Author's note: although certain characters in this story disparage certain spiritual beliefs, that should not be interpreted as a value judgement on the part of the author.

The highlight of Sean Billingsly's day arrived at approximately six-thirty-seven A.M.

This highlight was not waking up, nor taking a hot shower, nor enjoying his first cup of coffee. All of these were done before sunrise, and they were pretty nice, but better was yet to come.

The highlight was not kissing his wife on the cheek while she still slept, nor was it saying goodbye to his infant daughter. Both of these had seemed more than a little perfunctory since Stella had entered their lives.

Even though Sean usually got his car on the road by about five-thirty each morning, the New York traffic was still sufficient to guarantee that his highlight would not be driving to work.

The morning news was not the highlight, even though it was filled with optimism about the vaccine making its way through the elderly and front-line-worker communities. Even though Sean had been ordered to return to the office the previous summer as though he were a front-line worker, he was not scheduled to receive the vaccine at the same pace, nor were any of his co-workers. No one actually knew when they would be able to receive the vaccine. Sean's supervisor claimed that he was making his daily trades on the assumption that it might be six months from now, or even a year.

The sports anchor on the radio said that Major League Baseball would be playing all one hundred and sixty-two games this year, albeit in front of limited crowds. But Sean's team was the Mets, so that was more of an anti-highlight of his day.

As Sean was riding the elevator up to the fifth floor of the office building where Eagle Investments had its trading space, his phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. The highlight was fast approaching. He did not check the phone, because he did not need to; the buzz was a notification of a text message reading Calling in 10 minutes.

Sean arrived at his office a few minutes before six-thirty. As a Senior Trader, he was privileged to have his own office, on top of a salary that could pay for the house in White Plains. But he'd had to pay a price for such a promotion, in the form of a punishing schedule where he was expected to be in the office an hour before the Director of Trading (who himself was thrice-divorced due to the punishing schedule he kept), and given enough work to depart the office at least an hour after the Director left.

It was only once Stella Halliwell had entered the picture that he had found a useful outlet for those extra hours.

Precisely ten minutes after Sean's phone had vibrated in the elevator, Sean had had time to get settled in his office, use the restroom, and check to make sure that none of the Junior Traders had yet arrived (they were required to start work at eight a.m., and most of them thought they were going above and beyond by arriving at seven-thirty). He locked his office door.

Then, the phone played Sean's ringtone, Trent Reznor's version of the theme from Halloween. Sean answered using wireless ear-pod headphones. Sometimes she would allow him the use of his hands.

"Good morning," Stella said quietly into his ear. "Are you ready?"

Sean was almost instantly erect. It was the voice. He actually didn't find her normal conversational voice all that sexy, but during these calls she did something to it that drove him completely wild. She had given him some suggestions that assisted in this, but he did not remember those.

"Yes," Sean said immediately. He didn't want to sound too eager, but he couldn't help himself. She had given him some suggestions that made sure he couldn't help himself, but he did not remember those.

"That's good," Stella said. "Because you're already completely focused on the sound of my voice, aren't you?"

"Yes," Sean said immediately, and it was true. His office door kept the sounds of the trading floor away, but it would not have mattered if the door were made of paper. On multiple occasions someone had knocked on his office door during one of these calls, he had not been aware of it, and the knocker had assumed he had not yet arrived at the office. Once, after many months of conditioning to Stella's voice, Amanda had called him this early -- she thought she had left her phone in his car, and somehow called him from the land line without knowing what Stella was doing at that very moment -- but he had ignored the ringtone so completely that he had not been aware of the call until he saw the missed-call notification a couple of hours later.

"And you can feel my fingers just starting to stroke your scrotum, can't you?"

Sean grunted, a combination of affirmation and pleasure. He had no idea how she did what she did, but he could feel it, gentle pressure on him from below. She tickled his balls from underneath, using just the sound of her voice, and oh god could he feel it as he gasped, "Yes!"

"And yet your hands can do nothing about it, can they? You want to touch yourself so bad and those hands just cannot move."

The first time she had suggested this to him, months and months ago, he had thought he was just playing along when he did not move his hands. But the second time, he felt it like he'd never felt anything in his life: his hands were inert. In colder weather, his fingers would begin to tingle, like they were going numb, even though the heating in his office worked perfectly well. "Yes," he said, trying not to whine.

"My control over your hands is complete, isn't yet?"

"Yes." Was it ever! Sometimes she told him to play with himself in a particular way, and his hands would just go, like they belonged to her instead of him. Once she had told him that he could move his hands but not his arms, and he had gripped his legs with such force that he tore a seam in his slacks. That had been a little too awkward for the workplace, so she didn't do that one any more.

"And you want to cum for me, don't you?"

"Yes." His erection was like an iron bar, weighing him down, anchoring him to the seat. He thought that the fire alarm could go off and he would not be able to stand up until he had climaxed, but thankfully that theory had not yet been tested.

