Marisa sat on the subway, heading back home, looking at her notepad. It was tough work.

There was writing there, and it was her handwriting, but she did not remember writing it. She must have written it while she was at the Tribeca Holistic Wellness Center, but

(listen and forget)

she could not recall the actual act of note-taking.

This might not be a problem, except that Marisa's handwriting was quite messy even in the best of times. Kat often referred to it as "chicken scratchings," to which Marisa always retorted that they made sense to her. Except, of course, this time they didn't make sense. Not even a little bit.

Marisa dropped the notebook back into her bag and closed her eyes. Any woman who has ever traveled by subway in New York City will tell you that eyes-closed is the preferred way to ride; meeting the eyes of the wrong man can lead to a very bad trip. But Marisa closed her eyes for a different reason; it just felt really nice. She still had something like a hundred blocks to go, which actually isn't that far by subway, but she just needed to ... needed to ...

Ping!

At the sound, Marisa's eyes flew open. She rose from her seat and walked to the nearest door, and onto the platform, before she even thought to look at any signage. The sign in the middle of the platform proclaimed 175th Street.

Marisa blinked. Already? Wasn't I just at Times Square-42nd Street? She was almost home, but remembered less than half of the trip.

Marisa took out her phone, perhaps intending to check the time -- in a moment or two, she would have realized that she didn't quite remember at what time she had boarded the subway -- but she saw that she had received several texts from Kat.

I got it

I was right, its a hand that rocks the cradle thing

well sort of

just call me i cant explain over text

Marisa stood at the base of the stairs leading out of the station, blinking, trying to make sense of what she was reading. Finally she said, "Siri, call Kat."

Kat picked up in the middle of the first ring. "Hey, I got it. We got her. Amanda is remembering the trances, she's hopping mad, ready to fire Stella."

"Okay," Marisa said vaguely.

There was a pause over the phone. Finally Kat said, "You're not gonna ask me what it is?"

Marisa blinked. "What is it?"

"She's one of those clients," Kat said. "She got hung up in a conspiracy theory about something called the Syndicate. They blame Eagle Investments for all kinds of nefarious shit. The pandemic, space lasers, lizard people, you name it. I found so much toxic nonsense just searching on my phone the last ten minutes, I'll probably have to wipe it."

Marisa said nothing. Kat said into the phone, "Do you understand?"

Marisa smiled dreamily. She knew the answer whenever Kat asked her that question. "I understand."

Kat said slowly into the phone, "What did you get from the wellness place?"

"I dunno."

"You don't know? Did you talk to anyone who knew Stella?"

Marisa tried to furrow her brow. She remembered lighting the candle, and there had been someone else in the room... "I think so."

Kat's tone of voice had a been-there-done-that tone to it. "Did you hypnotize someone who knew Stella?"

Marisa didn't exactly remember, but why else would she have lit the candle? "I ... think so?"

Kat sighed harshly into the microphone. "You hypnotized yourself, didn't you?"

"I dunno."

"Ris, we talked about this! Just because you helped me out after I got hurt, it doesn't mean you're trained to hypnotize people all the time!"

"Okay." Marisa's tone was vague, disinterested. She remembered that she and Kat usually had more involved arguments about this, but that memory seemed to be happening some distance up the street.

"Marisa, focus. Where are you?"

Marisa smiled again. Easy questions were nice. "Subway station at George Washington Bridge."

"I don't have time to wake you up right now. I'm dropping Amanda off at Debra's place. Debra is getting the baby. I want you to go straight home. The sound of our front door closing will bring you up out of trance and you'll remember everything. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Okay, bye." Kat broke the connection.

"Bye," Marisa murmured to no one in particular. She walked home in that way that so many of us do: along the same path that she always used, not really thinking about it or noticing much along the way. The closing of the apartment door was like the sound of a flood gate on a dam, opening inside her head. She laid her forehead against the surface of the door, now understanding Kat's exasperated tone in a way that she had not done during the phone call, and muttered, "Shit."

---

Debra Remington unlocked and opened the door of her sister's house. Sometimes she thought of it as "our house," though of course it wasn't; Debra's name was not on the papers here, and she owned her own condo downtown. But Debra had been here often enough, especially after the baby had been born, that it was an easy slip to make.

"Mandy?" Her sister detested this nickname. Sometimes, like now, Debra would use it when she knew Amanda would not be home, with the hope that Stella would hear it, and use it herself to her own peril. As of yet, no such luck. "You home?"

No answer, of course. Kat had texted Debra a pre-determined code word, telling her she should retrieve the baby. The use of the code assumed that Amanda was already safe, somewhere else.

"Stella?" No answer.

