Projection (25 page)

Jessica had read this sentence three times already, and yet the words couldn’t register. She was still fuming from the accusation that Ariel had made against Rob yesterday. She’d barely slept the night before, replaying it over and over again in her mind, and now, no matter how hard she tried, she still couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Yes, Rob was a lost
soul. But he was harmless. He was
her
lost soul. She knew what people thought: that he was a fool who’d wasted his adult life. But he was smarter than anyone gave him credit for. More sensitive, too. Accusing him was, in Jessica’s mind, almost the same thing as accusing Jessica herself. He was, after all, the closest thing she had to a parent. Michelle had never bonded with her the way that Rob had.

Besides, Ariel didn’t even have any evidence. Absolutely nothing to go on. Just
a feeling
, she’d said, based on nothing but the fact that Rob buys alcohol for high school guys, and a secondhand conversation with Nick Ford when Rob had let his guard down and admitted that he wasn’t happy with his life. And really, how many adults
were
happy with the way their lives turned out? There’d be a lot of murderers running around if that were the only criteria. At least when they’d accused Ariel of the murder, they’d had a reason for doing so. Gretchen had seen her at the party that night, and Ariel had lied about being there.
That
was evidence. A feeling was just bullshit.

Jessica sighed. She knew that this was just Ariel’s way of getting back at them for suspecting her. She was hurt, and she wanted to hurt Jessica right back. Well, it wasn’t going to work. Ariel was
not
going to make her doubt Rob of all people. The only thing was, now that Gretchen had it in her head that Rob was a potential suspect, Jessica knew she’d never hear the end of it. This, she thought, is how celebrities must feel when the tabloids just make up a story about them, and everyone in the world believes it.

There was a quick knock at her bedroom door, and then Michelle’s face was peering in at her.

“Can’t you at least wait for me to say
come in
?” Jessica asked.

The left side of Michelle’s upper lip rose as if it were attached to a string held by an invisible puppeteer. “This is my house that I pay for, and I’m entitled to go into any room that I want, whenever I want. You’re lucky I even knock at all.”

Jessica sighed. “What do you want?”

“You have to drive me to the office. The bust I’m reporting on is on Monday, and I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes that I’m not prepared for. I need to read some things on the way over.”

“I’m busy,” Jessica protested. “I’m working on the thing that Tina asked for.”

Michelle frowned. “God. I haven’t even looked at that yet, and Tina gave me the file three days ago. It’s still sitting in my office.” Her anxious expression suddenly gave way to a self-satisfied smile. “Hey, I know. Take me to the office and just work on it there. You can use my computer. I’ll only be an hour.” She preemptively wagged an index finger at Jessica. “And before you try to come up with a lame excuse for why you can’t do it, just know that there’s only one ending to this conversation, and it’s you asking me where the car keys are. So let’s go.”

The NBC affiliate station
in Delphi occupied three stories of a squat, nondescript building in the center of town. What made it stand apart from the rest of the squat, nondescript buildings on the block was the oversized peacock logo affixed to the stucco, along with a massive billboard that seemed to rise out of the roof, emblazoned with a horribly airbrushed picture of Michelle and the rest of the News-on-Nine Team. This heightened version of Michelle—with the overly white teeth, the impossibly unblemished skin and the helmet of too-perfect hair—still made Jessica cringe.

Inside, the office was frantic. Interns rushed with stacks of paper; people in cubicles urgently shouted across the room.
The husband in the domestic dispute was thirty-four, not thirty-seven! The teacher charged with molestation had a prior arrest for engaging in lewd acts! The mother of the little boy rescued from the fire spent time in rehab last year!
Nobody said hello as Michelle and Jessica walked down a carpeted hallway toward the row of offices that lined the back wall.

“They’re not very friendly,” Jessica observed.

“They’re news people,” Michelle quipped, as she opened the door to her office. “Lacking social skills is a job requirement. Haven’t you lived with me long enough to have learned that by now?”

Jessica almost smiled.
At least she’s self-aware
.

The office was cramped and cluttered with DVDs and stacks of accordion folders everywhere. There was a television atop a black metal stand in the corner and a rectangular, curtainless window along the back wall. The front wall was dominated by a large window overlooking the rest of the office—shielded by blinds that had been lowered to half-mast, so that Jessica could only see the legs of the people scurrying past. On the desk were several pictures in silver frames: one of Michelle and Rob on their wedding day, one of Michelle with some of her friends at an Oculus Society event, one of Michelle and Jessica’s mother from when they were children. And there was a candid one of Jessica at her eighth grade graduation. She was wearing her cap and gown, laughing at something off camera.

Jessica had never seen the photo before. She hadn’t even known that it existed. She’d never been in this office for longer than fifteen seconds at a time, and usually those brief periods where spent buried angrily in her phone—anything to
escape. But inside of her, in the icy place where she stored her feelings about her parents—about Michelle, about how sad it was that there was nobody who really, truly cared about her—a tiny little piece chipped off and melted.

Michelle eyed Jessica as she took in the photo, but didn’t comment on it. “Just stay in here,” Michelle instructed. “You can use the computer, but Do. Not. Touch. Anything else. I’ll be back in an hour.” She smoothed her hair and smiled into the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the door. “Thanks for telling me that I had lipstick all over my teeth.”