"But you can't cum for me until I tell you, isn't that right?"

"Yes." At some point in the last eight months, the thought had occurred to both Sean and his wife that Stella seemed to ask so many questions where the only answer was yes. At some point soon afterward, both Sean and his wife had lost track of that thought completely.

"I don't think you want to cum for me that badly. Do you want to cum for me?"

Sean gasped, "Yes!" The erection was painful now, both in how it demanded release, but also in how it strained against the resistance of his boxer briefs. "Yes, yes yes!"

"Convince me."

"God, please, let me cum, feels so good it hurts..."

Sean did not consider these calls to be cheating on his wife. His justification, in his mind, was that he had never touched Stella and never would (although he sometimes wondered if he could resist her, were she to give these sorts of commands in person). It was only over the phone, while he sat in his office, and the only touching of his genitals was done by himself.

Late at night, when self-doubt crept in as Sean lay in bed with his wife sleeping soundly next to him (that slumber happening under the influence of suggestions from Stella that he did not know about), Sean asked himself the tough questions about this. He told himself that Stella was simply allowing him some release, indulging the part of him that his wife did not know about, the part of him that wanted to beg.

Why he did not simply ask his wife to help indulge him in this way was a question for a very good marriage therapist. Or for Stella, who had been only too happy to make some suggestions that would reinforce the justifications that Sean told himself.

"I don't know, I'm not convinced."

"Oh, please, pl--"

"Cum now."

She said it almost casually, throwing the words away as though unimportant. But for Sean they were the exact opposite. His hips bucked and he grunted in pain-tinged ecstasy. The condom he slipped on before leaving the house every morning -- one of the first things Stella had suggested to him -- was nearly filled.

As he finished, Stella cooed encouragements into the phone. "That's right. That's it. Just release it, release everything, just let it all go until there is nothing left but sleep."

Sean slumped forward until his forehead touched the desk. Later, if one of his co-workers were to comment that he looked tired, he would say that his commute took a lot out of him. In truth, it was the come-down off of the orgasm which simply turned his body into jelly.

"You're going to do a wonderful job at the firm today, aren't you?" Stella's voice was so much more gentle now. He had begged, so there was no need to continue pushing him.

"Yeah," Sean mumbled into the desk.

"Then let's talk about what you're going to do," Stella said.

Sean didn't remember much of the subsequent conversation, but he didn't mind a bit.

---

Amanda Remington would have had a considerably different opinion on whether Sean's phone calls with Stella were considered adultery, but she did not know about those calls.

In the real world, Amanda was sitting in a rocking chair in the nursery. In her mind, she was on the rocking swing outside of her parents' home on the Maryland shore.

She had been seeing Sean for a few months at that point, and had felt fairly sure that he was the one to marry. She'd taken him to meet her parents and that had gone very well. Then, after her parents had retired one evening, they'd sat on the swing and shared a special experience. Later, Amanda would say that was when they had made love for the first time; they'd had sex before, but it had felt more casual, like fulfilling a biological imperative. That night on the porch swing -- and in bed, and on the floor of the guest bedroom after they had fallen out of the bed -- had been passionate.

Amanda felt Sean's hand exploring her breast. He'd spent so long touching her on the swing, it felt like hours even though it was only the first act of the night's lovemaking. In her mind, lost deep in the memory, the hand was gentle but forceful, almost like it was sucking all of the doubt and inhibitions right out of her, preparing her for all that they would go on to do.

In the real world, the pressure on Amanda's breast was from a breast pump. It was withdrawing her milk, to be saved for later. This process was not automatic, it required effort from Amanda's other hand, but Amanda did not have to think about what she was doing; a powerful suggestion from Stella had made sure of that.

Amanda sighed with pleasure, remembering Sean whispering to her, not too loud, your dad might think we're burglars. Amanda grinned in her sleep at the thought, and in her mind the hand just went on and on, sucking every negative emotion out of her and replacing it with pleasure.

Stella was in another room, conducting her call with Sean. This day, like many of her days, would be a long one. She had to rise at the same time as Sean, because his waking usually woke his wife as well. And Stella had to be on her game immediately, because she had to intercept Amanda before Amanda did something that would wake her fully, like take a shower or drink a cup of coffee.

As Amanda had trudged down the hall to the bathroom, two hands had drifted over her shoulders. The fingertips had massaged her temples (lightly, always lightly, press too hard and she might rise from the trance), while Stella had gently whispered words and phrases that would remind Amanda's subconscious of the powerful triggers that had been planted and reinforced there. Amanda would not even remember that she had been briefly awake this morning. She regularly believed that she slept through her husband leaving for work. Sometimes it was even true.

Now and then Stella would walk past the bedroom door, just to check. The beast-pumping was a relatively new development, in her massaging of Amanda's mind -- the beginning of the end, Stella had told herself -- and she wanted to be sure that it was working. She had no doubt that Amanda was under and would respond to the suggestions she had been given, but Stella was always the sort to check.

