Villainess 5: Janet’s Second Retry
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Red Pill 26: Mirrors, Retry!
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Afterwards DeeDee had the crowd gather around the double-door entrance of Classroom 1-3C, Janet’s old homeroom class. Then she handed Janet’s lamp to Rowena and manifested Janet’s profile book, then flipped it to the first of thirty-one entries detailing the death of Janet’s suicide clone, in which she had leaped from the balustrade on the third floor after the Prince had threatened her. Then DeeDee waved Janet and her pale-faced suicide double over to her side and had them place their hands on the lamp in Rowena’s hand, then had the clone place her hand over the page of her ignominious entry.
“One of my sisters, ReRe, discovered an anomaly in a magic mirror that I think was used to cast a spell on Prince Blaise,” DeeDee said. “In that mirror, she found a confrontation between Janet and Lady Dorian in a courtyard before it went blank for a few moments and then came back on with Janet arguing with Prince Blaise. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Janet and her clone nodded, for Prince Blaise’s words hurt them both, as if the Prince himself had kicked their mother’s big belly and caused her to miscarry.
Then DeeDee said, “We’ll first decrypt the spell’s contents using your memory of that confrontation, and then we’ll reactivate the spell using the darkness affinity in the lamp as a medium. My reasoning is that Lady Dorian must have used the emotional imprint of that memory to fabricate a false narrative of your suicide in your profile entry,” she added, looking at Janet’s suicide clone. “By using this method, she implanted false ideas into the Prince’s mind and manipulated the people around her with the same method. Now for this to work, I want you two to close your eyes and recall that memory.”
Janet and her clone did so, calling up the heated moments between them and Lady Dorian that Friday afternoon, in which they rebuked their mutual enemy for all of her bullshit lies. Then came Lady Dorian’s slur against their mother, saying that Janet should have died with her in prison, causing Janet to grab at Lady Dorian as she skipped back, so that Janet could only get a handful of Lady Dorian’s dress, tearing the hem along the seam. Then Lady Dorian did the unthinkable, ripping the tear wide enough for her legs to show through and thanking Janet for setting herself up. This sent Janet over the edge, grabbing Lady Dorian’s wrists and cussing her out, only for Lady Dorian to scream for help, saying Janet was hurting her.
(That’s when the Prince rushed through the double-door entrance of the school building and confronted Janet for what he thought she had done to Lady Dorian, grabbing Janet’s wrists and making her wince and say, “You’re hurting me!”
“Then let this be a lesson to you,” the Prince said before letting her go. “Now leave Rosalie alone!”
“She ripped her own dress!”
But the Prince scoffed, saying, “You can’t expect me to believe that!”
So Janet looked around at her peers in the courtyard, yet they all looked the other way like cowards, till she saw the three women closest to the fountain (Mindy Kessler and the Drevis sisters) and said, “You saw it, right?”
“Yeah, we did,” Mindy said.
“See?” Janet said. “They witnessed it!”
“You threatened them, didn’t you?” the Prince said.
“Why do you keep doubting me?” Janet said. “I never threatened them to do anything!”
“And you expect me to believe that?” the Prince said. “You’ve already threatened Lady Felton and Lady Childeron to bully Miss Edgeworth on your behalf.”
“Those bitches set me up!” Janet said.
“Yeah, sure they did,” he said. “You’re always making—”
“I’m telling the truth, damn it!” Janet screamed. “You just don’t give a fuck!”
“After everything you’ve done,” he said, “why the fuck would I believe you?”
“Fuck you!” Janet said and turned away—
Till the Prince grabbed her hand again, yanking her towards him and saying in a low seething tone, “You’re dangerously close to lèse-majesté, you know that? I could have you imprisoned for you impudence right now, so don’t fucking test me!” Then he flung her hand away.
Janet was about to say something else—
When Lady Dorian beat her to it, saying, “Please, don’t be so rough with her, your Highness.”
“You’re too kind, Rosalie,” he said.
Lady Dorian said, “But she’s engaged to you.”
“I know,” he said, “but I can’t just stand by and—”
“How quaint, Donavan,” Janet said, crossing her arms over her bosom. “It’s only been a few weeks, but you’re on a first-name basis with another woman?”
