Chapter 32
Sixteen
I didn’t get all of my memories that night—just the memories from this lifetime that were taken and some that had belonged to my aunt. They confirmed what I’d already learned, that she’d become obsessed about spending an eternity with Tristan without limits, and that the same crazed version of myself had gone searching for him in the maze the night of my supposed “anxiety attack.” But having these memories also unveiled the side of her that everyone else seemed to remember, the normal side of her, the confident and determined girl who truly believed that she could change the world. Part of me wondered if she would have if she never met Tristan, or remembered their past. Not that he had been any less incredible then. The weekend they’d snuck off to Times Square was simply beyond words. Unfortunately, having her memories didn’t help me with figuring out what the deal was with Tristan and the whole “die if you choose me” thing. Those memories, for some reason, continued to elude me. Still, it was enough that I no longer dreamed of Tristan, which was fine by me. How could I disappear into happy memories of him, when the present state of things was anything but?
Every day for the next eight weeks, I reached out to Tristan, and every day he’d respond. I wasn’t sure if I could reach his mind the second time I tried, him being possibly anywhere, but our connection was strong, and his voice came to me as clear as if he was sitting on the bed next to me. However, the conversations were brief, often painfully so. Surya was right about them torturing him. Sometimes, I would slip into his mind too deeply, my rush into his mental embrace too forceful, to the point that I could feel what he felt, and the pain that would race throughout my body was paralyzing. Still, I went to him. I wouldn’t abandon him. If it meant that I would suffer from time to time, it was nothing to what I would have faced had he not sacrificed himself for me.
It was my intent that my thirty-second visitations be spent comforting him as best I could, but often times it was the other way around. The guilt would swallow me up sometimes and leave me unsure of what to say. He’d tell me not to worry about him, that if I truly wanted to honor his sacrifice then I should just live. In fact, that’s how he’d end all of our talks. “Live, Ana.”
So that’s what I tried to do.
Those eight weeks were in many ways a period of adjustment. For one, I had to get used to being considered a “freak,” and not the “weird kid from out of town” kind of freak that I was used to, but a “freak,” freak. The news of my being confirmed a conjurer had spread quickly, and witch folk showed up from all over the world hoping to get a glimpse at the “cursed heir.” The guardians my grandmother still trusted enough to use were turning away people by the hundreds by the time my birthday rolled around. The local news picked up on the increased number of incoming foreigners; fortunately, they weren’t able to offer up any explanation as to the cause.
However, not everyone who came did so out of curiosity. A great number of them came to protest my being allowed to keep my “title.” News reached us almost daily about the high-ranking witch folk from other havens speaking out against me. Most of the world’s witching communities were in an uproar now that it was common knowledge that the ancestors they’d held up as heroes were actually liars who’d lost the war and agreed to a suffocating peace agreement. Witch folk were now fully aware of just how far beneath the thumb of Daemon they really were, but that wasn’t something they could do anything about, so I became an easy target for their frustrations.
That is not to say that everyone in my own haven had come to accept me either. The majority did offer their support at the next council meeting, and were willing to denounce Duncan’s coup as being both wrong and illegal, but only under the stipulation that I be placed under near constant supervision. They still didn’t trust me, and honestly, I could have cared less. I had some of Aleksandra’s fiery temper now (thankfully that was all this time), and I still felt so angry for what they tried to do to me. I would talk about it with my mother sometimes, and that kept me from doing anything stupid. She would remind me that it would take a while to uproot the traditional views of what a conjurer was, but assured me that Mrs. Moorer was right—my example could go a long way to doing just that.
So I did what they told me to do. After speaking on their behalf, those who were instrumental in the coup were pardoned. I recited something about the haven needing to put the past in the past, about needing to heal as a community. I couldn’t say that the words were one hundred percent sincere, but it had done the trick. My speech was met with a rounding applause.
