Clarissa Murphy's day was not off to the best start. Mondays were hard enough when she hadn't been working a case all weekend, and just as she'd finally been about to get some sleep on Sunday night, she'd received a call about a break-in that had stumped the cops. She sighed as she parked her car in the deck across from her office and took a long pull from an irresponsibly large coffee. If the break-in actually had proven to be related to her department, she wouldn't have minded the hours of sleep lost. But like everything these days, there had been a perfectly rational explanation for what had happened. 

Clarissa sat in her car, letting it idle while she contemplated closing her eyes and taking a nap right there and then, but eventually she killed the engine and got out, slipping a pair of sunglasses over her eyes as she emerged from the gloom of the parking deck and into the crisp autumn sunlight that gleamed spitefully off the windows of the towering buildings around her.

She crossed the street without looking and entered one such building; the squattest and least impressive on the entire block. The words on the front of the building declaring it the Law Office of Fitzgerald, Burham and Oslow were a blatant lie. Though the reception area certainly looked like it belonged to a stuffy law firm, and they even had a group who practiced law on the fifth floor to maintain the cover, the majority of the building was actually dedicated to the headquarters for the Federal Bureau of Occultism.

"M-morning Stan," Clarissa said, stifling a yawn as she entered the building.

"Morning Murph," Stan said, brightly. Most people at the office called her 'Murph' or 'Murphy.' She'd objected at first, back in her days at Quantico, but she'd become increasingly attached to the name as a way of establishing her professional persona. There was something tough about being Murph that wasn't the same as when she was Clarissa or, God forbid, Clary, as her mother had always preferred.

"Long night?" Stan went on, and Clarissa shook her head, realizing she'd been staring into space.

"Something like that. False alarm on a B-and-E around one AM."

Stan nodded sagely. He was younger than Clarissa, but he had a long, serious face that made him seem older sometimes. "Who did it?"

Clarissa rolled her eyes. "The 'victims'," she said, pantomiming air quotes, "have a teenage daughter. I checked her Instagram page."

Stan chuckled. "Clearly only an FBO agent was going to solve that one for them."

"Clearly," Clarissa agreed, dryly. She took another sip of her coffee. "Anything new?"

Stan tapped away at his keyboard. "Director wants to see you, but you can head to your office. She told me to ping her when you got in."

"Joy," Clarissa said. She got along well enough with the director, but a visit from one's boss first thing in the morning was never fun, especially when she was as wrung out as she was now. "Guess I better get up there."

Stan nodded, tapped at his keyboard some more, then pressed a switch under his desk. "Elevator's unlocked, head on up."

Clarissa went to the elevators. There were two of them, but the one on the right wasn't operational unless Stan unlocked it. She pressed the button and the doors rolled back smoothly. Before long she was riding the elevator all the way up to her office on the twelfth floor.

As she rode up, she tried to adjust her appearance in the mirror. She needed a shower, but she'd settled for pulling her copper hair into a messy bun and trying to cover the dark bruise-like circles under her eyes with makeup - a daunting task, cursed as she was with her pale, Irish complexion. At least her dark green pantsuit was wrinkle-free. She smoothed the jacket over her shoulder holster. Director Williams wasn't usually a stickler about how her agents dressed so long as they were professional, but Clarissa looked up to her in many ways, and was always eager to impress.

The elevator dinged open and Clarissa stepped out onto her floor. She was met by the usual flurry of activity. Analysts and other support staff bustled from one cubicle to another, and conversation murmured in the background beneath the sharper sounds of ringing telephones and barked orders. It was chaos, but organized chaos, and it made some part of Clarissa relax at the familiarity. She strode confidently into the fray. Despite her only average height and rather slender build, people moved almost unconsciously to get out of her way, clearing a haphazard trail through the bullpen and to her own office, where a brass nameplate read: ASAC Clarissa Murphy.

Clarissa's office, like most of the FBO headquarters, was nothing special. She had a window, which was nice, a desk that didn't wobble, and a chair that didn't kill her back. The standouts off the office were her top of the line computer and a corner devoted to a pair of leather armchairs and an old shelf weighed down with dusty books.

