Projection

by Risa Green

  Amphiclea hugged her as if she could read her mind.

  “You’ll live with me,” she said. “You and Gaia. We’ll tell her you’re her uncle. She’ll come to love you.”

  “No,” Plotinus said, interrupting. “No. I will die as you, Gemina, but there is only one thing I ask in return.”

  “What, Plotinus? Anything.”

  “We can’t allow this to happen in vain. This ability to project … I see it now for what it is. It’s power. I’m not talking about the magic. In the right hands, it can tip the scales of human justice. Gemina, promise me that you will never tell any man of this power. We men will take it for granted, like everything else.”

  He took Gemina firmly by the shoulders and looked her in the eye.

  “When Gaia is old enough, you must tell her the truth. Tell her who you really are and about what happened to us. And then you must teach her this power, Gemina, and she must teach her daughter in turn. Don’t allow it to die with me and you. Let it live for the ages. Let it become a power for the powerless.”

  Gemina felt a surge of electricity course through her veins. It had never occurred to her to tell the truth, but now the thought of being able to tell Gaia one day—to let the little girl know that her mother is with her—it gave her a glimmer of hope.

  “You have my word, Plotinus,” she whispered. “This ability—the Plotinus Ability—it will live on. I promise.” Before she could dissolve in tears, she turned from her own smile for the very last time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Jessica watched as Tina Holt lifted her crystal gavel into the air above the wooden podium at the front of the room. She found it hard it to take Tina seriously as President. Jessica had seen her dance on the tables one too many times at the annual Oculus Society Christmas party.

  “I’d like to call for a vote on the theme of this year’s holiday gala. All those in favor of a masquerade ball say ‘aye.’ ”

  A chorus of ‘ayes’ broke out among the members of the Oculus Society, all of whom were sitting on plastic folding chairs that had been set up in the small room where the monthly, Thursday afternoon meetings were always held.

  Jessica had a vague, hazy memory of an Oculus Society meeting taking place at her old house, where she lived with her parents before they died. She must have been four or five at the time. Still, she remembered the smell of fresh flowers and the hurried sense of importance that her mother carried as she readied the house. The images were fragmented: silver, metal folding chairs; the parquet wood of the dining room table laid out with fancy bowls and platters; coats piled up in the guest bedroom. It must have been one of the last meetings they ever held at a member’s home, because a few months after her parents’ accident, the Oculus Society bought a former Masonic lodge. Once suitably renovated with cream-colored walls, dark wood floors, and tufted white upholstery, the building became the new headquarters for all Oculus operations.

  “All those opposed?” Tina glanced around the room, the look on her face daring anyone to utter a ‘nay.’ Once the requisite period of silence had passed, Tina lowered the gavel with a soft thud. “Masquerade ball it is, then.”

  The official Oculus Society bylaws stated that members were expected to refrain from using cell phones during meetings. Jessica disregarded this rule, as she felt that the Oculus Society should refrain from making meetings so painfully boring. Still, she didn’t want to flaunt her disobedience. As she alternately texted Connor and checked Instagram, she held her phone behind the meeting agenda, which she’d propped up vertically in her lap. A text appeared from Connor:

  I want 2 hump u.

  Jessica rolled her eyes. Connor did have a sweet, endearing side to him, but then he’d bust out with something like this that just made her want to smack him. The guys in Delphi were so lame. Even Nick had turned out to be a huge disappointment. To think she’d been so jealous the night of Gretchen’s graduation party, when Nick had held Gretchen’s hand. And they had flirted with each other that summer at the Club, and Gretchen was furious, even though she’d never said so. Jessica would be a liar if she didn’t admit she hadn’t thought about him while she was in England. She’d built him up to be some kind of god: hot, athletic, popular.

  So of course, Ariel had fallen for him. She’d never left Delphi, so she still believed in the myth of Nick Ford. Jessica knew that Ariel would start to see the cracks in Nick sooner or later—she wasn’t stupid. And in the meantime, if Jessica wanted to keep hanging out with Ariel and Nick, she would have to suck it up and pretend that she was into Connor Matthews. It was the only way the plan would work.