Debra hesitated, as she tried to think why there would be no answer. The doula did not have her own car (Whenever they needed groceries, Stella told one of the parents, who ordered via a food-delivery app), so she could not have gone far. COVID precluded taking the baby for walks (something Amanda worried about often, since the vaccine would not be available to a child Arielle's age for months yet), so Stella would not have a reason to take the baby on foot or in the stroller.

Debra walked straight through the house, on the way to the baby's room. She was not particularly worried about the doula sneaking up on her and trancing her; Kat and Marisa both had said that could not happen. She checked around corners and behind herself, just in case the doula decided to come at her with a kitchen knife or a frying pan or something, but she wasn't worried about that to an outsized degree; the doula was a small woman and did not seem inclined to violence.

The baby was in her room, asleep in her crib. The crib was under the window, the half-open blinds creating a rectangular space of warmth and shade at the same time. "Okay, Arielle, ready for a little trip?" she asked rhetorically, more to calm herself than anything else.

As she reached the side of the crib, Debra noticed the apparatus mounted on one corner of the crib. Most families mounted toys there, what the toy stores called "mobiles," little plastic things hanging from swing arms, the colors and the motions being things that babies liked to look at. Amanda had gone a different way, simplying hanging a crystal pendant from a tripod. The pendant had belonged to their mother, who had hung it over the kitchen sink in the house where they grew up.

The baby's natural movement, even when asleep, caused the pendant to spin and sway, just enough to send flecks of light spinning all through the crib. And of course the pendant was a prism, so the flecks were like little rainbows, so every one of the colors could be seen in each one of them, ROY G. BIV like they'd been taught in school. She rememebered pleasant spring afternoons just like this one, when her mother would tell her to wash the dishes and she would just stare at the pendant, looking for each one of the colors, and daydream while the warm water ran over her hands...

Stella watched from the doorway for a good minute or two as her snare took effect. She'd realized fairly early on in this project that conditioning someone took a lot of time, more time than could easily be managed around the eating and sleeping schedule of a newborn. So she'd used the pendant with both Remington women, taking them deeper and deeper into the memory of seeing it in their own kitchen as children. Eventually she'd given Amanda the idea to hang the pendant at the baby's crib so that neither woman could pick up the baby without falling into trance first. It was a useful way to ensure that Stella almost always had the baby in her arms.

Stella checked her phone. She'd given Abby at the Wellness Center a suggestion to go into trance and send a text if anyone came around the Center asking about her. You had to watch your own back in times like these, when you dealt with these Syndicate bastards. Abby had said,

Woman asked me about you

What did she ask?

Dunno. Hypnotized me.

What did she look like?

Brown hair green eyes

Was it possible that Debra had been the questioner? Stella doubted it. Debra didn't have green eyes, for one thing, but Stella's trainer had said people could remember colors oddly under hypnosis. More strange was just the texture of the description: Abby was an imaginative person, and even her subconscious was quick with the adjectives. Would she look at Debra's lustrous movie-star dark mane and think Brown hair, green eyes, whatever? No way.

Plus, where would Debra have had the time to learn hypnosis? Even if she was resisting Stella's suggestions -- and what Stella saw in front of her right now implied that she was not -- it was a time-consuming process, one that had required months from Stella as she had consumed every online course she could afford (and some she could not). Debra had been around this house too often to develop any hypnosis skills.

Debra was not wearing her purse. Stella knew that she often left it in the car, which was itself sometimes unlocked. White Plains, she thought with disgust. Stella felt Debra's jacket pockets gently; the key fob was in the left-hand side, her phone in the right-hand side. Debra took no notice as Stella removed them both, and she did not blink as Stella held the iPhone at just the right angle in front of her face to wake it from sleep. Though the phone did wake, Debra did not.

If Stella had given Debra a suggestion in that moment, Debra would have awakened. Kat and Marisa had given her plenty of mental tools with which to resist Stella's voice. And Stella did consider asking Debra questions, but decided she could find out just as much from the other woman's phone. Had she made the opposite decision, the rest of that day's events might have gone quite differently.

---

Marisa was on the computer, Googling various combinations of "the syndicate conspiracy" and organizing what evidence that they had, in case the police got involved. She wasn't really planning the latter -- Kat had made it sound like Stella was just going to get fired so emphatically that you could hear it from space -- but it was always a good idea to be prepared. She had already emailed quite a bit of information to Kat

On the desk, a cheap Android phone, barely a step up from a burner phone, trilled. Kat and Marisa both carried iPhones; the Android was the "work phone," the number on the K&M website. They sometimes handled client calls on it, but most people preferred video chat; for the most part the Android existed solely because they needed a phone which was not their personal phones to put on the tax documents.

"Um, K&M Consulting," Marisa said. The um was like a nervous tic; something about using a mobile device constantly had her forgetting that these were professional calls. "This is Marisa, may I help you?"