Today, however, there was the unexpected addition of another person, who was eyeing the bookshelf so closely that she didn't notice Clarissa come in. Clarissa's instincts as a field agent kicked in, and she found herself scanning the strange woman closely, assessing her as a possible threat. 

The woman was shorter than she was, and the first word that sprang to Clarissa's mind as she analyzed her was: soft. She was pleasantly curved and plump in a way that didn't detract from her overall appeal. She was wearing a skirtsuit she probably bought five or ten pounds ago, and she was shifting her weight back and forth on her kitten heels, suggesting she didn't have much experience wearing them. 

Clarissa let the door close behind her with a snap that got the woman's attention. She jumped and whirled to face Clarissa. Her chin-length, honey blonde hair framed her round face that matched her other soft qualities. Even her eyes were soft, huge and blue and wide from being startled. Some small, lonely corner of Clarissa ached at the sight of those eyes, and she found herself inadvertently wondering what the woman would look like in less restrictive clothing. 

Clarissa only indulged those fleeting thoughts for a moment before engaging her mental defenses. Recalling her training, she built a visual image of a solid brick wall, assembling the mental construct piece by piece and using it as a representation of her mental fortitude. Her psychic talents were barely noteworthy, but she prided herself on at least being an impenetrable fortress of stubbornness, and in her line of work, it was never a good idea to casually let one's guard down around a stranger. 

"Who are you?" Clarissa asked by way of introduction, crossing the room to drop her bag behind her desk. She shrugged out of her jacket, letting the woman see the shoulder holster she was wearing underneath. 

The woman's eyes tracked to the butt of Clarissa's gun, then flicked back up, meeting her gaze fleetingly before settling on her own shoes. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I was told to- I mean, they said I should-" The woman broke off, her round face blushing furiously. "I'm Rachel." 

"Pleasure to meet you, Rachel," Clarissa said, her voice neither warm nor harsh. "Why are you in my office?" 

"She's here at my invitation." The door to Clarissa's office wasn't even all the way open before she could hear the director's rich alto voice, but she followed closely on its heels. Kendra Williams was an imposing woman in nearly every sense of the word. She was tall, nearly six feet, a fact which didn't keep her from wearing heels around the office. She had stern, but handsome features, and she wore her dark hair in long braids which she currently had bound together in a single tail. She had left the jacket of her own suit upstairs, apparently, and the way her dark skin contrasted with her white blouse never failed to make Clarissa think inappropriate workplace thoughts. 

I need to get laid, she grumbled to herself. 

Director Williams put a hand on Rachel's shoulder and steered her to the center of the room, pushing her down into one of the chairs across from Clarissa's desk. Clarissa took the cue and sat herself, though the director remained standing. "This," she said, giving Rachel a pat on the shoulder, "is Rachel Becker. She's was training to be an intelligence analyst at Quantico before I recruited her." 

Clarissa perked up at that. Due to its somewhat more clandestine nature, the Federal Bureau of Occultism operated in the shadow of the FBI, recruiting its agents from among the pool of hopeful trainees at Quantico. Usually their recruitment programs tried to single out trainees who had some kind of supernatural occurence in their lives, or those who demonstrated aptitude for extrasensory perception, or ESP. Agents and support staff who demonstrated ESP aptitude were invaluable to the FBO as they sought to track down criminals who were outside the boundaries of traditional law enforcement. 

"So what's your story, rookie?" Clarissa asked, leaning back slightly in her chair. Rachel shifted nervously, but managed to at least look in Clarissa's direction when she answered. 

"Well, you see, I get these...hunches is I guess the best word for them. When I was doing data analysis, sometimes certain things would just, you know, leap out at me. And I found that if I started following those hunches, I would usually find some kind of discrepancy or..." her nerve seemed to give out and she looked away, blushing again. "Or something like that," she finished lamely. The director squeezed her shoulder in a reassuring way. 

