for my revenge, boy.”

“Please, please, Merissa,” he pleaded again, summoning all his courage to speak. “Don’t do this.”

“Oh, what was it that you said just earlier, huh? You’re no match for our love, Merissa! ” She laughed again. “I like a good challenge, and I accept yours. We’ll see if your true love could save you, after all.”

His eyes widened. “Merissa—don’t—”

“Forget the love of your life, Tristan, and live until your last breath in misery and loneliness with your wretched father. I look forward to attending your funeral in a few years to see your dad breaking before my eyes again.”

Then she blew the ashes.

Someone bellowed “NO!” as the ashes flew toward his face. Tristan realized it was his own voice just before his mind began to spin like a wheel. He clenched his eyes shut.

Lexa. Lexa. Lexa.

He repeated her name in his mind as if that would block the effect of the spell.

I love you forever.

White specks danced around him in a whirlwind like leaves in a cyclone. He glimpsed her face in each of the specks before, all of a sudden, the screen in his mind shut down like a TV.

When he opened his eyes again, Tristan Knight remembered Alexa Ford no more.