Silence on the other end of the line. Crap, Marisa thought. Am I gonna have to scrub us from the spam-calls lists again? Still, because it was the work line, she gave it another try. "Hello?"

"I have the baby," A woman's voice said quietly. Not Debra's voice.

Five years ago Marisa might have frozen at hearing such a thing. But she had seen some shit in the meantime. "Stella?"

"I looked you up online," Stella said. "People say good things about you. We should talk."

Marisa and Kat, on the rare occasions when they had involved conversations with one of "those" clients, always said slight variations of the same thing: There are some bad actors involved in these conspiracy theories; some people who act out of spite or racism or greed. But others, including your loved one, actually think they're doing the right thing. Marisa's intuition said that Stella was in the latter group. "Yes," she said. "I also think we should talk. Where do you want to meet?"

"I'm outside," the voice said.

Marisa started out of the desk chair. Shit, is our address on the Web somewhere? "Outside ... my apartment?"

"I'm standing in front of the cell phone shop."

Marisa paused to tap out a message to Kat on her phone, then she went to the window. She did indeed see a woman who appeared to have a baby in a papoose, standing in front of the store that sold burner cell phones and cheap iPhone accessories, looking up at her building. "Yes, I see you," she said.

"Can I come up?"

It's just a negotiation, Marisa thought. You can do this. Just keep her talking until Kat brings the cops. "Yes," she said. "I think we have a lot to talk about."

---

Debra's apartment was not far, but it was also on the island of Manhattan and further downtown. If the car was insured in any way, Kat would have left it in a garage somewhere and taken the subway instead. Driving in the heart of the city was the sort of torture that could convert anyone to any cult.

The shoot had dragged on longer than expected due to the beautiful weather providing perfect sunlight. Amanda excused herself due to "not feeling well," which was perhaps the understatement of the decade. Finding out about Sean's betrayal was a gut punch -- but was it really a betrayal? Kat could see that question was tearing Amanda up more than anything Stella had done to her -- and had muted her rage. Kat wondered if, were she to put Stella in front of Amanda at this very moment, the result would be violence.

Debra's condo was large, reflecting how much more lucrative her chosen career was than Kat's. It had an odd sensibility: perhaps it had been purchased by a person who wanted it to look like the height of fashion, but the pandemic had lended it a lived-in, dorm-room vibe not unlike Kat and Marisa's own apartment.

Kat swept a couple of empty Amazon boxes off of the kitchen island, dropping her and Amanda's purses into the middle of the space she had created. "You know your way around the place, right?"

No answer. Kat looked back at the other woman, who was blinking and looking quizzically around the apartment. "Amanda?"

Amanda gave her a curious look. "What?"

"You know your way around the place?"

"Um, yeah," Amanda said. "I helped Debra pick it out. That was just a couple months before the pandemic started ... seems so long ago ..."

Kat could relate. The Trump presidency felt like it had been ten times as long as any other in her lifetime. "Okay. It's going to be like last year for a little while, at least for you. Debra will bring the baby here, then you should both just hunker down until we can make sure Stella is gone."

"What about Sean?"

It was a good question. Stella had been messing with his head, but Kat hadn't been hired to help him, specifically. "He can wait. First things first."

"First things..." Kat could see that the idea Sean might not be a first thing was just dawning upon Amanda.

"You and the baby. That's first. Then you keep your head down and hope you didn't catch the virus today."

"Catch the virus? But everyone had to test negative before they were even allowed on set."

"Yeah, that's what every famous person who got sick over the last year said," Kat replied. "You might be right, but it's my job to be a little more paranoid than you."

Kat's phone vibrated on the surface of the kitchen island. Kat picked it up and saw a text from Marisa.

Stella is here, says she has the baby, wants to talk

"Fuck!" Kat hissed. I blew the whole thing when I got lazy and she tranced me yesterday, she thought. Which wasn't actually true, but the human capability for self-blame can at times be bottomless.

"What?" Kat could hear the rising alarm in Amanda's voice, but she did not answer her or even look up from her phone as she tapped out:

Given the mood amanda is in, i can sell the cops on kidnapping. just keep her there, dont let her trance you

She sent the message as Amanda said, "What is it?"

Kat looked up from her phone at the other woman. She knew from experience that saying something like you should sit down first just made them more panicked. "Stella is at our apartment. She has the baby with her."

"God damn it!" Amanda said. "I told you we should have gone there first!"

She started to move to the door, but Kat caught her by the shoulders. "Wait, I need you to stay here."

"Like hell I will! That fucking woman--"

"I need you," Kat said, cutting her off, "to stay here, talk to the police, and tell them the whole story. If I say it's kidnapping, they might disbelieve or misunderstand. If Arielle's mother tells them it's kidnapping, it's fucking kidnapping."