"Miss Becker is being too modest. The cases she worked on benefitted enormously from her hunches, and her efficiency put her on our radar. We tested her, and she has aptitude. I'd like you to take her under your wing, as your personal assistant and analyst."

The phrasing had been deliberate, Clarissa sensed. It wasn't an order, not yet at least. But Clarissa didn't need her own measly aptitude to sense the anticipation and excitement rolling off Director Williams. She was invested in this one, for whatever reason. 

Clarissa pursed her lips, staring at Rachel intently. "Have you ever had an experience with supernatural or occult forces?" she asked. Rachel shook her head. 

"N-no, I, I mean, I've heard about stuff. I read things online, stories people tell, but not personally, no." 

Clarissa nodded. "Some of what you find on the internet is real. Most of it isn't, either people making things up or fabrications to help obscure what could be dangerous to publicly acknowledge." Clarissa steepled her fingers and looked at the director. "How much formal training has she had?"

"The basics," Director Williams said. "She's spent the weekend brushing up on the introductory material. Clarissa looked back at Rachel. 

"So what do you know about the psychosphere?" 

Rachel glanced up at Director Williams, who nodded in a reassuring way. The analyst took a deep breath. 

"Well, we know that there are aspects of human consciousness that are biological, obviously, but there are also components to consciousness that can't be observed by traditional scientific methods. There's an element of consciousness that exists outside of ourselves, and that's what the psychosphere is: a hypothetical collective thoughts and emotions that all humans tap into on some level, most commonly when we're dreaming."

Clarissa was impressed. The young woman had a fantastic memory if she'd only been cramming the basics in over the last few days. 

"Humans can consciously choose to tap into the psychosphere," Rachel continued, closing her eyes and speaking as if she was reading off the backs of her eyelids. "Mostly this results in minor miraculous phenomenon. Yogis who can hold their breath for a long time, manifesting prophetic dreams, even stuff like minor levitation. 

"But those with ESP aptitude can take that even further. Individuals who demonstrate an ESP aptitude rating of three or higher can utilize the psychosphere to affect others." Rachel opened her eyes, met Clarissa's for a moment, then looked away hastily, blushing. "That's basically all I know." 

Clarissa looked up at the director but spoke to Rachel. "There are other ways that ESP aptitude can manifest. Eidetic memory, for example." She saw the corner of Director William's mouth quirk up, and she sighed. 

"Rachel, can you wait outside, please? I need to speak with the director alone." 

Rachel looked up first at Clarissa, then at the director, who nodded again. Rachel got to her feet, nearly knocking over the chair in her haste to comply, and she stumbled slightly in her unfamiliar shoes as she stepped out of the office. 

Once she was out of the room, Clarissa let her guard down, her mental defenses relaxing. She thought she could feel the director do the same. "What's her aptitude rating?" Clarissa asked the director, warily. 

"Three, at least," the director said. "And she was nervous during the test. It could be higher. She certainly manifests some form of clairvoyance, and she claims to have always had an eidetic memory." 

Clarissa let out a low whistle. The director had the highest aptitude rating of anyone in the FBO, and she topped out at a mid three. Clarissa herself had only managed to scrape the minimum score possible to still get a rating of two. It was possible, with discipline and training, for anyone to achieve some aptitude ranking, but across the board, natural talent seemed to be the most deterministic factor in a person's ESP aptitude. 

"You want her in the field," Clarissa said, making it a statement rather than a question. 

"If it's a good fit," Director Williams said. "In the meantime, I want her working closely with my best field agent. She could be an invaluable asset to the Bureau." 

Clarissa met the director's gaze steadily. "Do I get a choice in this?" 

Director Williams shrugged. "I'm assigning her to someone. If you don't want her, then she'll work with Agent Simmons." 

Clarissa shuddered. "Simmons is a creep."

"Simmons has the second best record when it comes to closed cases," she said, without heat. Then her expression softened just a touch, and she produced a file, which she dropped onto Clarissa's desk. "And besides," she said, "if it weren't for Miss Becker, we wouldn't have a lead on Mesmer." 

