Jessica Mead

Jessica Mead, AKA Jessie, is the Primary Protagonist for M.E.R.C.E., Book One of the MERCE Series written by J.P. Hart. Although she is described as bluntly honest to the point of callousness, sarcastic, and cold, Jessie hides a very vulnerable and loving nature. She is ruled by truth and logic, often omitting certain facts as opposed to outright lying in an attempt to protect herself from the judgment of others. She is diagnosed schizophrenic after her incarceration at the beginning of the first novel. However, it is later discovered that the voices she hears are actually the auditory manifestations of the Darkness and the Light in constant argument over the truth. Because of this, she believes that every story has three sides, his side, her side, and the truth. She also has the mentality of a survivor, living by the motto: Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. She is not very trusting by nature but, once she makes an emotional connection with someone, they become family to her and she takes the protection of her family extremely seriously. She shows herself to be quick witted, intelligent, and viciously loyal to those she loves, regardless of the personal cost.

PreMERCE History
Jessica Mead was raised in the small town of Rankine, TX, a backward, tiny community in the buckle of the Bible Belt. From a very young age, she made the Mundane around her very uncomfortable as a result of the power growing inside her and often experienced bullying as a child from her peers. She was also often observed talking to herself as suffers from auditory hallucinations in the form of two voices in her head that she describes as the Malignant voice and the Reasonable voice. Though she was quiet and guarded by nature, her tendency to simply observe others as opposed to trying to socialize was viewed as borderline predatory by those that are already afraid of her. Because of this, she began to fulfill the role others saw her in by reacting only on instinct in most situations, defending her territory and those she loves with the clear focus of an animal, a trait that is very prevalent in her adult life.

After her fraternal twin sister, Teresa, gave birth to a son, Daniel Jr., when they were 16, Jessie dropped out of High School and became the boy's primary mother figure when Teresa decides her popularity among her peers is more important than raising her child. Although it is mentioned in MERCE that Jessie's mother is still alive, she is never mentioned by her first name and it is clear that the woman is an alcoholic and abuses prescription drugs. There is little mention of Jessie's father in the beginning of the story, however, it is later revealed that she believes him to be an Army Medical Officer and deceased after going missing during a deployment when she was twelve. As a result, Jessie is extremely self-sufficient and mature for her age.

A year before the events of MERCE begin, Daniel, age 5, is kidnapped from the local Fourth of July celebration, sending Jessie on a downward spiral as she hunts for answers. Using her powers, she tracks the people responsible and tries to turn them into the authorities, but they are unwilling to help as her evidence cannot be proven useful by Mundanes. Shortly after she is turned away, Jessie is arrested on suspicion of approximately thirty counts of murder and at least one count of arson after the building housing the ones responsible for Daniel's abduction is burnt to the ground, though Daniel is never found.

The Events of MERCE
When the story opens, it is the day before Jessie goes on trial and she is speaking with her court-appointed psychologist one last time. During the scene, the reader is given a taste of the chaos inside Jessie's head and is given a glimpse of her power. Afterward, Jessie speaks with an attorney that seems overly vested in her case as well as the outcome. Her attorney, Zack, shows signs of wanting to look after her as more than just a stranger, but Jessie pays little interest in it past knowing that he's willing to fight for her freedom. After winning her case, Zack introduces Jessie to Elijah Bernal, the Headmaster of MERCE. Bernal convinces her that he has the resources available to help her find Daniel but will only give her access to them if she agrees to attend the school. Desperate to find her adopted son, Jessie agrees with little thought to the recourses.

During her journey to MERCE, she meets a fellow new student by the name of Chantel that completely ignores Jessie's attempts to stay distant and claims her as her new best friend. Jessie still maintains her secrecy about herself and her past but allows herself to view Chantel as a friend. When they are picked up by one of the staff members of the school, Theo, at the airport, he explains the history of the Mancers and the source of their powers. When they arrive at the school, a converted ski resort in a remote valley of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Jessie meets the rest of the primary Mancer staff identified as the Troupe Masters. After Jessie has settled into the temporary room she shares with Chantel, she has a nightmare that depicts her as a demon torturing Luke before she attempts to comfort a weeping Daniel. (It is not mentioned in the novel, however, it is later revealed in the second book that the image of Daniel and his distress is actually Puff who is actively searching for her at the time.) When Luke identifies Daniel as a corpse, Jessie is startled awake, effectively ending the nightmare.
 * Theodor "Theo" Lancaster - Terramancer Troupe, Earth
 * Annabeth "Ann" Esposito - Pyromancer Troupe, Fire
 * Lena Harris - Aquamancer Troupe, Water
 * Jacob Lancaster - Aeromancer Troupe, Air
 * Lucifer "Luke" Interitus - Spirare Troupe, Spirit

That same day, Jessie goes to see Bernal in his office and overhears an argument he is having with Luke. When Luke catches her, he actively tries to intimidate her but she doesn't back down and ends the confrontation by invading his personal space and surprising him. Afterward, she speaks with Bernal who informs her that her education is being financed by an angel by the name of Zadkiel, whom she believes she has never met. She feels uncomfortable about taking the charity and tries to argue, but Bernal refuses her argument and dismisses her, giving her a sense that she doesn't have much choice about what is happening in her life.