Just to be sure.

Couldn't drop the ball now.

Not when she was so close.

Stella closed her eyes and ordered Sean to cum. She conducted the remainder of the call with her eyes closed, trying to focus on what she was so close to, and what she was trying to push so far away.

---

Later that morning, Marisa walked across the plaza, the spire of One World Trade Center looming behind her. She'd been here last fall, looking to do an in-person interview with an "essential worker" who had eventually cancelled. It had been a ghost town then; now, it was somewhat more populated, but still eerily quiet.

Marisa got a few odd looks and double-takes as she walked across the plaza. This was because her mask was Caucasian-flesh-colored, making it appear from a distance that she had no lower features. Marisa had gotten a similar mask for Kat, because she found it to be strangely hypnotic, but they had not yet been in a situation where they felt comfortable doing hypnosis outside the apartment, even with masks.

A few blocks from the tower, Marisa approached a storefront labeled Tribeca Holistic Wellness Center. Marisa's search had not revealed Holistic Wellness Centers named after other neighborhoods, but lots of businesses around here liked to brand themselves with the trendy Tribeca name.

The storefront was similar to a dentist's office: Marisa could see a receptionist's area, but there were several frosted windows on either side of it, which suggested a very large footprint with a great number of private rooms. Marisa was not surprised by the scope of this operation; this place had the highest Yelp score of any location in the five boroughs that claimed to hook you up with a doula. Which also meant the Center was big enough that a clever and possibly deranged doula could hide their true motives there.

Marisa entered through the front door like a normal customer; she had not called ahead. The reception desk was operated by a blonde woman that even Marisa, who herself was a few years short of thirty, thought impossibly young. Her nametag read Anne. Even through her K95 mask Marisa could sense Anne's enormous smile as she chirped, "Welcome to the Center! How can I help you?"

"I'm looking for a doula," Marisa said, as she pumped sanitizer onto her hands and began to rub them together. Her intention was to say exactly what Debra had said, so despite being an only child she added, "For my sister."

"Oh, congratulations to your sister!" Anne's sunniness did not lessen as she turned her attention to the computer and started clicking away. "How far along is she?"

"Uh, a couple months," Marisa said, trying to stay on the pattern of replicating Debra's experience.

"Okay, what I can do is, I can email you a list of available people," Anne said. "Then, when you can pick one, we schedule an in-person meeting here between that person and your sister. Don't worry, there are lots of COVID protocols. Then, if you like that one, we can negotiate a contract. Is your sister looking for live-in or--"

Marisa leaned across the desk. "Actually, I have kind of an awkward request," she said more quietly. "My sister got recommended someone from here, and I think she's a little ... off. You know?"

Anne's eyes went a little wide, and from the tone in her voice when she spoke, Marisa could tell the just-off-the-bus-from-Des-Moines positivity was not an act. "Omigod, really? From here?"

"Yeah," Marisa said.

"Um, okay," Anne said, and in that moment Marisa saw the how the conversation could play out. That was her gift, negotiation: she could just tell what the other person needed, and what the other person could afford to give up in exchange. Marisa often wondered if that talent was somehow related to her being a somnabulist; after all, what was negotiating but making suggestions for what the final purchase ought to be?

She's afraid to give up too much private information, because it could get her in trouble with her bosses AND her co-workers. And she doesn't think there's any money in this. But she's also afraid of a negative tweet or a nasty blog post from me going viral.

"I mean, I'm not trying to start a whole thing here," Marisa said quickly, "but I need to know what's going on with this woman, because I don't want to tell her to void the contract unless I'm sure."

"Right," Anne said slowly, and even more quietly than Marisa was speaking, almost a whisper. "But I think it's against the rules for me to talk about stuff like that."

"Well, I can narrow it down for you quite a bit without giving you a name," Marisa said. She did not whisper; ironically, whispering tends to suggest to the people around you that you have something to hide. "She's in her mid-thirties, blue eyes, dark blonde hair..."

"That's a lot of the people we employ," Anne said.

"She does a lot of hypnosis," Marisa added.

"Actually, that describes a lot of us also," Anne said. "Many of our doulas either do hypnosis, or stuff that looks like hypnosis but has some other name. I'm even certified in hypno-birthing."

"Maybe..." Marisa felt her momentum dissolving, and improvised quickly. If she didn't keep this conversation going, Anne might back out. Something specific that would piss people off about Amanda and Sean. Kat made a snarky joke about Sean's job. Sean's job! "Maybe she has a big thing with Wall Street? Eagle Investments, specifically?"

Marisa saw the recognition in Anne's eyes, and Anne saw that she saw.

"Have a seat," Anne said somewhat more loudly, indicating a chair in the waiting area. "When the woman in Room 7 is done, you're going to want to talk to her."

---

The front door of Amanda's house opened, and Kat's mood darkened instantly.