“Well, I’m thinking about becoming a news person myself,” Jessica answered dryly.

Michelle smirked and pulled the door shut behind her.

Jessica sat at Michelle’s desk, waiting. As she studied the photo of herself, doubt began to pry its way under her convictions, lifting them up and unsettling them, like tree roots beneath concrete.
Is Michelle capable of killing someone? Could she really have murdered Gretchen’s mom?

Finally, the coast was clear. She pulled open the top desk drawer: mints; a light blue, suede makeup case; a travel-sized toothbrush. In the drawer beneath that were a company handbook, a folder of HR materials, and a black address book filled with the names and numbers of various public officials, police officers, newspaper reporters, union leaders and CEOs of local companies. Jessica picked through some of the accordion folders lying on the floor, keeping one eye on the legs moving around outside the window.

She was just about to give up when she found a single manila file folder leaning against the side of the desk. The words
Oculus Society
had been typed onto a thin label that ran across the tab of the folder. She picked it up and sat back down at the desk.

Inside was a memo written to Tina Holt from a Ralph Sheasby, Licensed Private Investigator.

Jessica’s heart sank a little. She had heard Tina say that the private investigator had found nothing, but seeing it in writing—so stark and bleak—drove it home. She flipped through the rest of the file. Tina Holt had supplied Mr. Sheasby with a list of people who were aware that the anklet was a “rare and ancient artifact,” and he had compiled a dossier on each of them. Tina’s list matched hers and Gretchen’s exactly, with the exception of Ariel, of course. But she frowned when she saw that Ralph Sheasby had extended this initial list to include the husbands, families, and close friends of each of them, as well. Jessica turned straight to the page on Rob.

There was a photograph of him outside of the Club—taken, it appeared, at long range and without his knowledge. And Mr. Sheasby had also delved into his finances, as evidenced by a spreadsheet detailing his assets, liabilities, and bank accounts. As expected, he had next to nothing in the asset column and just a few credit cards with small balances. He had two bank accounts: a joint account he shared with Michelle and another account in his name only. There was also a safe deposit box at the Delphi Bank and Trust.
He probably keeps his pot there
, Jessica thought.
Or maybe he’s finally started squirreling away some cash so that he can leave her
.

Jessica glanced at her watch. It had been almost ten minutes since Michelle had left, and she hadn’t done any research on Plotinus yet. She knew that Michelle would be suspicious if she hadn’t produced something, so Jessica carefully put the file back and logged onto the computer as a guest. She returned to the Wikipedia page she’d found at home.

This time, the words sank in.

Treason?
Jessica opened a new window and typed a search:
treason in ancient Rome
.

She wondered if Gemina might have been involved in a murder somehow. How fitting, she thought, given the circumstances under which her anklet disappeared almost two thousand years later. Jessica clicked back to the original passage she’d been reading.

Jessica’s brain hurt from trying to read between the lines in front of her. The facts, she knew, were the facts, but the real story lied in the details, details she could only guess at. Over and over she kept returning to the quote from Porphyry about how Plotinus believed himself to be someone else. She tapped her pen against the side of Michelle’s desk.
He believed himself to be someone else. He believed himself to be someone else
.

Jessica dropped the pen. A sickening idea had begun to form in her mind. Was it possible that Gemina and Plotinus had somehow gotten stuck in each other’s bodies? Could Gemina have been executed before they’d had a chance to project back to themselves? It would certainly explain why Plotinus believed himself to be someone else. It was because he
was
someone else. He was Gemina.

Jessica felt like she was going to throw up. She remembered back to the first time she and Gretchen had projected, how panicked she’d been when she’d realized that there was no guarantee that it would work a second time. How terrified she’d been that she might be stuck in Gretchen’s body forever. But then it had worked, and they’d never really given it a second thought. All of those times with Gretchen, with Ariel … if she’d have known that it could really happen—that you could get stuck like Plotinus and Gemina—she’d never have taken the risk.

I’ll never do it again
, Jessica swore to herself.
Never
.

Rob was in the
den playing Guitar Hero when Jessica returned home that afternoon. Michelle had dropped her off at the house and had gone straight out again. The police were making her wear a bulletproof vest for the bust, and she needed to go get fitted for it ASAP. The brand was called Dragon Skin, Michelle had told her. Jessica had had to bite her tongue to keep herself from saying that it was aptly named: Dragon Skin for a Dragon Lady.

Funny: Jessica couldn’t remember the last time Rob had played Guitar Hero. He usually said it made him too depressed to pretend to be a rock star on the way up after his real band had come so close and failed. It had hardly been close, though. It made her a little sad to think about how much Rob had hung his hopes on that one A&R guy—some jerk had come out to hear the band as a favor to the drummer’s college roommate.

He’d given Rob his card after the show, told him they had a great sound, said he should give him a call. Rob had been
out of his mind with excitement. He went out and bought an expensive leather jacket and a new guitar he’d had his eye on for years; he told everyone that he was getting signed to a record label, that he’d be moving to LA. But the guy never called back. Ten, twelve, twenty phone calls … and he never returned any of them. Rob had been devastated. The feeling of sadness around the house was almost as bad as when her parents had died.