"...Take away your magic? I don't even know how I would do that. I just plan to use my magic to to prevent you from running off and destroying more people's minds with it." 

James pauses. That's what he's worried about doing her doing, with whatever that strange word she used before, but maybe that isn't what she means. Maybe this isn't as bad as it looks. And as long as he goes back to the plan of not telling her he can change herself, and removing whatever she does to him in a room, he should be fine. He takes another breath and shoves his anger down nice and far and puts on his best friendly face. If that's all she thinks she's going to do to him, then maybe everything will be fine.

"That isn't what it felt like," he says after a couple of further breaths. "It sounded like you were going to do something to me keep me from doing anything you didn't want me to do, to make sure I only ever did what you wanted. And being tied up like this," he gives a short and very futile struggle to demonstrate, "isn't making it any easier to believe you have anything so remotely benign in mind."

"I have you tied up because you're empirically the kind of guy who if given his own way will turn people into oversexed automata. And I don't know how benign I'm going to be able to be, because you have powers I don't understand, and the more hostile you are the harder it will be to be sure you're not going to hurt people without doing things to you that you don't want me to. 

I do promise, though, that I won't send you to Hell. If worst comes to worst and I have to kill you I'll bind your soul to prevent it." 

James begrudgingly agrees with what she's saying, he supposes. He doesn't have much power over her without shoving her into the room somehow, but he supposes she has no reason to believe that. He takes a bit of offense to "oversexed automata", though -- Maria is far more than just for sex. Even if she's very very good at it. Heck, if he plays his cards right, he can get to keep her, this foolish unknowing girl none the wiser.

And then she says some other things that are very worrying. Hell?? Binding his soul?? Shit, what the fuck is she talking about?

"Sorry, souls? Hell? You're going to bind my soul?" James is confused whether or not he's more terrified by the prospect that hell is real or that she can take his soul or... well maybe he can keep himself younger in the changing room and never have to end up there if he's careful. And wait how does this strange backwards woman from elsewhere even know that hell is real. Is hell real? Shit, where does this lady even come from?

"...Yes? I don't, like, actually agree with the policy of torturing evil people forever." 

James pales a little. Maybe this woman doesn't know anything about what she's talking about, since a lot of things she seems to think are normal or should be understood are simply not the case here. Maybe whatever religion she has wherever she's from talks about hell and she believes in it and it isn't real. Or, maybe.... James swallows and speaks slowly. "How sure are you..." he pauses and tries again. He doesn't want to offend her religion. Or offend her in general. Shit. "Hell is the stuff of religion here," he says, trying to figure out how to explain and not be offensive and make sure that whatever he's worried about isn't true. "Religions which... tend to be wrong about a number of things. Most intelligent people here consider all of our religions to be... fake. Just made up myths and stories." Which James did as well, up until a few minutes ago. "Do you have... any special insight that they might lack?" That should do the best for asking the question without offending her. If it was her religion she'd go talk about it for a while and maybe try to convert him and James could breathe a sigh of relief, if it was real... shit he was so screwed.

"--Ooh, wow, uh, I'm...sorry to hear about that...I have, uh, met. Devils and demons and so on." 

James pales a little more. That's not a ton of proof but it's certainly more than he'd be expecting from someone from his world. Unless, of course, they'd been deluded by someone else. Which is a possibility. Still, more detail would be useful here. And might make it easier to find out if she's parroting back stories, or if it's really real.

"That's... interesting," he says. "Can you explain how this works in more detail? Because honestly, this is all news to me. And everyone else here, I expect. I'm not sure anyone here knows, well, anything about what you know."

"Okay. There are nine planar afterlives, each one corresponding to one of the nine alignments; when you die, you go to whichever afterlife matches the alignment you were at time of death. It's generally agreed that the Good afterlives are decent, the Neutral afterlives are usually the kind of thing you can at least cope with, and the Evil afterlives are no fun at all. The planar afterlives are distinct from but closely associated with the alignment-associated planes that alignment-associated outsiders are from, and like some alignment-associated outsiders do like move there and stuff, and the evil ones seem to really like having a steady supply of hapless victims. I mean lots of this is hearsay, I've never been dead--well I guess I sorta was one time but it got fixed before I could wake up in an afterlife and anyway I dunno what I pinged exactly back then but it's not like I was doing anything wrong--I mean I did some dumb stuff but nothing that would risk landing me somewhere super nasty, it was like self-destructive dumb not hurting other people dumb. Anyway that was a very very long time ago." 

James frowns a little as he hears this, trying to follow. He more or less understands what she's saying, but it's gone back to sounding like something out of a fantasy. Still, she's clearly talking like she knows what she's talking about but no one in his world has said anything like this. But what if it's real, though? Shit. How the literal hell (shit) can he know any of this for certain? Maybe it's how it works for her and not here? And for that matter, this doesn't answer his main question.

"How... do you know which afterlife you're going to go to?" he asks, tentatively, still worried. "What do you need to do to change it? And for that matter, how sure are you that things work that way, here?"

"Well, there are spells and magic items and so on that detect alignment, and you can change your alignment by performing acts that correspond to the alignment you want to be. I...guess you guys could be oddly human-looking nonhumans? But I saw what looked like old people out the car window and if there exists a species that dies of old age and doesn't funnel into this afterlife system I don't know it." 

"And I came out as evil," he says, slowly, understanding the implications.

It was quite possible that nothing here worked the way she implied, it seemed strange for her to be so very certain of something and for it to be complete news to him. But it was also quite possible that she was right. As long as he managed to use the changing room to make sure he lives forever, none of this would be a problem. But for now, he might as well be careful, and co-operate, and think about doing good deeds once he was free of all this.

"Alright, well, that's something to think about. In any case -- what do you need from me?" His look is less sullen, and more cooperative. He really wants to deal with this and get it over with, at this point. If he can capture her, so much the better, but that's becoming more and more unlikely, and all he really wants to do right now is get rid of her and go back to his life. He doesn't even need to worry about the police, at this point. Not unless he makes a scene himself.

"First off I want to know how your power works, and how to summon that young woman here." 

James does his best not to roll his eyes in frustration. Both because he's more or less explained what he already knows, and even worse because it's looking unlikely that he's going to manage to keep Maria. Which, shit. He can always manage to find someone else, eventually, once he figures out a little bit more about this whole "hell" thing, or at least how to avoid dying. And not having a slave around to serve him for a few days is not going to be fun. But right now it really is better to do what the annoying witch says. He supposes.

"I'm not sure what else to tell you about how my power works that I haven't told you already," he says. If I find a room and am able to occupy it and do some mental gymnastics in it for a while, it eventually becomes a changing room. And when people are in changing rooms I can change them however I want, though I do have to put some effort in to do detail work, especially with minds." And, finally, Maria. Shit. She's so very well trained and so very useful and he doesn't want to give up his slave, but he's probably screwed if he doesn't. Really really screwed. He considers lying but really he should probably cooperate here. He can always get another.

Still he pauses for a moment before finally talking. "The device inside, from before is called a phone. She tried to call me earlier, I guess once your magic wore off. She's probably tried to call me a number of times since. If you let me use the device I should be able to turn it back on and answer and tell her where we are and how to get here." And for that matter he might have one or two commands that he could give his slave that could get her to try to overpower Elodea. But she doesn't really have much in the way of initiative anymore (shit, shit shit, next time he's going to think this through a little more) and there's far too many things that can go wrong. Whatever, he'll have time to think about it when she's fetching his phone.

"No tricks or loopholes you're hiding? Alright." She fishes out the phone and pokes it until it does something.