“It’s not what you think,” the Prince said. “I’m just trying to prevent you from harming another classmate.”
“Have you taken a liking to her?”
“What are you talking about?” the Prince said.
“You’ve been sleeping with her, haven’t you?” Janet said.
Lady Dorian gaped, saying, “That’s not true!”
“You’ve gone too far!” he said, grabbing at Janet’s hand again, yet Janet evaded his reach.
“Whatever,” she said. “Enjoy yourselves!”
“I’m not like that, and you know it!” Lady Dorian yelled, now beginning to cry crocodile tears. So the Prince started comforting her, saying pretty nothings that just made Janet sick to her stomach to witness.
“How disgusting,” Janet said and was about to go—
Till the Prince said behind her back, “So you’re relying on innuendoes now, are you?”
Janet turned, saying, “It’s the truth!”
“Fine,” the Prince said. “You’re not my type, anyway.”
Right then, Janet seethed like a chained demon about to break free from its bonds, yet she stifled herself just enough to say under her breath, “Then try telling that to their Majesties and see how far you get.”
The hubbub of the surrounding voices died in an instant.
“What did you just say to me?” he said.
“You heard me,” Janet said.
More silence.
“Then I guess I will,” he said.
Janet gaped at his response, saying, “What?”
“I’ll talk to his Majesty about what you just said,” the Prince said. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll agree with me and allow us to break it off.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Janet said.
“You brought this on yourself, Janet,” he said. “If you were anyone else, I might have pitied you, because you’ve never had a mother as a role model. But from what I’ve seen of you today, even if she was alive, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your father never told you, did he?” he said.
“Told me what?” Janet said. “What are you trying to say?”
“That your mother was a witch,” he said. “Only a witch can give birth to someone like you.”
Janet was speechless as tears started trailing her cheeks, for words were swords of a different kind, and the Prince’s words cut deeper than any of the insults Lady Dorian and her cronies had used against her. At that moment, the blood running hot through Janet’s veins and arteries ran cold, her lifeline between herself and the Prince severed.
Now grieving over the loss of her mother and incensed at the Prince’s utter cruelty, Janet glared back with a flash of her red eyes and said, “My mother is dead, your Highness. Don’t make light of the dead.”
Then she turned away and walked from the scene of her public denouncement, keeping her steps steady so as not to betray the turmoil of her feelings in front of the bastard and the vixen. Yet when the hubbub of the crowd roused behind her, their gossip looming over her head like a death sentence, she picked up her heels and ran down the boulevard before cutting into the entrance path, approaching the steely-eyed guards that opened the double doors for her, and passing the threshold into the darkness, where she broke down into tears.
And there she stayed . . .)
Till she looked up and noticed the light of a lamp glowing red at the end of a long and dark corridor. She blinked. Then she crept towards that levitating lamp, seemingly held at about chest level from an unseen hand, then started running. She blinked again. And the lamp also blinked and shimmered and even moved, shifting little most of the time and abruptly changing positions at longer intervals as if the holder of that lamp was switching it between two hands.
She blinked again.
And now she found herself back inside the hallway of Lassen Academy amidst her friends and clones and everyone else, including Rowena who had switched Janet’s lamp to her left hand to give her right arm a break. Then she noticed Janet’s own body and her clone’s body, their hands still pressed against the lamp in Rowena’s hand, so she passed through the gathering and entered her own body—
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Making the lamp flash a blinding red glow and making Rowena and everyone else in the hallway squint their eyes. This made Rowena say, “What’s happening, DeeDee?”
“It’s fine,” DeeDee said.
“Just tell me what’s going on!” she said.
“They’ve both just come to their senses,” DeeDee said. “Just keep yourself steady, okay?”
Rowena nodded, biting on her lower lip as she kept stealing glances at Janet and her suicide clone.
“The rest of you,” DeeDee added, turning to the others in the hall, “follow RuRu into the classroom and stay there. Whatever happens during this experiment, watch out for anything unusual or out of place, got it?”
They all nodded, but Mindy Kessler added, “Anything specific that I should watch out for?”
“You were in this class before, right?”