Clarissa straightend up in her chair and flicked the file open hastily. "Mesmer surfaced?" Her eyes practically flew over the dossier. She didn't have an eidetic memory, but she had at least managed to become an accomplished speed reader. "Why? And why now? I haven't had a lead on him in..."

"Five years, I believe," the director said. Clarissa grunted. She hadn't realized it had been that long. She reached the end of the short file and flicked over the last page. A grainy photograph was paper clipped to the back cover of the file folder and she snatched it up, holding it close to her face.

"It's him," Clarissa breathed. She could barely believe it. But even though it had been nearly a decade since she'd seen him, and she could count the pixels in the picture, she knew for a certainty that this was the man she'd been chasing for the overwhelming majority of her career. She met the director's gaze once more.

"Fine, I'll take her."

"So who is this Mesmer guy, anyways?" Rachel asked, eating lo mein from a takeout box. 

"He's a criminal," Clarissa said, bluntly, through a mouthful of General Tso's chicken. "One of the first cases I worked." It was a couple of hours past her usual lunch time, but Clarissa had spent the morning rushing through as much of the on boarding process with Rachel as she could. There had been paperwork to fill out, forms to file, instructional videos for her to watch. All the while, she'd felt like she was faintly vibrating with excitement. A lead on a case like this, a case that could define her career moving forward, was the kind of thing she wanted to attack with single-minded determination. She'd even been reluctant to take lunch at all, but it was clear the rookie she was responsible for was not used to skipping meals. So they ate in Clarissa's office, the file that the director had given her open next to a considerably larger file.

"I'm guessing he's not a normal criminal," Rachel said, clicking her chopsticks. "What's his deal?"

"Well, for starters, he's a psychic."

Rachel frowned. "I know what that means in, like, normal context. But..."

"Right, right," Clarissa said. "Psychic is Bureau shorthand for someone with an ESP aptitude rating."

Rachel's brow furrowed further. "You tested him?"

"Well," Clarissa hedged, "not exactly. It's hard to covertly run an aptitude test. But we can observe patterns of behavior, and other unexplainable phenomenon and extrapolate from there. And Mesmer definitely exhibits signs of supernatural capabilities."

"What did he do?" Rachel asked.

Clarissa rubbed her jaw. "Well, he was posing as a therapist. Or, well," she amended, "maybe he is qualified to be a therapist, I don't know. I don't know all that much about him for certain. What I do know is that he started a private practice when I was starting out as a field agent. He was linked to the sudden strange behavior of a wealthy socialite. She divorced her husband suddenly and moved all her assets to offshore accounts before vanishing. At the time, we only had him in for questioning regarding her mental state."

"Let me guess," Rachel said, "he...what, mind controlled her? Can people do that?"

"Can and do," Clarissa confirmed. "Broadly speaking, psychics level three and higher fall into three categories based on how their talents manifest. Clairvoyants, like you probably are, can see things. Glimpses of the future, mostly, but sometimes they can trace the psychic residue left on people and objects to determine where they've been and what they've been involved in in the past.

"Psychokinetics manipulate the world around them. Telekinesis is the most basic example, but we've observed those who can do more...disturbing things." Clarissa shivered and didn't elaborate.

"So," Rachel said, setting her mostly empty takeout box aside, "the third kind are telepaths, right?"

Clarissa nodded. "They can be the scariest. Telepaths can influence thoughts and emotions, and some of them can be unbelievably subtle." Reflexively, she checked on the brick wall she'd rebuilt in her mind. She might have trusted the director's judgment, but that didn't mean she was about to get sloppy around a stranger she'd just met.

Rachel looked vaguely ill. "So, what, he just told this woman to divorce her husband and give him all her money?"

Clarissa held out her hand, palm down, and wiggled it back and forth. "Well, yes and no. As scary as telepaths are, they're not omnipotent or anything. And it turns out, free will is one of those things that can be tricky to undermine. Survival instinct is generally enough to keep a telepath from telling you to outright off yourself, for example."

