Projection (16 page)

In their relationship, she was the child, and he was the adult who always came to her rescue. It was why he’d gone to Lucretia Iusta’s bed to begin with. After two years of tolerating marriage to a child, Castricius longed to be with a woman, and Lucretia was certainly that. Years of being widowed and having to fend for herself had left her strong, capable, cunning even. She was everything Gemina wasn’t. But this was a Gemina he’d never seen before. Calm, self-contained, unafraid. Castricius looked into her eyes, and he knew right away that something was different about her. It took him a few moments to realize what it was: she seemed older. If the circumstances hadn’t been so dire, he might have even found it seductive.

He removed the paper from his tunic. “Gemina,” he said, sternly. “What is the meaning of this? Where did you get this?”

She sneered. “I wrote it!” she declared. “And I meant every word. Do you know why I’m being held here like a prisoner, Castricius?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “It’s
because I’m a woman. I’m a woman, and I wanted to open a bank account.”

Castricius lowered his voice to a growl. “Have you lost your mind? How could you possibly handle a bank account?”

Gemina smirked at him. “I’m quite sure it’s not so difficult, Castricius. The fact of the matter is, you’re sleeping with that traitor Lucretia Iusta, and you’re giving her money from my father that was meant for me and Gaia. I’d like it back, and I’d like to put it somewhere that you can’t access.”

Castricius went pale, and his heart quickened.
So she knows
. Still, there was some relief.
She knows
.

“And,” she continued, “in return for me not disgracing you in public, I’d like you to present to the Senate a law that women and men shall be treated equally.”

The panic Castricius had been feeling subsided. She was talking nonsense.
There must be something wrong with her
, he thought.
She’s been poisoned, or the stress of being in jail is causing her to hallucinate
. It occurred to him that having his wife in a weakened mental state could work entirely to his advantage.

“Gemina,” he said softly. He went to her and placed a hand on her arm. “My dear wife, I think you may not be well. I’ll explain it all to the authorities, and we’ll have you back at home in a few hours. Perhaps I’ll consult a priest or doctor for medicine that will help you to think more clearly.”

But Gemina shook his hand off of her arm. “I can think just fine!” she roared. “The laws of this empire are an outrage!”

“Shhh! You’re going to get yourself executed if you keep talking like that!”

“I will never stop talking like this! I cannot stand by and participate in a society that lives a lie. Rome is so civilized, so enlightened, and yet is so unjust! Why can’t women vote?
Why can’t women have money of their own? Why can’t women imprison men?”

In spite of himself, Castricius was trembling with anger. He found it difficult to keep his voice steady as he answered her. “Because women do not have the sense for such things. Women are needed at home to manage affairs and to raise their children. You’re spewing nonsense, Gemina, and if you continue to do so, I can assure you that you’ll find yourself in deeper trouble, trouble from which I cannot save you. Now I’m going to leave and see if I can find out a way to get you out of here. But you must not speak of these things to anyone, do you understand? Not to anyone!”

With that, he walked out of the room and brushed past Marcus Caelius, standing guard outside the door. As he heard the bolt on the door slide back into place, he felt the strange mingled combination of nausea and satisfaction.

Amphiclea was in the
garden when Plotinus came to tell her the news—or rather, when Gemina came. It was still difficult for Amphiclea to remember that it was her vibrant young friend in that frail, middle-aged man’s body.

Gemina trembled in sagging skin as she relayed the story. Plotinus obviously must have forgotten that he appeared to everyone else as a woman. She herself had almost slipped a thousand times that day; she’d caught herself just before curtsying, she’d almost neglected to kiss the hands of other women, she’d nearly declined to discuss business matters. Neither she nor Plotinus had thought enough about how difficult it would be to change them so quickly. But to follow a banker into the men’s bath and to try to discuss business right there in front of influential men who knew her and Castricius …

“Oh, Amphiclea, what have we done? How will we ever fix this?”

There were tears in Plotinus’s eyes. Amphiclea wanted to shout at Gemina for being so careless with her life, for agreeing to something as dangerous and as outrageous as trading souls—and with a man, no less! But she bit her tongue. A reprimand was not what Gemina needed right now. Instead, she reached over and hugged her, feeling the strange contours of Plotinus’s body, the thinness of his bones beneath his clothes.