"This is all your fault," Amanda said, angrily but quietly. It hurt Kat to hear that, but at least the other woman wasn't trying to shout over her any more.

"Maybe so," Kat said. A key factor in working with people who had been mind-controlled was to agree with them. "But I can fix this. She's at my place and my partner is already there."

"Your place? How does Stella know where you live? I don't even know!"

"I don't know. Maybe I'll ask her. You call the cops here, I'll go over there to talk Stella down."

"Wait, why are we calling the cops to come here? And if so, why don't you stay here?"

"Police do not understand these sorts of issues. If I'm here when they show up, I'll have to answer their questions all night instead of resolving the problem. I'm going to give you a list of things to say to them, that will give them the right idea about what is going on, and then you tell them to go to my place. Let's get started."

---

Marisa was thinking of the story Kat had told Debra, during that first call, about Milton Erickson. By a certain point in Erickson's career no one wanted to shake hands with him at parties, because he could trance them in the space of a handshake, by touch alone. In the time it took Stella to arrive at her door, she resolved that there was not a chance in hell she was going to touch Stella.

There was a soft knock at the apartment door. Marisa opened it to see Stella standing there. She was surprised at how small the other woman was; not just shorter but scrawnier, her low-cut blouse revealing skin stretched tight across her breastbone.

Stella did not smile as she extended a hand. "Hello. I'm Stella."

Marisa ignored the hand, still thinking of Erickson.

"But I guess you already know that," Stella said. "May I come in?"

Marisa said, "Of course," as she walked backward until she was standing by the kitchen island.

After Stella entered, there was a silent moment between them. Presently Stella said, "she's sleeping. Can I lay her down so we can talk?"

"Keep her in your lap," Marisa said. She figured trying to keep the baby down would keep the other woman too occupied to try hypnosis tricks.

Marisa stood in the doorway as Stella went into the living room. The couch seemed to casual for this conversation, so they took chairs on either side of the room, staring at each other over the coffee table.

Marisa did not say anything. She wanted Stella to start. Every second that there was no conversation between them, was another second close to Kat bringing the cops.

Stella said nothing for some time, as well. Her eyes were a faded blue, not gray but heading in that direction, and Marisa had to remind herself not to stare at them. The eyes are intimate, Kat had told her one time, when they were doing play involving Marisa begging to be hypnotized by eye fixation, and Kat trancing her in various other ways instead. Looking at them opens yourself up. Look at the tip of the nose instead, or the lines of the cheeks.

"Look, I'm just going to say it," Stella said, "because I know you're already thinking it. This is not kidnapping."

Marisa did not bother to challenge the statement I know you're already thinking it. Instead she said, "If I called her mother, would she agree?"

"Her mother is the problem," Stella said. "You have no idea what horrible things these people do to their children."

"'These people'," Marisa echoed. "Her husband too? And Debra?"

"The sisters come from money," Stella said, "and Sean works on Wall Street. Just follow the money. It all follows the same dark energy."

Marisa, who had seen All The President's Men more than once, knew well the power of the phrase follow the money to lead people in the direction of the bad guys. But she also knew, from dealing with far too many of "those" callers over the past year, that it was a phrase which could lead a lot of conspiracy theorists in the wrong direction. She decided this was the place where she had to issue a challenge.

"My father worked on Wall Street," Marisa said. "He knew that his job sometimes put him adjacent to some bad people. But he told himself that he needed to do it to put a roof over my head and give me a good education. I can't see how Amanda, Sean, and their sister could do horrible things to that baby for money."

"It's not the money," Stella said. "It's the dark energy. Money is just a tool, it can do good things or bad things, but it follows the energy."

First you told me the sisters were in it together because of the money, then you told me it's not the money, Marisa thought. She knew from experience that such contradictory statements were a key part of cult logic. The same cult convert could be told one day that their parents didn't love them, and the next day be told that their parents had smothered them with love.

"Arielle looks fine to me," Marisa said. She hadn't said the baby's name yet, but using the name was important. You had to have the conspiracy theorist thinking in terms of individual people, instead of a mass amorphous enemy. "What do you think Amanda and Sean are doing to her?"

"You don't need to patronize me," Stella said. Though it seemed a bitter sentiment, there was not a trace of bitterness in her voice. "If I told you, you wouldn't believe it. And I get that. It's complicated and horrible. Most people don't want to get it."

Marisa noted another classic piece of cult logic: putting oneself above the rest of society because one "gets it" (where "it" is usually the key tenets of the cult) and everyone else does not. "You're right," she said. "If 'it' involves kidnapping, I definitely don't get it."

"I told you, this isn't kidnapping," Stella said. "This is a desperate action to protect this baby. And, frankly, it's your fault."

"My fault?" The words came out reflexively, and internally Marisa kicked herself. Repeating the words of a hypnotist was a no-no.