  There was a tap on her shoulder, and Jessica quickly shoved the phone underneath the paper she was holding. Michelle. Jessica looked up guiltily, expecting to be reprimanded—her aunt took the Oculus Society so seriously—but Michelle didn’t comment on the infraction. She didn’t say anything at all, just tilted her head, signaling that Jessica was wanted in the back room.

  Jessica raised her eyebrows.

  There hadn’t been a backroom meeting since the video of Jessica and Gretchen kissing had gotten out two years ago, and it had been suggested that Jessica “distance” herself from the Oculus Society for a while. Michelle shrugged, as if to say that she had no idea what was going on, either.

  Jessica held her breath as she followed Michelle down a narrow passage behind the main stage. Joan Hedley handed them white robes as soon as they stepped inside, and Jessica immediately slipped hers over her jeans and T-shirt. She was nervous, though she couldn’t put her finger on exactly why. Joan and Kristen Renwick were already robed, and they took their places at the table. A few moments later Tina Holt joined them and took her spot in the middle of the group. Jessica could hear the muffled sounds of women talking in the other room now that the meeting had been adjourned.

  Tina cleared her throat and took a sip of water from a glass she’d carried in from the general meeting. She held a piece of folded-up paper in her other hand.

  “Ladies, welcome back. I’ve called this meeting to let you know that we’re officially dissolving the board, as its purpose of protecting the Plotinus Ability is no longer required.”

  Michelle interrupted with a question. “Sorry, but didn’t that purpose end two years ago when we lost the anklet? Why are you doing this now?”

  Tina nodded. “As you know, we’ve been actively searching for the anklet since it was lost.”

  Jessica raised her hand. Her heart was wildly beating, and she desperately hoped no one else could hear it. Tina nodded at her to speak. “What does that mean, exactly, that you’ve been ‘actively searching’ for the anklet?”

  “While you were away, Jessica, we were in contact with the police regarding the anklet, and we also hired a private investigator on behalf of the Oculus Society to try to find it.”

  Jessica blanched. The police? A private investigator? She was horrified. Gretchen must not know about any of this. Of course not. She tried to stay calm and to appear only mildly interested. “And did they find anything?”

  Tina shook her head. “Nothing. I’ve been arguing with the police to try to get them to reopen the case, but until someone produces a real lead, they’re not willing to—and I quote—‘invest the resources.’ ” Tina sighed. She looked sad and tired. Jessica realized that it must be killing her that this happened on her watch as President. After thousands of years of protecting the Plotinus Ability, Tina Holt was the woman responsible for its demise.

  “Anyway, I think it’s time for us to move on. The anklet has vanished, and as such, so has the Plotinus Ability. However, I’d like to propose that we create a document compiling all of the known information about Plotinus, the anklet and the role the Oculus Society has played in protecting it. There’s nothing written down in the archives about how all of this works. One day the anklet might find its way back to us again, and it will be important that whoever is in charge then knows what to do with it.”

  Jessica felt sick to her stomach.
She wanted to shout out to them that the Plotinus Ability was alive and well, and that the anklet had nothing whatsoever to do with projecting. It’s just an anklet, she wanted to scream. It doesn’t have magical properties! But of course, she couldn’t say anything. Not unless she wanted to admit to everyone that she’d lied two years ago when they’d asked her why she and Gretchen had been kissing late at night in a plastic teepee on the far corner of a playground.

  We were just experimenting, she’d been forced to say. We were curious.

  And never mind how angry they would be if they knew that she’d told Gretchen about the Plotinus Ability in the first place. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what would happen if they knew that she and Gretchen had been projecting all this time. Not to mention that they’d recruited a girl not in the Oculus Society both to project and to be a witness. The very girl who videotaped them and accused the Oculus Society of terrible hypocrisy in the first place …

  Jessica sat rigid in her chair and didn’t say a word.