Kat had expected Stella to open the door, but Amanda opened it instead ... sort of. Amanda did not appear to be all there: her eyes were glassy and mouth slightly agape. There was a full second where Kat was sure that Amanda had absolutely no idea who Kat was, or why she was at the door.

Then Amanda's memory finally kicked in, and she blinked. "Oh, Kat, hi," she said vaguely. "I forgot you were driving me today."

Shit, Kat thought. I thought I made some real progress yesterday, and she's even more out of it than she was when I met her!

"Yeah," Kat said, trying to keep it cheerful. "Something about a shoot at the Central Park Zoo?"

"I dunno," Amanda murmured. She was putting minimal effort into keeping her voice from slurring. If Kat didn't know better, she might have thought the other woman was day-drunk. "I don't hafta be there for that one. The model's juss a beginner."

"Well, you're the client," Kat chirped. It was starting to require real effort to remain cheerful, which was not her default state. "But if I looked as good as you do in that power suit, I'd be going out every day, pandemic or no pandemic."

Flirting was an atomic bomb, of sorts, in Kat's line of work. It was a weapon of last resort: just as likely to blow back on you and make things worse, as it was to succeed. In this case, it seemed to work. Amanda blinked her eyes, a blush forming on her face. "Yeah," she said, a little more affect coming back to her voice. "Yeah, why not? Gotta get practice in, for whenever I finally get vaccinated."

"Great!" Kat said. She gave a wide smile, which was sincere in the sense that she was already thinking of things in Central Park she could turn into a hypnotic induction.

"Come in, while I get changed," Amanda said, as she retreated into the house.

Kat walked in. She saw Stella to her left, in the living room. She was sitting in a rocking chair, holding the baby. What would a normal person say here? "Wow, she's really quiet."

"Oh, you should hear her in the afternoon," Stella said ruefully. Her tone of voice did not sound like a put-on; she sounded like one of Kat's married friends, complaining about motherhood while loving it at the same time. "That sweet spot between lunch and dinner, she just goes crazy."

"She's sleeping through the night already?"

"More or less," Stella said. "It's kind of a myth, that all babies struggle with that. Some adapt much faster than others."

"Oh," Kat said, in a tone of voice that said I just got some real knowledge dropped on me from a professional. "Didn't know that."

"She's working again?" Stella said. Her eyes seemed to be focused on a point just behind Kat's head, a hypnotic technique that Kat used often in play with Marisa. "So soon after yesterday?"

"Guess so," Kat said, shrugging and glancing away from those eyes. "I'm just the driver."

"I'll bet you know some things, though," Stella said, in a just-between-us tone. "People talk to the driver."

Kat looked her in the eye. Stella was still doing the unfocused stare, but it was easy for Kat to resist it, knowing it for what it was. "Like they talk to the nanny?"

"Doula, technically," Stella said quietly. She was rocking harder in the chair, creating more motion in her eyes, requiring some effort on Kat's part to follow them. If Kat hadn't been in character, she might have smiled at how obvious it was. "Ends up about the same."

Kat could have argued that point -- her research had suggested to her that there was a significant difference between a nanny and a doula -- but it wasn't really important. What was important was not breaking rapport, here. She said nothing, watching Stella's eyes. They were a faded blue, like the sky on a day when it was cloudy but not so cloudy that you thought it was going to rain, and you left the apartment without your umbrella because you felt like gambling and it didn't really matter because you were going to be on the subway for most of the time anyway and--

"Tell me," Stella said. "Where are you really going?"

"Central Park," Kat murmured.

It was fortunate that Stella had asked a question where Kat's in-character answer was the same as her actual-Kat answer. Because, for just a moment, Kat was under. She'd let go too much watching those eyes, and if instead of her question Stella has said sleep Kat would have closed her eyes and gone down, so deep that her legs might have unhinged.

Instead, Kat heard her dreaming voice respond to Stella's question, and summoned enough of herself to bite her tongue, hard. She tasted blood as she came to, the rest of the room around those eyes returning to focus. Kat had not even realized that the background had gone blurry.

"Yeah," she said, just trying to force words out of her mouth so that it didn't look too obvious that she'd gone under or awakened herself. "Debra scheduled a shoot for a new model in Central Park. People still have to see beautiful people in unusual locations try to sell them things, I guess. Pandemic couldn't stop that." She thought that she was rambling and forced herself to shut up.

"Well, take care of her," Stella said, her voice returning to a more conversational volume. Did she know that she'd had Kat for a couple of seconds there? Impossible for Kat to tell. "Would be a shame to catch the virus right as the vaccine is coming out."

"Tell me about it," Kat said, with a forced chuckle.

Thankfully -- either the small talk or the attempts to avoid Stella's eyes might have driven Kat crazy if they had gone on much longer -- Amanda came out of the bedroom at that moment. She was wearing the same power suit as yesterday, with what looked like a printed T-shirt on underneath. "Okay, I'm ready. Let's go."

Stella looked over at her. "Don't you want to stay and talk about the plan for her today?" She inclined her head toward the sleeping baby.