"The driver," Stella said. "I was expecting to see her in this place. I assume you and she are working together. And," she said with a small smile, "maybe a bit more than that?"

Marisa avoided an agreeable statement. That was a Kat trick, in their play: once you start agreeing to things, you're on a road which leads to saying yes to every suggestion. "So what if we are?"

"Nothing at all," Stella said. "But you forced my hand. I realized you were going to have Amanda throw me out, so I had to do this. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," Marisa said, and suppressed a wince. It was so easy to say the wrong thing on reflex. She moved on with her intended follow-up. "I understand that you are desperate to put the blame for your own actions on everyone else."

"Of course I'm desperate," Stella responded. It was argumentative language, but her tone was even and steady, not arguing at all. "These Wall Street animals, they make us desperate. It's the only way they can make money, if they leech it out of people like me until we're completely desperate."

"That's my father you're talking about," Marisa said.

"Are you telling me you don't have a little more than you need?" Stella was still holding that small smile. "This is a very nice apartment."

Marisa bit her tongue to keep from arguing. We won a settlement against a cult psycho, and we wanted a building with good security to keep him away from us! It was more cult shit, she knew: flip the argument back around on the non-member, make it all about them. "This is not about me," she said. "I'm not sitting there with another woman's baby in my lap."

"She entrusted me to keep the baby safe. That's what I am protecting." As if to punctuate her point, the baby gurgled softly. "She is safe here, isn't she?"

"She's safe," Marisa said. This time she did not kick herself.

Stella said nothing. Marisa tried to focus on her cheeks. Stella wore no makeup and her cheeks shone in a way that you never saw from actors in movies or TV. Marisa knew all about that, because she'd had to wear makeup to prevent the same thing, back in her cello days. She never understood why, it's not like people are looking at the orchestra's faces...

"Marisa," Stella said.

Marisa blinked. She caught herself before the reflexive yes. "What?"

"You looked like you were zoning out, there, for a second."

"I'm fine," Marisa said. "I'm just trying to figure out what your plan is, here."

"Just trying to keep the baby quiet and safe," Stella said. "Is this place not quiet and safe?"

"It's fine," Marisa said. "But I can't believe you would take the baby out of the house without a plan."

"Just trying to keep the baby quiet and safe," Stella said. "Is this place not quiet and safe?"

"You just said that," Marisa said.

"Did I?"

"Yes," Marisa said.

"Shhhhhh," Stella said. Her voice was close to a whisper. "You'll wake the baby."

Marisa tried to keep her voice quiet as she said, "What do you want?"

"What do I want?"

"Yes."

"I want what you want."

"I want." Marisa blinked. Focus. "I want that baby to be back home with her mother."

"Why?" Stella said. "Is this place not quiet and safe?"

"Not as safe as being with her mother."

"But you took the job to keep the baby safe."

Marisa sighed with annoyance and looked Stella in the eye. "Stop dancing around it. That baby needs to go home, now."

"Shhhhhh," Stella said. "You'll wake the baby."

Marisa might have thought, maybe it would be better if the baby WAS loud? But, for whatever reason that we sometimes avoid the obvious thought, she did not think this. Instead she said quietly, "The baby needs to be at home."

"But what if home isn't safe?"

"Her home is safe. You have no evidence otherwise. You said so yourself."

"You were so close."

Marisa blinked. "I was so close?"

"I was so close," Stella said. "I was almost there."

"You had eight months," Marisa said. "Maybe more."

"And the baby was safe that entire time, wasn't she?"

Marisa paused to take a breath. Focus. The fucking circular logic of these conspiracy theories would be tough enough even if she didn't have to pay attention to the fact that it was coming from an accomplished hypnotist.

"Wasn't she safe?" Stella asked again.

"Yes," Marisa said. "Of course she was. Because you never had any evidence--"

"Shhhh," Stella said.

Marisa fell silent. She did have the brief thought, is 'shhhh' a suggest--

"The baby is safe with me," Stella said.

"The baby belongs at home," Marisa said.

"The baby was safe at home," Stella said. "With me."

Marisa looked into those warm blue eyes. Focus. This is just a negotiation. What does she need? She said for the second time, "What do you want?"

"I want the baby to be safe," Stella said.

"The baby is safe," Marisa said.

"Yes?" Stella said.

"Yes," Marisa said.

Stella said nothing. This was probably the last time that Marisa could have reminded herself of Kat's warning not to go into trance, but she had tranced herself too recently, at the Wellness Center. She looked into the warm blue eyes and the heavy feeling seeped into every cell of her body. Including the brain cells.

"Shhhhh," Stella said. Marisa had not spoken for some time, but she did not mind.

---

Kat took the subway. There was something vaguely absurd about finding oneself in an intense situation and then just standing on a subway platform. But Debra's place was too far downtown, and the train was simply the fastest way to get to Washington Heights from there.