After her meeting with Bernal, Jessie meets up with Chantel and Theo for breakfast. Chantel, being a social butterfly, has found another student whom she invites to join them and tries to get Jessie to accept. Though Jessie is polite, it is obvious she has no intention of becoming real friends with the girl and mostly stays silent while the other girls converse. When Theo motions for Jessie to follow him away from the table, he confronts her about being so closed off and offers to be there should she need someone to talk to. When he squeezes her shoulder in comfort, Jessie uses her power without thinking to press her emotions into Theo's consciousness, startling him as that ability is not common among the "Base Four" Mancer Troupes.

Once Jessie is alone, she decides to go for a run, something that she used to do often before she was arrested, and encounters Luke, who appears to have been following her. In this private setting, Luke shows that he isn't as much of an asshole as Jessie first believes, but he is, in fact, very awkward socially. He reacts poorly to a sarcastic remark Jessie makes and tries to leave her behind, but she runs after him to apologize. In the process, she trips and sprains her ankle. When Luke hears her distress, he comes back and helps her. As he is carrying her back towards the school, Jessie tunes into his surface thoughts through their physical contact and hears him thinking in his native language, Romanian. She uses her power to push her remorse into his mind as a way of apologizing for offending him and he immediately stops. He explains to her that he is Spirare and that the ability to communicate through touch is something that is common for that particular group, as is healing others of the same Troupe by sharing each other's Spirit Energy. To test his theory that she may be Spirare also, he uses his power to heal her sprained ankle, leading him to believe that he is correct. The idea that there is someone else like her excites Jessie and she decides to give Luke a chance to be her friend, however, when he lies to her about his argument with Bernal, she is offended by his deceit and leaves him behind.

Three days later, Jessie begins the process of Troupe Testing to see if she belongs in any of the other Troupes. By the end, the only specialization she has show promise in is Earth as a result of an instinctual reaction to an angry Luke coming towards her. Having failed the other tests, Jessie believes that she will be expelled and prepares herself for that scenario by making plans to leave after the last test for the Spirare Troupe. She believes that her abilities don't come from being a Mancer. Instead, she thinks she is just one of the rare Mundane, humans without powers, who is sensitive to the different energies and can occasionally tap into them under duress.

When she goes to complete her final test, she hears the Troupe Masters arguing over her fate at the school and Luke becoming both protective and possessive. She immediately jumps to her own defense, effectively shutting them all down and then agrees to the final test. Luke explains the Spirare's origins briefly, informing Jessie that her father was not a human as she had believed, he is actually an angel. Luke also explains that, because of their genetics, Spirare are nearly immortal in the sense that they do not age and cannot take their own life because suicide is an act of cowardice. Before she is fully able to process the concept, Luke begins the test by opening a small pocket in the Veil where the raw element of Spirit is drawn to Jessie's presence. Luke tries to shield her when he feels how strong it is, causing him extreme pain, but Jessie convinces him to let it go. When the energy floods her, Luke instructs her to shape it and release it through her body, allowing the energy to take the shape of translucent black wings. When the test is completed, Jessie smiles and then promptly passes out from the strain.

After Jessie wakes up in the Spirare penthouse on the top floor of the school's main building (which once serves as the Presidential suite when the school was still a hotel) she and Luke begin to speak, trying to move past the awkwardness of their first private encounter. It is then that Luke confesses that he knows about her past and Daniel because he followed her footsteps the day she was arrested. As a Tracker, Luke has the ability to read the echoes left by a person's energy and he used that power to understand what had happened that day in Rankine. Through his memories, Jessie sees that Daniel is, in fact, already dead and that her drive to continue her search for him was born out of her extreme denial of the tragedy. Unable to cope with the loss of what she saw as her son, Jessie freaks out and runs away, spurred on by the voices in her head.

Luke chases after her, refusing to allow her to live in the delusion that Bernal has been using to manipulate her into staying at the school. Jessie reacts to his pursuit violently, but Luke doesn't give up, replaying his previous argument with Bernal as proof that she is in danger as long as she refuses to remember. Jessie finally accepts the truth of what he is telling her and allows herself to feel the grief of her loss, though it has been diluted by time. Luke shows his true depth of caring for Jessie at that point when he takes her back to the apartment and stays with her in an effort to console her. That act of kindness breaks through to Jessie and she accepts that he is a solid part of her life.

The next day, after confessing to Chantel about her past and explaining the events of the night before, Jessie is confronted with another wrinkle in her reality. Her father is not only alive and well, he was the benefactor that is bankrolling her stay at MERCE, the angel Zadkiel. He had also used his power to pose as a human lawyer, Zack, during her trial to ensure that she was set free stating that she had to follow through with a Mundane trial as opposed to being tried by the Angelic Council for her crimes. After trying, poorly, to explain why he'd had to leave her, Jessie looks into his heart and sees that he truly hadn't wanted to and that he did truly love her, allowing her to forgive him. Afterward, he explains that he has another purpose for visiting the school, aside from reconciling with his daughter. The angels have gained a lead on a powerful artifact that had been believed to be lost. It is a physical link to the element of Spirit and can grant the one who wields it god-like strength. Zadkiel tells Jessie she has the choice to stay out of the fight, but she volunteers anyway.

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