“You must go talk to Castricius,” Gemina whispered. “You must tell him the truth. Bring him Plotinus’s journal, show him the anklet. Once he understands what has happened, he’ll know how to fix this. He always does.”

Amphiclea nodded. She’d known from the moment that Gemina and Plotinus had proposed their scheme that somehow it would come to this.

Amphiclea had never been
alone with Castricius before. She’d spent enough time with Gemina to have spoken with him, but always in passing and always about benign subjects—like the weather or the sweetness of a particular crop of figs. He’d been pleasant enough, but Amphiclea knew from Gemina that he wasn’t always so, and she was aware of his reputation in the Senate for having a quick temper, particularly when matters were not to his liking. So as she waited for him in the courtyard of his home, Plotinus’s journal tucked under her arm, the anklet trembled against her skin.

“Amphiclea,” Castricius boomed as he entered the courtyard, his large frame draped in a white tunic with silver edging. He was older, in his early thirties, and not particularly handsome. His black hair had begun to recede away from his forehead, like so many soldiers retreating from a hard-fought
battle. “Surely you’ve heard about Gemina?” he asked. He kept his eyes on the ground, never meeting her own.

“I have, Senator,” Amphiclea answered, trying to maintain some strength and resolve in her voice. “It’s why I’ve asked to see you.”

“Is it now?” he asked, thoughtfully. Suddenly, he seemed more interested in looking at her. “Let me ask you something, Amphiclea. You are her best friend, are you not? The one she shares everything with, perhaps even more than her own husband.”

“I am.”

“And did you see her today, before all of this happened?”

“I did.”

He hesitated, as if he were searching for a diplomatic way to ask what was coming next. “And did you notice her acting … perhaps … different than usual?” But before Amphiclea had a chance to respond, he threw his hands up in the air. “Oh, I’ll just say it! Did you notice that she was acting strange and talking nonsense?”

Amphiclea squeezed the journal with both hands to try to stop them from shaking so visibly. She cleared her throat. “I did notice, Senator. And I believe I may be able to explain it to you.” She motioned toward a small garden table behind him, where she and Gemina had shared so many private whispered conversations. “May we sit, please?”

Castricius held out a chair. He waited for Amphiclea to settle in before he sat across from her. His body barely fit in the opposite seat; his large legs took up almost all of the space beneath the table, requiring Amphiclea to sit sideways so as not to rub her legs up against his. She tried not to cry as she laid the journal out on the table between them.

“Senator, what I’m about to tell you defies logic and
reason. It will be hard for you to believe, as it was for me. I must tell you, if I hadn’t seen it happen with my own eyes, I still would doubt that it is even possible.” She opened the journal to a page she’d marked beforehand. “Senator, Plotinus believed—”

Castricius slammed his hand down on the table, cutting her off. “Plotinus!” he roared, his face turning red with anger. “I knew this was his influence. Filling her head with treasonous ideas about a woman becoming Emperor of Rome!”

Amphiclea steadied herself. She had planned to explain it to him from the beginning: how Plotinus had projected his soul through the Oculus and how he and Gemina had agreed to trade souls with each other. She had planned to tell him of the preparations leading up to their exchange, of the evening she met them at the Pantheon, of the anklet, of the journal … and of course, of the need for a witness in the event that something terrible—something like Gemina landing in jail—were to occur. But she realized that Castricius would not have the patience for such a long explanation. Better for them both if she got right to the point.

“No, Senator. I’m afraid that it wasn’t her head you saw today filled with those ideas. It was Plotinus. His theories are valid. By the power of the gods, I swear that he is able to project his soul, and he’s taught Gemina to do it as well. Oh, Senator! The truth is that Plotinus inhabits Gemina’s body, and she inhabits his!”