  “I propose the following division of labor,” Tina continued. “Each of us will be responsible for one section of the master document, and each of us will retain a full copy.” She slipped on a pair of reading glasses and smoothed out the paper she’d been holding. “I’ll deal with the actual process of projecting: how it’s physically accomplished, what needs to be said, the anklet, etc. Kristen, you do the history of how the Oculus Society came to be in possession of the anklet. Joan, you report on the OS members who were formerly chosen to project. I think you only need to go back ten years or so, and, um,”—she cleared her throat—“don’t include anyone who isn’t living. Michelle, since you’re a journalist, I think you’d be best to handle the murder and the subsequent investigations. Request copies of the police reports, and I’ll get you the file from our private investigator. And Jessica, I’d like you to research Plotinus’s life.”

  Jessica stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, treat this like the research project that will get you into the college of your choosing,” Tina snapped.

  Glaring back at Michelle’s friends was something Jessica had never had trouble with. But for the first time in her life, she saw Tina’s face. The crow’s feet. The purple under her eyes. The quivering lips. And still, the authority.

  “I’m sorry,” Jessica whispered.

  “Save it,” Tina said. “I want you to access his beliefs, how he came to project, who he projected with, and his death. Our archives will be totally available to you.” She gravely looked around at them all. “I can’t stress to you all how important this is. We are the keepers of an ancient secret. It’s our responsibility to preserve it in whatever way we can.”

  Tina hit the light switch and gave a curt nod, signaling for them all to clasp hands with each other. She closed her eyes and spoke softly in Greek.

  “Empistosýni mas kai ti n písti mas tha férei ti dikaiosýni. Af tí eínai i ypóschesi pou pani gyriká kratí sei.”

  “Our trust and our faith shall bring justice. This is the promise we solemnly keep,” translated the rest of them in unison.

  Jessica opened her eyes and took a furtive glance around; they were all beautiful women, made even more so by the flickering candlelight. Is it really even possible, she wondered, that one of them is a murderer?

  Just before lunch the next day, Jessica met Gretchen outside the boiler room of the school on a small patch of grass sandwiched between a brick wall and a tall, leafy hedge. It was one of the few spots at Delphi where they could talk unseen by anyone else.

  Jessica had noticed that Gretchen had been even more down than usual lately; she was upset, of course, that they hadn’t found her mother’s killer yet. But there seemed to be more. Her usual slouch had turned into more of a slump, and her eyes seemed dull and almost always on the verge of filling up with tears. All of the sparkle that Gretchen had once had—even after her mother had died—seemed to have completely deserted her. So Jessica was relieved to see Gretchen’s face perk up as she heard the news about the private detective; the color came back to her cheeks, and she lifted her head straight. She began to pace the grass.

  “The most important thing,” Gretchen said, jabbing her finger into the air, “is that you get a hold of whatever they give Michelle.” She clenched her hands into fists. “I can’t believe they had a private investigator looking for the anklet! You’ve got to get those files, Jess. I’ve got to know what this guy was looking into. Who this guy was looking into—”

  “But he didn’t find anything,” Jessica reminded her. She was worried about not being able to manage Gretchen’s expectations. She didn’t know how well Gretchen could handle being disappointed again. “I’m not sure it’s going to be the smoking gun you think it is.”

  “No shit, Jessica. But there might be something that I missed or something that means something to me that meant nothing to him. I just want to see it.” She looked pointedly at Jessica, her face a steely mask of resolve. “And if you can’t get it, then we’ll project, and I’ll do it myself.”

  Jessica chewed anxiously on her lower lip. She loved Gretchen like a sister, but her obsession had become exhausting. Obviously, she empathized with her. After all, Jessica had lost both of her parents, and if there had been someone to blame—if it hadn’t been a simple car accident in the rain—she would have been the first one to try to bring them to justice. So she supported Gretchen in her quest to uncover the truth, she really did. But two years had already come and gone.