Kat picked up on the embedded suggestion and briefly wondered if she should interrupt, but Amanda did not even look over at the other woman. "No, I trust you," she said quietly. "You've got this."

"Okay," Kat said, before Stella could start in with her ... thing again. "Car's in the driveway."

Kat went to the same Starbucks for coffee, but this time there was no hypnosis in the drive-thru lane. She really needed the caffiene to kick in, or else she was concerned that she might take herself down as easily as Stella had done.

---

Room 7 was just a small room, the size of an examination room in a family doctor's office. Unlike a doctor's exam room, though, this one was almost bare. There were just two heavily cushioned chairs facing each other in the middle of the room, a coffee table between them with an unlit candle in a holder, and a cot to one side of the room -- Marisa assumed this was for women who were so far along in their pregnancy that they needed to lie down. The furniture was even cheaper than the IKEA basics that the co-working space had used.

The woman in the room introduced herself as Abby. She was a Chinese-American woman, in her mid-twenties just as Marisa was, with a bland Midwestern accent -- like Kat, and so many other New Yorkers of their generation, she'd come here from somewhere else.

"I'm not supposed to talk about this, you know," Abby said nervously. She kept glancing to her right, at the door, as though someone was going to come in and fire her at any minute. This despite the fact that she'd said she was technically on her lunch break. "Customer treatment is strictly confidential."

Abby's nervousness actually re-assured Marisa. It meant that she was probably not part of any sort of cabal with Stella or anyone else. Not that Marisa had believed she was, but Marisa had dealt with so many conspiracy theorists since the pandemic had started that it was tough not to think about such things, even despite oneself.

"Don't worry," Marisa said. She spoke calmly and breathed slowly, trying to lead Abby to do the same. She'd already assumed she might have to do something trance-ish with this woman. "Your patients are no concern of mine. This woman I'm asking you about, her patients aren't even a concern of mine."

"Then what are you talking to me for?" Another glance at the door.

"Abby, something is not right with Stella," Marisa said. "I can tell. We need to know if it's going to affect how she does her work. My sister's baby is at stake."

That last sentence seemed to get to Abby. She looked Marisa in the eye.

"Look," Abby said. "In this job you meet a lot of people with spiritual beliefs that you might not encounter very often out there in the wider world. I'm not talking about New Age people who use crystals or believe in past lives; I mean, I use crystals and believe in past lives. I'm talking about people who the New Age crystal people look at and say, whoa, they're way out there. You understand?"

"And you thought Stella was one of those people," Marisa said. "The people who are way out there."

"Not at first," Abby said. "She seemed just like everybody else who works here. But then I had a woman who was..." Another glance at the door. Marisa could almost feel her figuring out what she could say that would not get her fired. "...concerned about how her past life related to her upcoming birth. I tried to get her to meditate on her baby with one of my crystals, but she had too much anxiety to meditate. So I asked Stella for help. And..."

Abby trailed off. Marisa waited for a few seconds, as long as she could tolerate, before prompting her with, "And?"

"Stella was really hung up on the idea of imprinting," Abby said. "Are you familiar?"

"Assume that I am not," Marisa said. She'd heard the term, but suspected she was not going to be familiar with what she was about to hear.

"It's a thing from psychology, for both humans and animals," Abby said. "A child imprints upon the creatures that they encounter when they're young."

"That's where the stories of children being raised by wolves come from, I suppose," Marisa said.

Abby waved a hand, as if to say, Yeah, whatever. "But Stella was really hung up on imprinting in a spiritual sense. She thought the baby received some kind of energy -- on the astral plane, I guess -- from whatever it imprints upon. And she said something about that energy being stolen. Being bought and sold."

Marisa took out her notepad and began writing. She knew from experience that it could ruin an entire discussion with a client if she got the particulars wrong on a subsequent re-telling. "What exactly did she say about that?"

"I don't really remember," Abby said. "I just gave her a thanks for helping out and tried to avoid working with her ever since."

"How did the girl at the front desk know about it?" Marisa asked.

Abby began to blush. "I might have gossiped about it," she said, looking at the door again. "Not specifics about the patient, that could get me fired. But kind of a that Stella chick, she's wild type of thing."

Marisa nodded sympathetically. She looked down on gossip herself, but saying anything about it would break the flow of this conversation. Thus, she tried to get back to the relevant question: "So, she thought that people were buying and selling babies' energy. How does a conversation like that end?"

"Awkwardly," Abby said. "I don't even remember what I said, but I said something and she seemed to get angry. I just tried to back out of that conversation as quickly as possible and got out of there."

"You're sure you don't remember what set her off?"

Abby shrugged. "Sorry."

Marisa looked at the unlit candle in the middle of the table. She said, "Well, if you're willing, I do know a way to help you remember."

---

Kat looked in the rearview mirror with some dismay.