Kat checked her notes on the Syndicate Conspiracy while she rode. She didn't have everything, not even close, but she thought she had what she needed. Soon she would find out if she was right.

Once she arrived at her address, Kat did not cross the street. Instead she leaned against the cell phone shop's outer wall and waited, looking up at the apartment as the evening sky darkened.

Marisa would be in a trance, inside. Kat knew this as surely as her own name. She'd warned Marisa not to let the other woman trance her, but Stella was good at this and Marisa had accidentally tranced herself just that same morning. The fact that Marisa had not sent another text since the first one just confirmed Kat's belief.

Kat had done some research. She thought she knew everything that she needed to know. But still, she waited until dark. Then she went inside.

Kat did not knock, but she opened the door quietly. She dropped her bag next to the door and took the room into account.

The two women were sitting in the chairs on opposite sides of the coffee table. Stella was on the far side of the room, facing Kat. She had the baby in a sort of papoose, resting against her torso. Marisa sat with her back to Kat; Kat could not see her face, but her carriage was erect, her head up.

Ris might have resisted being told to sleep, Kat thought. But this one has a couple of tricks in her bag.

"Hello, Stella," Kat said.

"Shhhhh," Stella said. She was looking at Marisa. "You'll wake the baby."

"The police are on their way," Kat said. She did not shush herself, but neither was she speaking with a loud or tense voice. "Let's wrap this up."

"Took you some time to get here," Stella said. Her voice was pleasant, with no sign of an edge. "Traffic?"

"Subway," Kat said.

"Because you definitely don't drive for a living," Stella said, her voice still quiet and pleasant.

"No," Kat said. There seemed no point in denying it. "I don't."

"We should be on the same side here," Stella said. "We both want the baby to be safe. I was telling your lover that, back when she was more able to have a conversation."

Kat's ears pricked up on the word lover, but she had to remind herself that there were pictures of them together in a few places around the apartment. Marisa didn't give her anything. Even in trance, she wouldn't. "Well, we didn't try to brainwash a newborn's mother into hating herself," she said, striving to keep her voice pleasant and conversational, just as Stella was doing. "So I don't think we want the same thing at all."

Police sirens blared in the distance. This was a common enough occurrence in New York City that Kat could not assume those sirens were for her. But it reminded her that time was a factor.

"I think we want the same thing," Stella said. "Or else you wouldn't have tensed up when you heard that siren."

Kat had expected something like this. She knew that Stella would try to dictate the sensations that she was feeling, as a way to establish later suggestions. It didn't matter whether Kat had actually tensed up or not. "The police are unpredictable," she said. "If they have to knock down that door, it increases the chances that something goes badly for one of us. Including the baby."

"Then why did you call them?"

"As backup," Kat said. "I want to have this settled by the time they get here."

"Well, then," Stella said. Her voice was still calm and even. Kat could see how Marisa had gone for this. "Here is what I propose, to settle this. Your lover is already quite settled. You and I should sit down and have a conversation, to settle everything to your satisfaction. And then when the police arrive, you can settle them as well."

"Come on," Kat said. "Be serious. Amanda is involved, and she has full recall of what you did. I had her talk to the police before I even got here, so they're acting under orders from a pissed-off mother. I couldn't make the police go away even if you were able to hypnotize me."

"I don't need them to go away," Stella said. "I just need them to have some doubt that the baby would be safe with her. You'll help me with that."

"I don't think so," Kat said.

"I do," Stella said. "I think I had you in a quiet and comfortable state this morning. You don't have to go much further than that. And it's for the baby's benefit."

The sirens had died down, but in the corner of her eye Kat could tell that the walls and windows of the buildings across the street were colored in flashing red and blue lights. Kat said, "And if I don't?"

"You said it yourself," Stella said. "The police are unpredictable. I could fall down. Perhaps with the baby under me."

Kat wondered if Marisa had heard a threat like that, or imagined that it was possible, and allowed herself to go into trance as a result. It would be worth investigating, later. But for now, Kat decided to deploy her one weapon that Marisa had never really developed: rudeness.

"Fuck you," Kat said, allowing her voice to rise a little. "Nobody comes into my own home and says something like that to me."

Kat took a step forward, and Stella said, "Shhhhh. You should stay over there. You'll wake the baby."

Her eyes had not wavered from Marisa not for the entire conversation, and finally Kat was sure as to why: She only barely has Marisa. Stella is trying to project control over her, and this entire situation. But she is just inches away from losing it.

Kat said, "What about your baby? Would she want you to make a threat like that?"

"I don't," Stella said, and then hitched. They both saw it and knew it for what it was. "I don't have a baby."

