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> “Our enemies abroad were distracted by Napoleon’s antics, but our enemies at home were not so encumbered. And so they made their move.”

“We’ve already been over that plan, no.”

Beatrice paced back and forth across the small office on the 47th floor as the sun crept toward its zenith outside the window. I had been there since 7 a.m. after a night spent staring at the ceiling without any sleep, after spending the previous day typing the same four lines of code over and over again at work.

Luckily Beatrice’s supply of vitality buffs was deep and I had sprung back to life immediately after I washed the awful-tasting gummy down with some coffee. I suspected, though, that the next week would be filled with a similar combination of sleepless nights and buff-fueled benders.

“The Schedule doesn’t say anything about the condition of the Guild asset,” I said for what seemed like the tenth time. “So all we need to do is just-”

“No, no, no,” said Beatrice, walking over to the workbench, where Rita van Asch’s diaries were propped open. “You don’t understand how the Guild works. We show up with statue Frankie and they’re more likely to break it into pieces and bludgeon us than thank us. And that doesn’t even address the box, which we obviously don’t have.”

“But they already have the box. At least Gilbert does, right? And he’s in the Guild, so why do they think that we have it?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“I still don’t understand why we don’t just use the speed buffs to help us sort through this,” I said. “It worked twice before, so-”

“No,” said Beatrice. “We don’t have enough of the picture. All that will do is confirm in half a second what we already know, which is nothing. Not until we get the other ring back.”

“Fine,” I said. “Can I go then? At least until you hear back from Polly? I would still like to make it into the office today, and tonight’s not exactly going to be a walk in the park.”

After almost a month of silence, of course today was finally the day I heard from Lisa, asking to meet her and Stacy for dinner tonight. I had been dreading this moment ever since the morning after the Met lecture, going over in my head a hundred times what I was going to say. But it was Beatrice who eventually put my mind at ease, when one night in the library a few weeks ago she had slid a small vial across our small table. Her memory serum. Well, a new version of it.

“You can go if you want,” said Beatrice, her nose buried in one of the diaries. “But don’t you want to test out the serum first? It wasn’t really meant for older memories. The modifications I made should fix that, but I can’t say for sure.”

“And how would I do that?” I said. “Are you offering up yourself as a test subject?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” I said. “OK then. What do you want to forget?”

Beatrice slowly closed the diary, pulled out her phone, and brought up a picture, before handing it to me.

“Him,” she said.

“Who is that?” I said, looking at the image of a man with grey hair standing behind a podium at some lecture.

“He’s the husband of Garrett’s old boss. Was, I should say. He died a few months ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you know him well?”

“Not really. I slept with him once to get back at Garrett, who was fucking his boss at the time. Long story.”

“Got it,” I said, not wanting to press further on what was obviously a sensitive subject. But Beatrice kept going.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“He and Garrett’s boss got divorced soon after. I didn’t care at the time, as Amelia was a real bitch. But then I found out he slowly drank himself to death. Maybe he would have done it anyway, I don’t know, but I don’t need any more things weighing on my conscious. Especially now.”

She turned away from me and wiped her eyes and I stood there, not knowing if I should comfort her or pretend that she wasn’t crying. Eventually, she collected herself and took a can of ginger ale out of the fridge.

“You have the serum?” Beatrice said.

“Yeah,” I replied, removing it from my bag. “But you never told me how-”

“Good,” she said. “Then let’s do this.”

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“So,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Stacy, who looked at Lisa, waiting for her to start the inquisition. But Lisa refused to take the baton, and instead just stared off into the ether.

“Why don’t I get us drinks?” I said, and got up quickly before either of them could respond. The tiny basement restaurant was packed to the seams and understaffed to boot, so I wedged myself between two groups of finance bros and ordered two rum and cokes and a whiskey.

I pulled out the tiny vial while I waited and gently uncorked it. It smelled sweet, a marked change from Beatrice’s other concoctions, but I had seen how much power even a few drops held.

The bartender brought over the drinks and I handed her a stack of twenties. I pulled the glasses close to me, the vial concealed in the palm of my hand, and slowly added three drops of the serum to all but one of the brown drinks.

“Hey,” said a voice.

I looked up and the bartender was nearly on top of me.

“Oh, it’s, umm,” I said, fumbling for a plausible explanation. “It’s CBD oil.”

“Obviously,” she said, “but we charge extra for that. Make sure I don’t see that again.”

“Sorry!” I called as I grabbed the drinks and retreated to the back. I set the glasses down on the table and slid into the booth, my heart pounding. Lisa still had the same forlorn look on her face and I wondered how much she and Stacy actually remembered from that night.

“Cheers,” I said, raising my own glass awkwardly. They responded in turn and clinked my glass, before each taking the smallest of sips.

Shit.

“Come on,” I said. “The more sober we are, the more painful this is going to be.”

I polished off my whiskey in a single gulp and hoped that Lisa and Stacy would follow. The silence that ensued was so painful that I nearly got up to run away, but after the longest minute of my life, both Lisa and Stacy took a second short swig of their drinks.

It was showtime.

“Look, I’m sorry I’ve been MIA for so long and I’m sorry I didn’t come bail you out after the lecture. I didn’t even really know what had happened. You both kind of just ran off suddenly and then Duncan was calling me from and then I dropped my phone and then-”

“Are you fucking serious?” said Lisa, her eyes filled with fury. “That’s the best you’ve got? ‘My phone died, sorry?’ Did you think we just … you know what, forget it.”

“Forget what?” I said, but part of me knew the answer already.

“Everything,” said Stacy, chiming in. “We’re done with you, Je-”

Stacy’s face suddenly froze mid-word, her eyes unblinking. Lisa too sat there with the same slack-jawed look, as if something deep in her brain had overridden her conscious thought to tell me off. Because that’s what was happening.

The same thing had happened earlier that day during the test run with Beatrice. Except that was more controlled, more thought-through. She had pictured in her mind the man she was trying to forget. Not just a particular memory, but his entire being. If they met downstairs in ten minutes, she would not recall who he was. If Garrett mentioned his old boss’s husband, she would shrug and say “Hmm, don’t remember him.”

And it had worked. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but it had worked.

So I knew in an instant that the serum had been triggered, not during Lisa and Stacy’s recollection of the night of the lecture, but at their adamant and explicit desire that they wanted to forget me.

It had taken only a minute for the life to flood back into Beatrice’s face. And so I counted down the seconds until my two best friends returned to the waking world without a memory of who I was. What would they think, I wondered, when they saw pictures of the three of us or when someone mentioned me in passing? And wasn’t a part of me being erased too? If our memories together were now only in my mind, how could I prove to anyone (and to myself) that they had been real and not just the delusion of a lonely 18-year old looking for a place to belong?

Lisa blinked. And then Stacy did too. They both gave me a look as if they were trying to remember where it was they had seen me once before, but couldn’t quite place me.

“I’m sorry,” said Lisa. “But could we get another round of drinks? This one tastes a bit off.”

I nodded, fighting back the tears that were slowly welling in my eyes, grabbed the two glasses, and started to walk away.

“Hey,” said Stacy, and I looked back.

“Take this one too,” she said, pointing to my own empty glass. “It was here when we sat down.”

I stood there, unmoving, as the full reality of what I had done finally snapped into place.

“Hello?” said Lisa, waving her hand to get my attention, before turning back to Stacy. “I swear, the service in this city has been going downhill for years now.”

I grabbed my glass without another word and walked out of their lives.

Next: Jen replaces the erased memories with new ones.