“Only during the first week of school,” Mindy said. “I got transferred afterwards.”
“Then watch out for any differences,” DeeDee added, “between what you remember and what you’re about to see during this experiment. If there’s anything, no matter what it is, let us know, okay?”
Lady Kessler nodded and joined her club mates and her club advisor and Janet’s clones and Lady Graves and Maxine, all of them following behind RuRu as she pushed open the double doors and led them into Classroom 1-3C.
With that, DeeDee said to both Janets, “Okay, open your eyes, girls, and tell me what you see or feel or anything that comes to mind. Got it?”
Janet and her clone opened their eyes, and their eyes flashed a bright glowing red from their irises. Janet was awake and aware of her surroundings, yet her senses were enhanced with the surreal clarity of a lucid dream.
“What are we supposed to see, anyway?” Janet said.
“Whatever comes to mind,” DeeDee said, “just say what it is, and we’ll see what happens.”
Moments passed, and Janet blinked, and again she found herself in the darkness of another realm. She felt a cool flat surface against her palm where she had her hand over the lamp, then blinked again and gasped at two figures appearing before her in her mind’s eye. One was Rosalie Edgeworth— . . . No, it wasn’t: it was Lilian Dorian. The other was a slender figure in shadow next to her, maybe a woman, but Janet wasn’t sure. Both of them were reflected against a mirror with their hands pressed against it, and Lady Dorian’s lips were moving, but Janet couldn’t hear what she was saying.
“What do you see?” DeeDee said.
“I see a reflection of Lady Dorian and a shadowy figure, maybe a woman,” Janet said. “Lady Dorian’s saying something, but I can’t make out her words.”
“Where are they?”
“Maybe a private study.”
DeeDee paused. “Anyone else there?”
“Nobody else that I can see,” Janet said.
“Can you notice anything else about the scene?”
Janet spied past the figures in the reflection and noticed the edge of a door of some kind beside Lady Dorian’s shoulder and said, “There’s a door beside Lady Dorian.”
“Anything else?” DeeDee added.
“That’s all I have.”
Then Janet felt a hand on her shoulder as DeeDee said in her mind, “Wake up, dear. You’ve done well.”
Janet did so and felt a wave of nausea passing through her, making her tipsy, till she regained her balance and breathed in and out at regular intervals. Then she caught Rowena looking at her with creased brows and a worrying lip.
“Are you okay, honey?” Rowena said.
“I’m fine, Mom,” Janet said.
“Are you sure?”
“Really, I’m fine,” she said.
“What about me?” Janet’s clone said.
“Not yet, dear,” DeeDee said. “Stay focused.”
“Okay,” Janet’s clone said.
“What are you seeing right now?” DeeDee said.
“I’m in front of a mirror with my hand on it,” the clone said, “and I’m next to the shadowy figure of a woman with her hand on the mirror, too, and there are symbols glowing on the back of our hands.”
“Describe them,” DeeDee said.
“Lady Dorian has a triangle made of three touching triangles on her hand,” the clone said, “while the one in shadow has a circle with a cross inside it on hers.”
“A tetrahedron and a wheel cross,” DeeDee said.
Janet wondered what those were and said, “What are those?”
“A tetrahedron is a three-sided pyramid,” DeeDee said, “and a wheel cross symbolizes the sun in the Church of the Holy Light.” Then she turned back to Janet’s clone and added, “Child, when Lady Dorian presses her hand against the mirror, is the tetrahedron upside down?”
“Yeah, it is,” the clone said.
“DeeDee,” Janet said, “is that important?”
“I found the same upside-down tetrahedron on the Prince’s profile book,” DeeDee said.
“You’re kidding!”
“I’m not. Stop bothering me,” DeeDe said, then to the clone: “Are they standing inside a study room?”
“I can’t see the room they’re in,” the clone said.
“That shadowy figure,” DeeDee said, “do you see anything else about her that I should know?”
“No, I can’t,” the clone said. “I’m looking at another scene in the reflection.”
“Then what’s in the reflection?” DeeDee said.
“It’s the Prince in a bedroom, but it doesn’t look like a dorm at school,” the clone said. “It looks like he’s in his bedroom at the Royal Palace.”