Amanda was sprawled in the backseat, eyes half open, mouth slightly ajar. She looked even more entranced, more ready for Kat to give her suggestions, than she had at any point the day before. The problem was, Kat hadn't done an induction or given her a trigger. Amanda had just flopped into the backseat and zoned out on her own.

Or perhaps not entirely on her own. I thought I had made so much progress yesterday, Kat thought. Stella undid it all in one night. Fuck!

Did Stella know about what Kat and Marisa were trying to pull? Probably not. Why would she allow Kat to give Amanda another ride if she did know? Still, the possibility gnawed at Kat.

Kat wondered if she should just do nothing, and allow Amanda to show up to the Central Park shoot like this. The embarrassment of co-workers trying to get her attention might be a useful thing to get her to snap out of it. The problem was, what if no one tried? Amanda was the boss, after all; someone thinking about saying helllooo? to her or snapping their fingers in her face might fear getting fired. People might just ignore Amanda and shrug off her trancey behavior with some snarky comment like she can do whatever, as long as the check clears.

No, Kat decided she would have to say something. And at the moment she realized that, she noticed that Amanda had not put on her seat belt. Well, that's as good a place to start as any.

"Miss, I see that your seat belt isn't on," Kat said. "Help me out here?"

Kat had purposefully made her request vague, to see how the other woman responded. Amanda blinked slowly, but did not move or speak.

"Amanda," Kat said. The other woman's eyes fluttered, and Kat thought she had gotten through. "Put your seat belt on. It's the law."

Amanda opened her eyes wide, squeezed them shut, then opened them normally. "Oh," she said vaguely, as she moved slowly to buckle the seat belt. "Sorry about that."

Kat followed up quickly. The next question didn't work if she gave Amanda too much time to think about it. She asked, "Are you okay?"

"I ..." In the rearview mirror, Amanda still looked dazed. Kat had hoped to bypass the reflexive I'm fine that most people offered in response to that question, and she could tell that she had done so. "I'm just ... heavy."

Kat knew that Amanda was not talking about her actual weight. "Lethargy is a common pandemic thing," she said. "We've all had it. It took a month for me to start driving again, even after I had figured out a proper sanitization budget and routine."

"Mmm," Amanda said. Her eyelids blinked slowly.

"It's just anxiety and depression," Kat said. "But most people feel those things when they are alone. You have two other people in your pod with you. Is someone in that house making you depressed?"

"Stella is so good with the baby," Amanda murmured. "I'll never be that good with her."

"How do you know?" Kat said. "You just had the baby a few months ago. She can't even tell you anything yet."

"I ..." Amanda's eyes fluttered. How would you know is not an easy question for a trancey person to process, and Kat saw her chance to move in for the kill.

"Stella told you that, didn't she?" Kat didn't look in the rearview as she said this. She no longer needed to, so confident she was that she had the right tack.

"I ... she ..."

Kat interrupted, working off of the word she. "She talked to you about feeling heavy and slow, and then she told you that she was better with the baby, didn't she?"

"Yes," Amanda said, her voice harsh. Kat glanced in the rearview and saw Amanda lean forward against the seat belt, putting her elbows on her knees and covering her face with her hands.

"It's okay," Kat said quietly, as she turned off onto 110th Street. She would say it several times more over the next few minutes. They would be at Central Park soon enough, that she needed to clean up the mess she had made.

---

Even though Marisa had quit smoking years ago, shortly after Kat had started hypnotizing her, she still carried a lighter. In one sense this was fortunate, as they had no way to light the damned candle otherwise. In another sense, it might have been better if she had tried something else.

"Just feel the warmth of the candle on your eyelids," Marisa said. The lights were down, the candle the brightest source in the room. Just put yourself in the subject's shoes, Kat had said when she was teaching Marisa how to do this, so Marisa tried to divide her attention between Abby's closed eyes and the candle flame, asking herself how Abby must be feeling right now.

"You might be able to notice the candlelight in the room, behind those eyelids," Marisa said. She spoke quietly, not just because it was hypnotic but also because she had no idea how thin these walls were. "The way it gently flickers and changes colors."

Abby let out her breath with a heavy, sigh-like sound. Kat had said that was a good sign of trance; Marisa herself did it often, though she was too deep by that point to remember that she'd done so.

"That's right," Marisa said. "Just let that warm, heavy feeling settle over every muscle in the body."

Marisa closed her eyes. She could not have told you why she did, any more than she could have told you why the words you are getting sleepy made her shiver, deep down in that special place. She could see the candlelight behind her eyelids, just as she'd told Abby to do.

"In a moment," Marisa said, "I'm going to ask you to count to three, out loud. After each number you can take a nice, deep breath, and as you let it out just double that wonderful feeling of relaxation. And ... one."

Marisa had intended to say start counting now, but it didn't really matter. Same result. She heard the Abby say the word "One" as part of a heavy sigh.