Rachel nodded, absorbing that. "So what did happen to her?"

Clarissa blew out a long breath. "Fucked if I know," she said. "She turned up in a strip club in Las Vegas six months later. FBI chalked it up to a psychotic break."

"That's convenient," Rachel said. She'd pulled the larger file towards her and was scanning each page methodically, committing them to her impressive memory.

"Right? But yeah, if he did make this woman do all that, we would expect her to basically have the awareness and agency of a vegetable. Yet here she was, her usual ditzy self, just stripped of her dignity and propriety. Oh, and most of her memories."

Rachel looked up, her huge blue eyes fearful again. "How did you figure out he was responsible?”

Clarissa shrugged. "Hunch, mostly. I kept an eye on his clientele. Started to notice a pattern. He took exclusively female clients, and exclusively wealthy ones. Most of them started making large donations to charities that wound up being dead-ends, shell companies, that sort of thing. I gathered all the evidence I could and took it to Director Williams. Well, Assistant Director at the time. I was too new to be involved in Mesmer's initial questioning, so I wanted to go undercover and see if I could get a first hand account of what was going on."

Rachel's blue eyes managed to widen further. "But, but, that sounds so scary!"

Clarissa barked out a laugh. "I guess it kinda was. But I was eager to prove myself. Besides, telepaths are most powerful when you don't suspect them. Slipping thoughts into your mind as background chatter is only useful if the subject isn't on high alert and engaging in Bureau-mandated mental disciplines that can make someone less susceptible."

That seemed to comfort Rachel, and she relaxed her scared-puppy expression slightly as she went back to scanning the file. "So how was he doing it."

"Fucked if I know," Clarissa repeated, more exasperated this time. "I didn't observe him doing anything out of the ordinary." She didn't like thinking about that day, in the stuffy therapist's office. She'd been so nervous, she had been sure he would be able to see through her at a glance. But the session had proceeded fairly normally as she'd gone through the rehearsed story of a trophy wife feeling unfulfilled in her life of provided wealth, and he'd eaten it up eagerly. It was only right at the end when he'd-

Clarissa shivered. The memory of his thoughts, his power brushing against her mind was something she could never seem to escape. Unlike most sensory memories, it neither faded, nor blunted over time. She remembered the utter wrongness of his mental touch, along with the subtle but deeply alluring draw of his influence. She recalled the mental image of her brick wall forming spiderweb cracks against her will, and through those cracks slid his words, his thoughts, his...desires.

That had been the worst part. For just a moment, she had felt him in her mind. She had felt the depths of his attraction to her, his desire to claim her. And it had struck a chord somewhere deep in her self. To this day, still had yet to experience anything so hideously, beautifully intimate as that singular moment of mutual attraction.

Of course, shortly after that, she'd drawn her weapon and tried to arrest him, which had more or less killed the mood.

"Anyways, the op went bad and he went to ground. I got wind of activity on one of his known accounts about five years ago. He used it to buy a ticket to Cambodia."

"A country he can't be extradited from," Rachel observed.

"Exactly. His practice was set up under the name Alarond Mesmer, but it turned out to be an alias. We managed to freeze the assets under that name, as well as the one he bought the ticket under, but he hasn't tried to get in to them as far as we can tell. Since then, we've had nothing." Clarissa sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Well, nothing until you came along, at least." Clarissa held up the grainy photo of a man emerging from a bank.

"So spill. How did you get this?"

Now that the attention was on Rachel again, she blushed. Clarissa was beginning to get the sense that this girl didn't operate well under pressure, definitely a mark against her potentially being a field agent. Still, there was nothing wrong with her mind, which she proved by flipping the smaller file open to a page of numbers ordered, to Clarissa's eyes, entirely at random in several columns of a spreadsheet.

"These accounts aren't connected to anything," Rachel said. "There's almost no discernable pattern in their activities. No patterns in deposits or purchases that anyone could tell. But I had a hunch that there was more to this than a random sample of numbers, and after a while, I found the connection." She flipped the page over to more numbers that didn't make much sense to Clarissa.