“Is he sleeping?” DeeDee said.
“I think so,” she said, “but he’s tossing and turning in bed like he’s having a nightmare or a fit.”
“Can you hear any voices?”
“Yeah,” the clone said, “but it’s hard to make out. I’m not sure if it’s Lady Dorian’s voice or the voice of the shadowy woman next to her.”
“Can you hear any words?”
“They’re hard to make out,” the clone said.
“Try your best,” DeeDee said.
More moments passed.
Janet had her eyes fixed on her clone’s expression, wanting to see what she was seeing and hear what she was hearing, if anything. Then there was a sharp intake of breath, and her clone’s lips started trembling at something that none of them could see or hear.
“What is it?” DeeDee said.
“Hey, can you hear me?” Rowena added.
When Janet’s clone said nothing, DeeDee leaned in and stared at the clone’s glowing red irises, then passed her hand across her field of vision, but there was no reaction.
“Can she hear us?” Rowena said.
DeeDee shook her head and said, “I don’t think she can hear us right now. In fact, I think she’s fast asleep.”
“You’re kidding,” Janet said. “A spell that works on ghosts? Is that even possible?”
“With enough mana, it is,” DeeDee said.
“Will she wake up?” Janet said.
“She will, but not now,” DeeDee said, then paused a moment rolling something through her head, though Janet hadn’t a clue what. “Barring the identity of the woman in shadow, we know there are two individuals using two spells in concert over two profile books.”
“Mine and the Prince’s?” Janet said.
DeeDee nodded and said, “These things tend to work in pairs. Since this child here has fallen asleep, one of them used a sleep spell, while the other used a mental manipulation spell. From what I’ve read and what I’ve gathered from the observations of your clones, I think Lady Dorian and this other person must have used both spells on Prince Blaise and Baron Underwood: for the Prince, Lady Dorian used a mental manipulation spell to implant thoughts into his head through his profile book during sleep, while this other person pinned a mental manipulation spell on the Baron to prime his students to follow Lady Dorian’s words without his or their knowing through putting them to sleep during his classes.”
“Mass hypnosis!” Janet said.
“Exactly,” DeeDee said. “Since they’re using both spells in conjunction, one is the dominant spell.”
“The mental manipulation spell,” Janet said.
“That’s right,” DeeDee said. “And one is the passive spell.”
“The sleep spell,” Rowena added.
“That’s right,” DeeDee said. “As such, a pair of spell-casters and a pair of spells and a pair of dupes requires another pair to activate both spells,” and she now looked Janet in the eyes. “Do you get it now, dear?”
She did. The fact that the Prince and Janet’s old homeroom class and everyone else at the Academy seemed to side with Lady Dorian, the fact that they all seemed to overlook whatever happened to Janet during her confrontations with Lady Dorian and the Prince, the fact that Janet’s clones were all killed with the Prince’s witting or unwitting help, the fact that the four other students’ profile books had been damaged or manipulated to cover up traces of Lady Dorian’s duplicity, even the fact that Janet’s suicide clone was the only aberration in this fucked-up chain of events: all of these pieces fell in place inside Janet’s mind like a jigsaw puzzle. As such, with her mind bursting with epiphanies, Janet said, “They need two memories in order to create a false one.”
“That’s right,” DeeDee said. “They used one memory to activate both of their spells.”
Janet looked over at her sleeping clone, saying, “Our memory of last Friday with the Prince.”
“Not yours, per se,” DeeDee said. “They used the Prince’s memory of that day to manipulate another memory.”
Janet got the picture, keeping her eyes on her double and saying, “Her last memory before she . . .”
She couldn’t say it, but DeeDee nodded nonetheless—
Which left Janet wondering what must have happened during her clone’s last moments to make Lady Dorian take such drastic measures over thirty subsequent iterations of the same course of events with thirty other Janets leading to a common end:
Death by Lady Dorian’s schemes.
“Since she’s asleep, Janet,” DeeDee said, referring to Janet’s suicide clone, “we’ll use you as the change agent. Now put your hand over your clone’s hand on the lamp and pour in as much darkness affinity as you can.”