Duncan had taken Nathan and skipped town the night the vampires came. I thought of him often in the following weeks; the kindness he showed me that night in South Carolina, the hate in his eyes when he discovered what I was. And even with the great show of support at the council meeting, many still shared Duncan’s views. After someone sent a fireball through the glass wall of my bedroom (thankfully I was in the bathroom taking a shower), my grandmother beefed up security with foreign guardians and accepted Genevieve’s offer to send out two guardians of her own to become my personal security detail. I hated the idea of being followed even more closely, but the two girls she sent were at least my age, a vast improvement over the forty-year-old male “supervision” the haven had prescribed for me.
My birthday party was to be an enormous test. Sixteenth birthdays were a really big deal in the witching world, as it was usually the earliest that a girl’s magic became active—if you weren’t a conjurer that is. For an heir, it was a worldwide event. As if I needed more attention. However, even I was aware that a lot was riding on tonight. This was my showcase, the other heirs and various VIP’s were all flying in, and I had to convince them that I wasn’t the monster that my being a conjurer suggested. What happened tonight could wipe away all the progress we’d made in the last two months.
I sat quietly in my bedroom, waiting on Aspen’s “magical” make-up kit. She wouldn’t be doing anything quite so breathtaking this time; I needed to appear as normal as possible tonight. My bodyguards, Corinne and Amelie, were on high alert, one on the balcony, the other on the outside of my bedroom door. I’d asked them if they wanted to join our little makeover party but both promptly refused. Amelie had at least smiled when she turned me down; Corrine looked at me as if I had insulted her mother.
A knock sounded on the door and Amelie leaned into the room to inform me that Taylor was here.
“Big night!” said Taylor, beaming as she stepped into the room.
Taylor had taken to being a witch like “white on rice.” Her words, not mine. After the attack, her mother sold the ranch and moved up here, purchasing the house across the street from her dad’s so that she could help Taylor with the transition. Taylor’s near death experience allowed her mother and father to call a truce in regards to their bickering, and she swore she could see their relationship reigniting due to the proximity. This would be the exact opposite of what’s happened with her and Chris. Generally, we don’t bring up the craziness that happened two months ago, but when your best friend is dating the son of one of its main conspirators, it kind of hangs in the air. Taylor sided with me, and while I know in my heart that Chris didn’t support what his father did, he’s still his father and he’s loyal to that. Literature class has been the very definition of awkward. Taylor and Chris try to play indifferent, but I’ve caught both staring after the other longingly on several occasions.
“I told you not to buy me anything,” I said, as she plopped down next to me on my bed. She rolled her eyes and handed me the shiny red box anyway. Carefully, I untied the thin pink bow and lifted open the top. A book, Football for Dummies, was inside. Taylor had already started to laugh before I could pretend to be insulted.
“Look under the book,” she instructed.
I picked up the book to find a silver bracelet, an exact duplic
ate of the one dangling from her wrist. Normally, I’d find something like this incredibly cheesy, but Taylor’s intentions were just always so good-natured, these last eight weeks so rough, that it’s exactly what I needed.
I leaned over to give her a hug and she whispered that there was another gift. Her cheeks were red now and she nodded back to the box.
“Look underneath the paper, it’s all the way to the bottom.”
I did as she asked. An absolutely beautiful pencil drawing of me and Taylor’s faces, both smiling, stared back at me. “Chris?” I asked her.
She nodded.
“Are you two…?”
She shook her head sadly. “I’m just the delivery girl. He knew that his family wouldn’t be invited, but he wanted to give you something. I told him that I’d make sure you got it. Officially, we’re still not talking.”
I had to remind myself that what happened to them wasn’t my fault. That I’d done nothing to deserve what his father and others had tried to do to me. But it seemed like everything was my fault these days, and I felt guilty anyway.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
She nodded in agreement.
The door opened again, but before Amelie could inform me about who this was, Aspen had already come bouncing in, both hands full of bags.
It’s just Aspen and her dad now, her mother moved back to Ireland. The McArthur’s announced their divorce the day of London’s funeral. It was supposed to be announced the following day, but London’s father had a tough time keeping it together during the service. Most who attended were non-witches, having known London from either school or those rare Wednesday nights when she actually did go to the food bank to volunteer. People wondered openly about her death—how someone so young and physically fit could possibly die of a heart attack. The explanation that was given was that she’d had a heart defect. I wondered if they would have used the same lie had I chosen Tristan.