"These purchases were all made within the same six month window. Each of them were flagged by their respective banks for being unusual, all for the same reason: they were made out of state, relative to the owner of the account. Each flag was resolved by the owner of the account and none of them were challenged."

Clarissa sat up straight. "Let me guess, all the accounts belonged to wealthy women?"

Rachel nodded, grimly. "Most of the purchases were necessity items, but some were larger. Gold, jewels, that sort of thing."

Clarissa could feel her excitement rising. "He's buying things he can easily sell for cash. That means he's back in the states, trying to fly under the radar. So how did you pin down the bank?"

Rachel fidgeted. "Another hunch I guess. One of the accounts had requested to move a collection from her lockbox to the local branch for her bank. I looked up when it was delivered and started flagging security footage. That's when Director Williams finally reached out."

It wasn't an ideal situation. That probably meant Mesmer had no intention nor reason to return to that bank. Still, though, he was back in the states. More to the point, he was in town. Clarissa could hardly have asked for a better opportunity.

"If he's in town, he's operating again," Clarissa said, with the kind of confidence that brokered no further discussion. "That means there will be signs, even if nobody else is seeing them. We need to get eyes and ears on as many socialites as we can. There's a profile in that file on his preferred victims, we'll start with anyone who fits that profile and go from there."

Rachel frowned, and even though it looked deeply uncomfortable for her, she spoke up. "You said we still don't know exactly how he's controlling them, right? I mean, not like, the way he does."

Clarissa waved a hand. "That's a secondary concern. The primary objective is to get him off the streets."

Rachel fidgeted again, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, exposing the slope of her neck in a way that was innocently enticing. "Well, what about this? Could this have something to do with it?" She flipped the larger file over and slid it towards Clarissa, pointing to a specific spot on the page. Clarissa frowned slightly and looked where she was pointing.

Clarissa had possessed this file for eight years, adding to it with every scrap of potentially relevant information she could find. It had accompanied her home, to meals, even out in the rain on occasion, if it needed to make the trip from her car to the office. The part of the page Rachel was pointing to was hopelessly smudged, the words barely legible. Clarissa brushed Rachel's concerns aside.

"I know that file back to front, trust me, there's no relevant information about how Mesmer does what he does." A giddy euphoria seemed to shiver down her spine. She was so close, after all these years! The rush of adrenaline made something warm blossom in her stomach, and she suddenly found the fact that Rachel was leaning over her desk, presenting a tantalizing view down her slightly too-tight blouse very appealing.

She blinked a few times and resolved to finally download that dating app her sister kept recommending to her.

Rachel stared at the smudged page as if she wanted to say something, but whatever it was, she let it go and closed the file.

"Okay," she said, and her voice carried a note of resolve Clarissa hadn't heard from her so far. "I'll build the database and start going through personality profiles. What about you?"

"I have a few informants in the local occult scene. I'll make some inquiries. And I'm getting you a desk." Rachel tilted her head at that, giving Clarissa a strong impression of a curious dog.

Clarissa answered her with a wolfish smile. "You're my secret weapon, Miss Becker," Clarissa said. "I want you by my side until that asshole is off the streets.

"One way or another."

Rachel returned home that night exhausted, but pleased. It had been a long day. After lunch, she had begun working on the database of potential victims, only pausing to situate herself when the desk and computer Agent Murphy requisitioned had been delivered. The two had worked in companionable silence, with Agent Murphy occasionally stepping outside to make a phone call. She'd finished the database up by the end of the day, but Agent Murphy hadn't been willing to leave until she'd done a preliminary read through, and since Rachel hadn't been willing to leave before her new boss, it was nearly eight before she finally left the office.

Still, she wasn't complaining. Unlike her long years of academia or her months of strenuous training at Quantico, working for Agent Murphy energized her. She had an infectious passion, a razor sharp mind, and despite their somewhat rocky beginning, she had turned out to be a rather warm and open person. The fact that Rachel had noticed her staring at her chest on more than one occasion was just a bonus. Nothing would come of it, of course, but it was always nice to be admired.