"Two," Marisa mumbled. Her tongue was heavy and sluggish. She'd heard Kat say the phrase all hypnosis is self-hypnosis before, but she'd always thought that it was a metaphor. She didn't think that such a thing was literally possible. After all, she'd never seen Kat go into trance while hypnotizing someone else. (In fact, Kat had taken Marisa so deep on a couple of occasions that she'd had to wake herself up before proceeding any further, but Marisa would not have been in any condition to know that.)

"Two," Abby mumbled.

Marisa said the word three in her head, but it was too much effort to speak it aloud. She didn't need to speak it aloud anyway, as Abby was going along so perfectly that--

"Three," Abby whispered. The word sent Marisa down. She went into a place that she could not describe with words; even the word down was not quite right, it was just the best metaphor that her waking mind could come up with. On some level she knew that she was in trance, but that was fine, as long as Abby was in trance. As long as Abby remembered, that was the important thing. It was the only thought that Marisa could keep ahold of: Abby needs to remember.

"And now," Marisa mumured, "I want you to go back to that last conversation with Stella. Like you're watching it on TV. Can you see it?"

Abby was deep in trance, at a level where some people find it difficult to speak. Maybe things would have gone better if she had been unable, but she was able to whisper, "Yes."

"You don't have to remember," Marisa said. She had not planned to say this; the words came out of her mouth without any intention to say them. it was the exact phrase Kat used with cult victims whose cults had interfered with their memories. "Your subconscious mind can tell you what happened all by itself. Let your subconscious play the conversation back to you."

Again, maybe things would have gone better if Abby had been unable to speak. Some people are so literal-minded that unless you tell them to repeat every word of the conversation they are remembering, they won't repeat anything at all. But Abby was not one of those people.

"Morning, Stella!" Abby chirped. She showed no sign of her cheerful tone: her eyes remained closed, her face slack. "Happy holidays!"

A long pause. Marisa felt no need to say anything. It seemed like everything was just ... really nice. The trance was going perfectly, and the fact that it was going equally perfectly for her as for Abby was not important.

"What's wrong?" Abby said, her voice somewhat less cheerful but still brighter than Marisa thought she'd heard in a while. Brighter than she'd heard from anyone since...

"Have you heard about this new virus?" Abby said. Her voice had changed, into an impression of Stella's. It was a terrible impression, actually, but Marisa didn't know that; she hadn't met Stella in person and did not the sound of her voice. "In China. It's going to be bad, I know it."

"I don't really watch the news," Abby said in her own voice. "Why do you think it's going to be bad?"

"It spreads like the flu," Abby/Stella said. He voice dropped a little in volume. "It's what they've been planning all along."

It took all of Marisa's energy to lift her eyelids to half mast. She saw the thought I need to write this down from a great distance, the mental equivalent of being on the sidewalk while a plane flew high above trailing the words on a banner. Fortunately she had a pen and notepad in her lap, because there was no way she could have bent down and searched her bag for them.

"What who's been planning all along?" Abby said. "The printing guys?"

"Imprinting," Abby/Stella said, with an exasperated sound. There was a pause before she said quietly, "Can I trust you?"

"Sure," Abby said.

"Eagle Investments," Abby/Stella said, in a tone of great importance. "They are the ones who imprint on these kids and steal their essence. I'm so close to getting them."

Marisa's pen moved over the paper. She did not consciously move it.

"Um, Stella--" Abby began, but then she instantly switched to the other voice. If Marisa had been fully awake, she might have been unnerved from watching a woman interrupt herself. Marisa didn't care.

"Don't look at me like that!" Abby/Stella snapped. "I have them! I know the guy who's doing it! I know where he lives!"

Another long pause. "Well," Abby said slowly, "Then you should go to the police."

"The police," Abby/Stella said contemptuously. "You've got to be kidding. Guys like this, they have all the best lawyers."

"Well," Abby said again, in that same slow please-don't-eat-me tone that one might use in front of a salivating bear, "Then what do you need me to do?"

"All I need," Abby/Stella said slowly, "Is for you to listen to me carefully. Just listen. Listen. Listen and forget. Listen. Listen. Forget to listen and listen to forget."

Marisa took a deep breath in, letting it out in a heavy sigh. And listened.

---

In truth, Amanda had been right. There wasn't an outpouring of need for her at the Central Park shoot.

The model was new, yes, but she wasn't nervous or lacking confidence, which was good because Amanda was not in much shape to deal with either issue. The photographer was experienced and had everything well in hand. It was maybe useful for Amanda to be there in a "Prince Hal hangs out among the rank-and-file" sense, but Kat got the sense that the shoot would have gone off just the same if she had stayed home.

Which was good for Kat, because it gave her plenty of time to talk to Amanda with her own motives.

As the camera clicked away in the distance, Kat walked over to Amanda, who was sitting on a bench by the bike path, looking out over one of the small lakes in the middle of the park. She had folded her arms around herself, as though trying to give herself a hug, and Kat assumed she was the reason Amanda felt like she might need one.