Castricius’s eyes blazed for another instant. For a moment, she wondered if he would strike her. But then the light went out. He slumped back in his chair, as if her words had physically pushed him down. The anger was gone. In its place was an emotion she couldn’t read. “So that was her then, at Lucretia’s today,” he muttered to himself. “Pretending to
be Plotinus.” Amphiclea didn’t know what he was talking about. Had Gemina gone to Lucretia’s house? To do what? And why hadn’t she mentioned that to her? But Amphiclea didn’t dare ask Castricius to explain. He nodded toward the journal. “You have proof of this?” he asked. His voice was low and steady but with a quiet, seething bass note underneath.

Amphiclea slid the journal around to face him. She tapped her finger on the passage about the wearer of the anklet. “It’s me,” she whispered. She extended her leg to the side of the table and lifted her tunic, exposing the shimmering amber disk beneath it.

Castricius didn’t even give her leg a glance. He sat still, quietly staring out toward the horizon. Amphiclea didn’t disturb him.
He needs time to think about this
, she told herself. But after several more minutes of his silence, she couldn’t take it anymore.

“They can switch back,” she finally said. “All you have to do is arrange for Plotinus—I mean, Gemina—to visit him in jail. They need to be alone, but only for a few moments.”

Castricius didn’t look at her. “I can’t,” he said.

“Of course you can!” Amphiclea snapped, her voice rising with desperation. “You’re a senator. Surely you have influence over a mere guard at the jail!”

But Castricius shook his head. He finally met her gaze, and the vacant look in his eye chilled her. “What I meant is that I don’t want to.” He stood. “Let him rot in jail, and let her spend the rest of her days in that old fool’s body. It’s a worse punishment than I could ever dream up for either of them for betraying me like this.”

Amphiclea jumped up, horrified. “But Castricius! What about Gaia?”

He shrugged. “Gemina can have her. Or you can take her. It’s not like she’s a son.”

“But how will she provide for her? Where will they live?”

A wicked smile crossed his face. “My wife is in jail, being provided for by the Roman Empire, and whatever money she had from her father belongs to me now. How Plotinus manages from now on is not my problem.” He took Amphiclea’s clammy hand and held it to his lips. “Good day, Amphiclea. As always, it’s been a pleasure to see you.”

The seat belt buckle
was directly beneath Ariel’s lower back, and the weight of Nick’s body kept pushing her down so that it dug uncomfortably into her spine. Normally, Ariel would be clawing at him to get his shirt off, to feel his bare skin next to hers, but today she was hardly responding to his touch. She couldn’t concentrate on Nick right now. All she could think about was Jessica’s question.
Do you want in?

Ariel arched her back in an attempt to dislodge the seat belt buckle from her vertebrae.

“I really want to be with you,” Nick whispered.

Ariel rolled her eyes. She placed the palm of her hand on the middle of his chest and pushed him off of her.

“No. Nick, I’m sorry.” Nick let out a frustrated sigh and collapsed back onto the cushion beside her. “Why? Did I do something wrong?”

She sat up and ran her hand down his arm affectionately. “No. No, it’s not you. I’m just distracted.”

“By what?”

Ariel didn’t know what to tell him. By the idea of switching bodies with another person? By the idea of having to kiss another girl to do it? Or by the idea of doing it with the girl who had the most reason to hate her in the whole entire world? “I don’t know,” she hedged. “Did you ever … did you ever wish you could be someone else?”

Nick looked at her like this was the dumbest question he’d ever heard. “No,” he answered blankly. “Why would I want to be someone else?”

Right
, she thought. Of course Nick Ford wouldn’t want to be someone else. Why would he want to be someone else when he got to be Nick Ford every day? This, Ariel realized, was exactly the problem with their relationship. Nick was perfect. Or at least, he was perfect in his own mind. He was handsome, athletic, wealthy, and well-bred. More to the point he had no idea that he wasn’t the brightest white in the laundry. So why, indeed, would he want to be anyone else, especially when he thought that everyone else wanted to be him?

Ariel, on the other hand, had spent most of her life wishing that she could be anyone but Ariel Miller. But mostly, she’d wished that she could be Jessica Shaw. And now—now that she was finally popular, now that she was in a position like Nick, now that other people actually wanted to be
her—
here she was, being given the opportunity to leave herself, to become Jessica. The irony was not lost on her.

“You wouldn’t, I guess,” Ariel answered him. “But don’t you ever wonder what it’s like to be Connor?”