The only thing that struck her as odd was how quickly she'd blown off the part of the file that Rachel had shown her. Granted, she was new to all of this, to psychics and weirdness and everything else, so maybe there truly wasn't a connection. But somehow, Rachel had to assume that the fact that Mesmer had advertised himself as a professional hypnotherapist might have had something to do with how he was exerting so much control over these women. Could you use psychic powers to enhance traditional practices of mentalism? She didn't know enough to say.

She resolved to bring it up to the Director, but only if she asked about the case. She wasn't about to start her new career by ratting on her new boss, who she did genuinely admire.

Rachel stepped off the bus - she'd declined the ride home that Agent Murphy had offered her - and walked the last block to her apartment building. She unlocked the door and took the elevator up to the seventh floor. It wasn't until she was just outside of her door that the hairs on her arms stood up and a shiver went down her spine.

She froze, staring at the plain door with its little brass numbers on it. She tried the knob. It was unlocked. Had she forgotten to lock it? That didn't sound like her. She reached into her purse. Rachel didn't have a gun, but her fingers closed around the little spray can of mace she kept on her.

Slowly, as quietly as she could, Rachel eased the apartment door open. It was dimly lit, the only light coming in through the windows from the streetlights below. She glanced at the entryway. There was a pair of shoes there. Men's shoes.

Rachel lived alone.

She thought about leaving, about getting her phone and calling first the police, then Agent Murphy. Rachel was smart enough to know that there was little chance she just happened to be the victim of a break in the same day she officially joined the FBO. All she had to do was head for the emergency staircase and get outside where she was safe, where there would be witnesses, where she could…she could…

Rachel’s thoughts grew fuzzy and distant. They were still there they were just…unremarkable. Unimportant. She looked down and realized she'd crossed the threshold of her apartment. Why had she done that? 

The mace slid from Rachel's suddenly limp fingers. She felt the weight of her suspicions, of her worries and her fears slough away, replaced by a slow, sensual, erotic pleasure spread through her body, washing away the unpleasant emotions like a steaming hot shower rinsing caked-on mud off her skin. Without all those silly worries and concerns, Rachel could realize just how foolish she was being. Of course she didn't live alone.

She lived with Him.

"Hello, thrall," his voice said, and Rachel's eyes rolled back, her nipples tightening at the sound of His voice. "Was today a success?" 

"Yes Master," Rachel moaned. She didn't understand the question, nor her answer, but it didn't matter. Answering the question felt delicious, and all she could think about was how much better it would feel to answer another one, or kneel at His feet, or obey Him in any way He desired.

"Good thrall," her Master's voice said, and the praise made her collapse to her knees, pressing her forehead to the ground as she groaned in pleasure.

She heard movement, but didn't move from her prostrated position. She wasn't meant to see Him unless He desired it. Just like she wasn't meant to remember Him until she returned home. She was meant to obey, to be a tool to be wielded at her Master's will and no one else's. She soaked in the feeling of absolute inferiority that simply being in His presence provoked, feeling the warm pleasure of obedience, subjugation and humiliation pool between her legs, drenching her underwear beneath her skirt. 

Eventually, He spoke a word, and Rachel looked up, seeing nothing but a dangling crystal held in long, delicate fingers. The gem caught the glow of the streetlights outside, refracting and reflecting into a truly dazzling array of colors. Before she could even recognize how familiar the crystal was, she was already falling into trance, her mind melting as Rachel slid away.

Thrall didn't mind that, of course. Pretending to be Rachel was exhausting. It required so much thinking so much worrying and anxiety to pretend to be Rachel. Thrall didn't have such concerns. Thrall existed for one purpose - to serve her Master. 

"Let's have a chat about your first day at work," thrall's Master said. Thrall was too far gone to even consider resisting, and before she knew it was happening, she was deeply asleep.