"Not much happened after that. We caught up to you, called the ambulance. She got away."

"Ah. - you'd think someone would have mentioned the hypnosis somewhere."

"Might not have too many survivors, and Spike sure wasn't going to mention it."

"Yeah. I guess."

Did you get in? asks Wishbone, from outside. Did you find her? Is she OK?

Yeah. He conveys Karen's description.

Yep, that's vampire thrall. It's a rare ability, especially these days. Takes a long time to master. I wouldn't be surprised if some watchers don't believe in it anymore, but it's real, all right.

Interesting that she was able to exert that level of control that quickly. Not to say that it's Karen's fault, mind you, vampiric hypnosis and mind control can neutralize just about anyone with enough exposure, but I wouldn't have expected a vampire of Drusilla's age to be able to immediately stop a vampire slayer dead in the middle of a fight unless they were, ah, not in a very good headspace. She must be even more powerful than we'd assumed.

Also Karen's not in a good headspace at all, she's been miserable since the Spike thing. I am not sure it would be helpful to tell her that that might've contributed.

Ah.

- it might not be that at all, of course. People said that the Master of the Order of Aurelius could hypnotize people even if they weren't looking at him. It's one of the reasons he was considered so dangerous. It'd be surprising if Drusilla were in the same class as him, but many things about Drusilla are surprising.

If the problem is too serious to be fixed with snuggles, then I may be out of my depth here.

I think she just needs time without - an exchange student living in her house and a dangerous mummy living in mine and a serial killer on the loose and some dead classmates and routine near-death experiences. But we're sorta falling down on that front. 

Can anyone do it to multiple people at once?

Dracula can. Of course, he's Dracula, but it's possible in principle.

Fantastic.

...I do feel like I should maybe have brought some of this up sooner, so - you might want to know that while most vampires who use hypnosis simply mesmerize their victims, like what Drusilla seems to have done to Karen, Dracula's been reported to exert ongoing influence and control over people who appear otherwise normal. Once contact is made and the connection has been established, they can go from their ordinary selves to serving their new master at a moment's notice. There's probably some practical limit to the number of people he can have under thrall at any given time, but it's a lot more than one.

This is probably not making you feel better.

I guess I can read her mind until we're sure that's not the case. Thanks. And - yeah, it's good to know about extra creepy shit vampires can do. Before they do it.

It's a very rare ability. But yeah. I'll mention it if I remember anything else.

He reads Karen's mind.

Karen's not having a great time!

She's mostly trying to be calm, because if she's not calm then that'll make everything worse, and she really can't afford for things to get much worse, given how far she is off her game already, because she thought maybe she regained something she lost after talking to Zeke about all of the mess inside her and about his seven thousand victims, only now she doesn't feel like she's recovered anything at all, she sort of feels worse than she did after Spike beat her up, because this was her chance to fix things, and maybe they have some info now, OK, but she feels like the main thing it did to her brain was - well, the main thing it did to her brain was the head trauma, but like, apart from that - was make the whole anxiety spiral about the vampires worse, because Alex was really really really scared for her, (awwww), so by getting hurt she also hurt Alex, and she's going to get Drusilla really hurt when they catch her, too, because now Alex's gonna be super mad at her, and if he catches her and he can get away with it then he'll probably do whatever he did to Spike only worse, and she'll be really really really hurt, and probably like extra re-traumatized from all the times she was tortured before, and it'll be Karen's fault, and this is a really stupid thing to be fixating on when there's a crazy serial killer loose in her city, because she does actually have to catch Drusilla, and she wants to catch Drusilla, even though she's kind of scared of what'll happen when she does, except she keeps screwing it up, and it's not like thinking about her absolute failure to stop Drusilla from killing more people is really any less upsetting than thinking about Drusilla getting tortured, so she kind of just wants to stop thinking about the whole thing and hide under a bunch of blankets on her sofa while eating ice cream and watching old Alfred Hitchcock movies, except they're not really doing training-wheels superheroics right now, and if she ignores her responsibilities then real people will actually really die, and it's kind of lame, honestly, that she can at once feel like she can't turn away from this because nobody else is succeeding at it, and also feel like she can't actually do anything significant or make any real decisions about her city that isn't really her city at all anymore, between the super vampires and the government people and the Mayor and whatever else is happening, so she's gonna have to keep deferring to the government people and however the government people do things, because she doesn't have a better option than handing people over, no matter what they're doing to them, and she's also gonna have to keep deferring to Alex and however Alex wants to do things, and - aaaaaAAAAA, that's a terrible thought, she's not sure how she's gonna do her job at all if she's not at least sure that her core people are really her people and not some other different people with completely different priorities who she's just tolerating for like strategic reasons or something, because Alex is like her best friend and he definitely definitely cares about her and he's like one of her most favorite people ever (he's probably not her first favorite person ever? It might depend on the specific definition of favorite, or the specific qualities being ranked, and she probably shouldn't rank her favorite people anyway because that sounds unhealthy but the POINT is), and if the fact that she keeps letting vampires almost kill her is gonna mess that up then she needs to STOP LETTING VAMPIRES ALMOST KILL HER, and wow she's a very very dumb person if this is the sort of motivation she needs to stop almost dying, because maybe she doesn't actually care enough about the dying part, which is bad because she would like to not die, actually, and also she has a bunch of people to help still, but it's not like she wants to die, she just isn't really sure how to measure whether she cares enough about not dying, except this is probably a dumb train of thought because probably if the problem is a problem with her then it's either that she hasn't been smart enough and should like have a bloodhound and a cooler-looking map with more pins in it and spend more time hanging out with local demons or something, or else that her brain keeps DOING THIS and it's getting kind of hard to think over all of the this and she should really really stop and here she is not stopping.

- ugh, her brain hasn't been this messed up since summer camp.

"So did they say when I can go home?"

"They're more worried about you than is warranted since they don't know about the healing. If you feel fine you can probably check out against medical advice. Do you feel fine? Wishbone says that powerful vampires can do, uh, lingering influence."

Everything is TERRIBLE and the world is made of MISERY AND PAIN (and Wishbone, Wishbone is good), and she is getting VERY BAD AT EVERYTHING.

"I think I'm OKish? My head still hurts. Vision's not swimming or anything anymore, though. ...I dunno what lingering vampire influence feels like, what does that even mean."

"We don't know very much." He sends what Wishbone said except for the bit about mental states. "I'm not very worried, but I want to talk about it more once we're somewhere safe."

"Makes sense. Uh - where are we counting as safe? Do we, like, have a plan for where we go after we check out of the hospital?"

"I think we should go back to your place because Connor and Ampata are there, and I should perch in a tree half a block away looking for snipers like I did when I was scared for you when we first met, and we should talk through everything that's currently going on."

"Sounds good. - I do think I'm probably good to leave the hospital whenever."

"All right." So out they trudge.

Who even needs sleep. She pours herself a bowl of cereal at home, because it's almost six in the morning and at six in the morning you eat cereal. Wishbone curls up beside her chair. Azalea starts washing dishes, transparently glancing over to see how Karen's doing every few minutes.

OK. Things that are currently going on.