Janet did as she was told, placing her hand over her clone’s on the lamp and feeling her own darkness affinity mixing and churning inside its confines. Then in her mind, she heard two female voices reciting two different incantations at once, one of which she recognized as Rosalie’s— . . . No, it was Lady Dorian’s voice. The other voice resembled a bird-like whistling sound that obscured the exact words of Lady Dorian’s spell like a counter-spell.
But when she poured her affinity into the lamp, Janet grimaced through renewed tears at the aftereffects of every hit she had sustained in each round of her sparring match with RuRu. Flowers of pain were blooming on both of her arms and on her solar plexus and on her side and on the back of her head and even on her tailbone, so she said, “Ugh! Damn it, it hurts!”
“Bear with it and keep going,” DeeDee said.
So Janet gritted her teeth, willing herself through the pain, while the lamp in Rowena’s hand glowed brighter and brighter, filling the hallway with a reddening hue. It was like pushing something heavier than herself, for she was pushing against the collective traumas of her clones in their last living moments, pushing against the lies that had encumbered them all their lives, squinting her eyes and pushing the false memory out of the lamp in a bursting nebula of red light . . .
When Janet opened her eyes and let them adjust to the lingering glare of her surroundings, she glanced at her clone and noticed a symbol resembling an upside-down three-sided pyramid flashing over her double’s forehead. As another piece of the puzzle fell in place, she said, “That’s the symbol you were talking about, right?”
“That’s right,” DeeDee said.
Then Janet noticed the commotion around her and saw all the double doors along the hallway open, the classroom bustling with the hubbub of voices. And through these double-door entrances, several holograms of students in the hallway entered, most chatting about yesterday’s minor incident between Janet and the Prince at the entrance hall earlier, while others kept talking about the huge blowup between Janet and the Prince in the courtyard on Friday last week. Up to that moment, that Friday afternoon was the biggest commotion on everybody’s lips, till an even bigger one that nobody (not even Lady Dorian) could have foreseen was about to play out in these halls.
“Holy shit!” Lady Kessler said from inside the classroom. “Look, I’m inside the classroom!”
Janet and Rowena and DeeDee turned towards the now-open double doors at the flurry of voices from Janet’s club mates and clones by the professor’s lectern, where Lady Kessler was pointing out the object of her outburst amongst the students seated in class. But then RuRu told them all to be quiet and wait and watch out for anything else in the class.
Then DeeDee said, “Time to start the experiment,” and she approached Janet’s clone and passed her hand across her entranced glowing eyes.
Only then did her double snap out of it, taking in gulps of air and shedding tears, then cupping her hands over her gaping mouth and staring at a memory that Janet could only imagine, saying, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my GODDDDD!”
Janet grabbed her wrists, saying, “Stop it!”
“What’s wrong with her?” Rowena said.
Her double was sobbing now.
“Go inside, you two,” DeeDee said.
“But we can’t leave her like this!” Janet and Rowena said, both daughter and mother of one mind.
DeeDee paused for a bit, then whispered something into Rowena’s ear.
“Are you sure?” Rowena said.
“Let’s leave them alone for now,” DeeDee said, then to Janet who was now comforting her suffering clone: “Janet, when you’re finished, come into the classroom.”
Janet nodded.
After her mother and DeeDee went away, Janet grabbed her double’s hands and felt them trembling in her grasp, wondering what the hell she was going to say. Now left alone with her double, the girl whose only living act of defiance involved taking her own life before Lady Dorian could do it, Janet’s heart bled for her. She felt the throbs of her clone’s heart beating inside her own chest, felt the same sweat of cold fear wetting her own temples, and felt her double’s turmoil down to her last insufferable breath of air.
“It’s okay,” Janet said.
“I died! How is that okay?” her double spat as more tears flooded down her cheeks. “You never . . .”
When she broke down into more tears, Janet could only tell her the truth, saying, “We’re here for you, me and everyone else. You’re not alone, okay?”
Her clone looked up at her, sniffling as she started fading away from view.
“You’re not alone,” Janet repeated, then reached out her hand to wipe away the tears wetting her double’s face, only for her hand to pass through. “We’re with you, I promise!”
Only then did her clone say, “Thank you—”
And she disappeared.
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To Be Continued