"No," Kat said. "You don't. But someone called 'starbaby84' on the Syndicate Forum seems to have suffered quite a traumatic loss. 'Starbaby' sounds a bit like Stella, to me. And you were born in 1984, weren't you?" At least that was what the resume Stella had given to Debra had said.

Stella said. "You're reaching. It would be much better for us to settle this--"

Marisa did not interrupt people. That was not the way one conducted a successful negotiation. Kat had no such compunctions. "You scrubbed your Facebook and Instagram, because you knew that Amanda and Debra were clever enough to search," she said, cutting Stella off mid-suggestion. "But it's my job to wade through cesspools like the Syndicate Forum. Starbaby84 has your cadence and way with words, and she has quite the grudge against Eagle Investments. She seems to have been the first person to start the Eagle Investments theory on that forum."

"I don't have the first clue what you're talking about," Stella said. She kept her voice at the same volume, but the pleasant hypnotic tone was gone, and a decided edge had crept into its place.

"Starbaby's posts are shot through with loss," Kat said. She was looking at Stella, but not into her eyes; Kat had softened her gaze, staring at a point a foot or two behind the other woman's head. "The injustice of others having so much, when some suffer such loss. She doesn't say what she lost, even when others ask her directly. She doesn't have to."

"She shouldn't have to say," Stella said. "They know what they take from us every day. That's all that matters."

"And some people try to blame her for that!" Kat said. She was speaking quieter, tying to match the edge in Stella's voice, leading her deeper into her rage. "The fucking gall!"

"Yes!" Stella said, keeping her voice quiet but still clearly letting all of her anger into the exclamation. "I told you we wanted the same--"

She turned her head as she spoke, looking Kat square into the eyes. Kat barely paid attention to what Stella was saying. Gotcha, she thought.

Kat had edged forward until she was almost even with the coffee table, moving slow enough that Stella had not seemed to notice. Now Kat took two long, quick steps, putting herself into Stella's personal space. She leaned forward, putting her hands on Stella's shoulders and pushing, gently but firmly, driving her back into the chair until she was looking up at Kat. All the while Kat kept her gaze unfocused, staring though the other woman's head. Stella gaped, her line of thought broken in the middle of her sentence.

"The baby died in her crib, didn't she?" Kat said. Her voice was quiet but intense, keeping the perfect wavelength of rage between herself and Stella.

"Yes," Stella said. Her eyes, trying to meet Kat's, had lost focus themselves.

"You did everything right, everything the experts talk about."

"Yes."

"And who blamed you?"

"My mother-in-law," Stella said. Her eyes filled with tears as she whispered bitterly, "That bitch."

"And your husband followed her lead."

"I tried to explain myself!" Stella exclaimed, speaking more loudly than she had at any point up to that moment. The baby shifted in her arms. "He wouldn't listen!"

Kat, on the other hand, let her voice drop even lower and more insistent. Stella would have to focus to hear her. "He left you."

"Yes!" Stella said. "She always wanted him to!"

"And you had nothing," Kat said. She leaned forward, physically dominating Stella's space, forcing the other woman's eyes to go even more out of focus. She spoke low and quick, every word slipping through Stella's defenses. "Nothing but rage, nothing but the knowledge that the world can be so cruel and so random as to take everything from someone who did everything right, and you can feel that place, deep down in the deepest place of rage, where you made the decision for revenge, you can feel the decision you made when you chose her, you can feel the moment when you created the conspiracy for yourself, because the only other thing it could be was a choice, a choice to be that cruel and random force that would destroy her life as yours was destroyed, and you can feel how you and she are the same right now."

Kat snapped her fingers. She'd always had a decent finger-snap, but had practiced it even more after learning hypnosis. The sound popped like a starter's pistol, filling the room. The baby began to cry, loudly and enthusiastically, as babies do. A moment later, Stella joined her.

Kat stepped back, and looked at Marisa's face for the first time. The green eyes were blinking slowly; Kat estimated that Marisa was maybe one-third of the way up. The finger-snap had done a little for her, but it was not the usual method Kat used to wake her, and she hadn't been focusing on it. Kat took her hand by the wrist, and gave it a small jerk, like a stage hypnotist re-inducing a participant near the end of the show. "Sleep," she said, and Marisa flopped in the chair instantly, as if she'd been shot. This would make it easier for Kat to fully wake her later.

"Take her," Stella sobbed, her voice hoarse. She was fumbling for the snaps on the papoose. "Take her, I can't, just take her."

The baby was only in Kat's arms a few seconds before the three authoritative knocks came on the door.

---

They met in Central Park, near the place where Kat had gotten through to Amanda. There was no special significance to that place; Kat just thought it was a nice part of the park.

Debra came alone, and sat next to Kat without much of a greeting. Kat didn't know if this was a good icebreaker, but the news was so good that she didn't care: "Did you hear? They finally announced vaccine registrations. That's why Marisa isn't here, she's trying to reserve appointments."