Aspen started coming by to do my makeup every morning after that, just as she had done for her sister, and became noticeably more herself with every passing week. It helped both of us to talk about her, I think, and we would laugh with one another and share our favorite “London” stories. Understandably, she did most of the sharing.
“Ana, darling, so good to see you,” said Aspen in a playful voice.
“Oh it’s just been agony since the last time you were here,” I returned, playing along. “You simply must save me from my own plainness. I’m in need of something ravishing, darling.” I’m not sure exactly which morning it was that we decided to talk like this, but we’d kept it going for a while now, and had both become pretty good at it. It was always good for a laugh.
Taylor cracked up and Aspen sat her things on the bed beside us.
Aspen sighed. “I’m not sure I can do ravishing tonight,” she said in her normal voice. “I’ve been told at least twenty times to keep… it... simple.” She turned to Taylor. “But I’m gonna make you look amazing.”
And she did just that. Aspen tinted Taylor’s face with just the slightest tint of gold, and it played lovely with her now shimmering brown locks, dyed a shade lighter to match her eyes. Taylor just stared at herself in the mirror when Aspen was finished. I laughed and told her I knew the feeling.
My makeup took no time at all, and my hair was still in pretty good shape from when Aspen had come by to do it this morning for school. So we had time to kill. A dangerous thing considering Aspen possessed her sister’s same wild streak. She had an idea.
“Help!” I called. Corinne spun around quickly on the balcony and put her hands on her hips to show that she was annoyed with us. Amelie, on the other hand, didn’t have the same vantage point. She stormed into the room, fists up (and thankfully not on fire), and we, all three of us, wrapped her up. Her first instinct was to fight us off, but she caught herself. We weren’t threats. We walked her over to the chair in front of the wardrobe and Aspen went to work. She looked to her partner for help but Corinne just smirked. Eventually, she did relax and Aspen was allowed to do her hair.
Amelie’s eyes lifted, and she smiled at herself in the mirror when we showed her the final result. She asked us in a low voice if anyone had a cell phone capable of taking pictures, and Taylor told her that she did. She posed for a quick photo, smiling into the camera once Corinne turned her head to survey the grounds. Amelie told her what number to send it to and not a full minute later did we get a reply. Amelie translated for us. “Wow…is that really you?” We all laughed, and though she wouldn’t confirm who sent the text, we were all pretty certain it was her boyfriend back home. She had us wash her face after that and she skipped to the door just in time to introduce Helena.
“They’re ready for the birthday girl,” she announced happily.
“I can’t wait for Darren’s surprise—“Aspen started.
“Shhhhhhh,” said Taylor putting her finger to her lips.
“Surprise?” I asked. “What kind of surprise?”
Knowing smiles surrounded me now, but no one piped up with an answer. Helena had been upset when I first told her that I’d chosen Darren, but she came to me later that day and told me that she understood my needing to follow my heart and didn’t hold a grudge. I couldn’t bear to tell her about his sacrifice.
“Go on and change into your gown,” Helena instructed. “Your guests are waiting.”
I nodded and the others left the room. Tonight’s gown was already hanging in my closet. It had been picked out weeks ago. Not too flashy, a smidgen fancier than plain, it was light grey and had a bow on the back. I slipped into it quickly, and started back into my bedroom. I stopped myself.
Closing the door shut and locking it from the inside, I slid down into a corner of the closet. “Tristan.”
I waited for a moment. No reply. “No big deal,” I told myself. He doesn’t always answer the first time, but going deeper into his mind made me vulnerable, allowing his experiences to rush into me. I took a deep breath and braced myself for the pain. “Tristan!”
He still wasn’t answering.
It took everything I had to force myself out of that closet. Corinne had knocked several times by then, and sounded genuinely concerned when she asked if I was alright. Unfortunately, I wasn’t. Tristan could be dead.