"I don't remember giving birth to her," Amanda said, without looking at Kat (or, indeed, showing any sign that she knew Kat was standing there). She did not sound sorrowful; her voice instead held at a tone that Kat would have described as vague and somewhat melancholy. "They say it's the worst pain that any woman can feel. But I don't remember it."

"Do you remember holding her?" Kat said. "Afterward?"

"I remember her being so heavy," Amanda said. "Not what her face looked like or whether she was crying or not. Just that she was so heavy. I could barely do anything."

Kat said nothing. She wasn't quite sure if she should go right for the throat of this issue, or not.

"What did she do to me?" Amanda asked. Her voice did not change its halfway-distant tone. She kept staring out at the lake.

"She hypnotized you," Kat said. "I think that she planted suggestions in your subconscious mind to make you believe you were not capable as a mother."

Amanda nodded slowly. "And you're an expert on that sort of thing, I suppose?"

"Yeah. I'm a hypnotist myself. I was trying to guide your subconscious back to the memory of what she did to you."

"Well, you didn't exactly do that. I was just in the car and I realized that I had ... forgotten." She leaned forward and covered her face with her hands.

Marisa might have hugged her at that moment. Marisa could build that kind of instant positive rapport with people. Kat did not move.

"You're not a driver, I suppose," Amanda said through her hands. She was not sobbing; Kat wasn't even sure tears were coming out. Amanda's voice remained distant.

"Well, I have a license," Kat said. "I can drive. But your sister did not hire me for that particular skill."

"Debra," Amanda said, pushing the word out like a harsh sigh. She uncovered her face and leaned back, eyes closed, face pointed at the sun. "God! All the times I dismissed her..."

"Beating yourself up is pointless," Kat said, subtly trying to plant the words as a suggestion. "Stella might have even programmed you to do it."

"Programmed," Amanda echoed. Some people might have thought her tone of voice strange, but Kat had heard it before, and completed Amanda's thought before she said the words aloud.

"People always think it can't happen to them," Kat said. "That's the whole point. That's why it happens. Her program was in place before you even thought about whether it could happen to you."

"Why?" Amanda looked right at Kat for the first time. "Why, for God's sake?! Why would someone want me to think I was a bad mother?"

"I'm not sure," Kat said. "My partner is looking into it."

"Kidnapping?" Amanda was pale.

"I doubt it," Kat said, "If that was her end goal, there are much easier ways than a months-long hypnosis scheme. But it could be, I'm not sure."

"Money?" Amanda asked. "We run a company, but we're not billionaires. Hell, we're not even millionaires!"

Kat bit her tongue for a beat, not wanting to snap, I just told you I'm not sure! Instead she shrugged. "Maybe. If you can afford to pay a few people's salaries, there's always going to be someone who wishes that salary could go to them, instead."

"Well, she is so." Kat saw the other woman marshaling her nascent fury. "Fucking. Fired!"

"That is your choice," Kat said, keeping her voice even. "But there's still a lot we don't know yet. If Stella is trying to commit a crime, we don't have the evidence to go to the police, not at this point."

"And what if the crime is kidnapping my daughter?!"

Kat glanced over at the set. No one seemed to have heard Amanda. "Debra is watching the baby," Kat said.

"And what if she's been hypnotizing Debra, too?!"

Kat had to admire how fast Amanda was catching up. As always, suggestible was not even close to the same thing as stupid. "She was," Kat said evenly. "Stella gave Debra the idea that Stella was a witch, so that no one would take Debra seriously. But we've helped her remember what Stella said to her."

"After all you've told me, do you really expect me to believe my baby is safe?!"

Kat said, "Amanda, focus." She clapped her hands together near the woman's face as she did this. Amanda blinked, but did not flinch away, as most people might do. That told Kat everything she needed to know. "We haven't even talked about your husband yet."

"My hus..." Amanda looked Kat in the eye, blinking. Her anger seemed to have been defused; her voice softened with confusion. "Sean?"

"Amanda, focus," Kat said again. Ironically, she unfocused her gaze; like trying to look at a point on the opposite inside of the skull, her hypnosis teacher had said. Amanda, trying to meet her gaze, unfocused her eyes as well. "Whatever she's planning, Stella needs complete control of that house to do it. Focus. She has complete control of that house. That's why your sister called me, so that I could get you to focus. She has complete control of that house because she took your focus. But you had control of that house once, didn't you?"

Kat's rapid-fire, insistent cadence stopped. She looked through Amanda's head; like you're seeing everything I'm thinking, Marisa had said one time. Amanda's eyes drooped to half-mast. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out for a few seconds. At last she murmured, "Yes."

"Amanda, focus," Kat said, speaking much more slowly and gently. "You had control of that house once. Focus. Some part of you remembers when she took all of your focus. You can get back your control if you focus. Look deep inside and focus. Tell me when she took control."

Amanda's eyes remained half-open and locked on Kat's, but in her mind she was having the most vivid dream she'd ever had.

TO BE CONTINUED