"Yeah," Debra said. She did not sound especially happy, though sometimes it was hard to tell through a mask. "My friend was talking about a Hot Girl Summer, but I don't think we'll be that lucky. It'll take a long time just to get enough people vaccinated."

"Yeah," Kat said, sensing Debra's discomfort. There was an even more awkward pause.

"Look," Debra finally said, abruptly. "I talked Amanda out of suing. But she is not happy with you. If you see her in public, go the other way. If you need models for advertising or whatever, don't use us. And you might have to worry about your Yelp reviews for a while."

"We're not on Yelp," Kat said. "But I take your meaning. Thanks for speaking up for us."

"More like taking the blame for myself," Debra said. "I was the one who was supposed to get the baby. Instead I didn't even wake up until it was all over. I still don't remember what happened."

"I can help you with that," Kat said.

"No thanks," Debra said. Under the mask, Kat could see she was blushing. "If Amanda found out I let you hypnotize me again, she might force me out of the company."

"Okay, but you shouldn't blame yourself," Kat said. "Stella was playing the long game, and played it well. She was manipulating all of you."

"But she was manipulating us to do things we already wanted to do," Debra said. "Or, at least, that's how Amanda's divorce lawyer explained it to me."

Kat nodded, feeling glum. When Amanda had revealed the details of Stella's influence upon Sean, Kat had assumed the marriage probably would not survive. But it was still a little sad to have that belief confirmed. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Explain that to me," Debra said. "If Sean wanted to cheat on Amanda, and that's why Stella used him, what does that mean for Amanda? Or for me? Did I want the baby to be kidnapped?"

"No, of course not," Kat said. "Look, it's complicated. No two people experience trance the same way. But Stella had you remember sexual situations and sensations, and then used them against you. It's not your fault. We all want to have sex."

"If she's that good," Debra said, "Then how did you stop her?"

Kat said, "Everything I knew about her said she only knew how to trance people by lulling them and saying sleep. Now, she was really, really good at that. But there are other ways to trance someone. All you need is for them to really focus on something. So I got her angry. I had her focus on her own angry memories. Basically, I hypnotized her with her own rage."

"And once you did that ..." Debra made a confused sort of gesture. "What?"

"I had done my research," Kat said. "A lot of conspiracy theorists are projecting. The conspiracy just happens to perfectly explain the problems in their own lives. The sovereign-citizen movement claims that the entire American legal system secretly became invalid around the time the income tax was created; that conspiracy was started by a man who had a ton of tax debt. You follow?"

"I guess so," Debra said.

"Stella created a conspiracy theory that babies are taken from people, which suggested that she lost a baby herself. Probably either a miscarriage or a crib death. As I was guiding her into her rage-trance, she talked about being blamed by others; most women who miscarry blame themselves. So, that left crib death. And I just realized that she was trying to project her pain onto Amanda. She was trying to make Amanda feel what she had felt."

"And why did she pick us?"

"You know, I'm still unclear on that," Kat said. "Maybe it will come out in court. Maybe she just picked you completely at random. But it didn't matter to me, in terms of getting the baby back, so I didn't ask."

"Didn't matter," Debra echoed. It was hard to be sure because of the mask, but the look in her eye was strange. She said, in a voice equally strange, "You really like this work, don't you?"

"It helps people," Kat said. "I've never helped people on this scale before."

"Helps people?" Debra said in that same strange voice. "My sister's marriage is disintegrating. She doesn't trust me around her child any more. We just found out that there's a huge army of people on the Internet who think we are billionaire monsters, when we aren't. And you think you helped us?"

Kat said, "You have the baby, right?"

---

"You maybe could have put it a little more tactfully than that," Marisa said from the couch, as she stared at the screen of her laptop.

"Ah, whatever," Kat said from the kitchen. She had taken to cooking, as they'd found meal-box services cheaper than just ordering out five nights a week. Tonight was moo shu pork. "I wanted out of that conversation anyway. Did their payment go through?"

"Yeah," Marisa said. "Yesterday."

"And did you get the vaccine appointments?"

"Probably not until tomorrow," Marisa said. "The website is so slow. I think everyone in New York is applying at once."

"See, that was what I was trying to tell her," Kat said. Everything was almost done. She took the rice off of the burner and began stirring it with a fork. "Not every win feels like a win, at first."

"Okay." Marisa ate in silence. Soon she said, "Kat?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you do to me what she did? Confuse me?"

"I mean you're already confused."

"What--" Marisa started, but Kat was already placing a palm over her eyes and barking, "Sleep!"

Down and down and down, forgetting what up even felt like, with only Kat's touch on her shoulder to guide her.

And, later on, Kat's touch in many places more ... wonderful.

THE END