  Granted, life had been easy and almost surreal while they were at Chadwell. They’d lived and plotted together all that time, day in and day out. Together they’d built Ariel up in their minds into a kind of mythic, menacing evil. And while they were there—thousands of miles away from Delphi and everyone associated with it, deliberately off of Facebook, off of Twitter, off of Instagram, so that nobody from Delphi could contact them or find out where they were—Jessica had been able to buy into the idea that Ariel might have been … well, if not responsible for the murder, then at least involved, somehow. And so she went along with Gretchen’s plan. Go back to Delphi pretending to hate each other. Lure Ariel in with the prospect of popularity. Make her feel like they’re really friends, then blackmail her into projecting with them. Use her to get information, and when the time was right, exact revenge for what she did to them. And if they were able to prove—as Gretchen suspected—that Ariel had something to do with the murder, then they’d turn her in to the police.

  But the plan had gone awry from day one. For one thing, Ariel wasn’t the monster that they’d imagined her to be. It was obvious that she regretted what she’d done to them—had been suffering for what she’d done to them. And worse, at least from a certain point of view and to her own great surprise, Jessica actually liked her. Ariel was funny and cool and fearless, and she’d been honest with Jessica about her problems: her shoplifting, her absentee father, her feelings about Nick. Jessica had wanted, a few times, to tell Ariel what she really thought—that Nick was kind of a meathead and that she was, frankly, too good for him—but she’d restrained herself. Rather than being angry about what Ariel had done to them, Jessica had ended up feeling badly about how she had treated Ariel in middle school. They hadn’t counted on her already being popular, either, although ultimately, that had worked to their advantage. As an outsider, Ariel had nothing to lose if she said no to their offer. But as the most popular girl in eleventh grade … well, she couldn’t afford to say no to them and risk losing her social status if they told everyone what she’d done. And it was obvious to both of them that, until now, Ariel cared more about her social status than just about anything else. Although, who could blame her, really, after all those years spent as a social outcast?

  And they still had no proof whatsoever that Ariel had anything to do with the murder. Nor had she provided them with any leads on who did.

  “I’ll bet you anything he’s got something on Ariel in that file of his. I can feel it,
” Gretchen said. Her eyes were gleaming and she rubbed her hands together like she was kindling wood.

  “I have to go,” Jessica muttered. “Lunch started five minutes ago, and they’ll be wondering where I am.” She couldn’t bring herself to say what she really wanted to say: Let it go, sweetie. Ariel isn’t the murderer. And we may never find out who is.

  Gretchen waved her away with an exaggerated flick of her wrist. “Go, then. Go have fun, and be popular.”

  Jessica gave her a weary look. “This was your idea, Gretchen. You were the one who thought it made sense to pretend that we hate each other. You were the one who thought it would be better if only one of us was popular.”

  “But you never argued that it should be you, did you? Admit it Jessica, weren’t you just a little bit worried that I might be more popular than you if we came back? Weren’t you just a little bit concerned that Nick Ford might pick me over you again?”

  “I was, until I spent five minutes with him,” she said with a laugh.

  But Gretchen wasn’t smiling.

  Jessica’s cheeks flushed. “No, Gretchen. The only thing I was concerned about was finding your mother’s killer. About being your friend.”

  Now Gretchen turned red, but not with anger. Something in her face told Jessica that she was embarrassed. Embarrassed and exposed. Jessica shook her head and let out a loud sigh before walking away, leaving Gretchen alone again as she retreated to the ruling table in the olive grove.

  Ariel was already seated at their table along with Molly Carson and a couple of other girls from the Oculus Society. Nick and Connor and some of their lacrosse team buddies were there as well.

  “Where were you?” Ariel asked her. Jessica thought she sounded suspicious, prompting her to consider, as she often did, how much Ariel really knew. Did she know that Gretchen still suspected her? Did she realize that this whole thing was one big set-up? Or that it was trying to be, at least?

  “Nowhere,” Jessica said with a casual shrug. “I had to stay after class for a few minutes.” Jessica saw Ariel’s attention shift to something behind her, and she turned. Gretchen was crossing the olive grove; she took a seat at an empty table in the sun. Her face was red and blotchy; it was obvious that she’d been crying. Great, Jessica thought. Now I’ve gone and upset her.