Mhalir is so proud of her! He doesn't say this, she still seems untrusting about that sort of thing, but it leaks through clearly when he talks to her. 

Also he's delighted to be back in her head. The temporary host he borrowed was at least semi-voluntary and cooperative, but wasn't nearly as smart as Carissa-plus-magic-items. 

He's ready to meet with their new recruits, them around the workshop for magic items, hand them computer tablets and show off their other technology. And then carefully explain more about the war situation, let them cast Detect Thoughts on him if they want (while he steers his thoughts toward some topics and away from others). 

After that he brings up the topic of matching them up with Yeerks; like with Carissa, he frames it as a very collaborative sort of thing. Which doesn't even feel like a lie, after his recent weeks of working with her. He doesn't have any systematic way of selecting Yeerk-host pairs for compatibility, but he knows most of his personnel very well, including the Yeerks brought in the pool without hosts in case prisoners were taken, and he can describe their personalities and let them pick, and of course they're welcome to swap around if it doesn't work well. 

She takes over from him - body language makes it so clear when they're doing this, which is actually kind of convenient - to say what she thinks are the most important considerations, and mention Yeerks are good at things like keeping you on task if you are distractible. Also she recommends they get this part over with quickly so she can explain about the Periodic Table of the Elements. 

There are six more interviews booked for the next day.

Mhalir really enjoys watching Carissa show off her knowledge of an alien civilization's science to their awed recruits. She's very good at this, he thinks. It's mildly terrifying how much skill she has in, well, lying. Clever and careful misdirection, at least.

He finds her very compelling, and also frightening. And - she's changing, bit by bit, he can watch her expand in new directions, freed from the crushing constraints of a country literally owned and run by an Evil god of Hell. 

The new recruits get settled. 

In the morning, he reluctantly departs Carissa's head again and trades back for the other host so he can watch her interviews. 

The feed cuts off mid-interview.

Mhalir freezes, and then jolts into motion. 

The shuttle was supposed to hover above the city, cloaked, while Carissa was interviewing. He barks orders through his host's mouth, ordering the shuttle to move in somewhat closer - but not within Detect Thoughts range of the ground - and try to get video footage of the area. 

The recording device should be able to reconnect, if Carissa is anywhere else on the planet. He reaches for the computer to ping the location chip in it. 

Carissa must not be anywhere else on the planet! 

Video footage shows the room they'd booked. Nothing obviously wrong.

...maybe the interference of a god? Or just a powerful wizard. Powerful wizards on Golarion can do all sorts of absurd things. 

Mhalir barks more orders, for the newly-recruited wizards to be summoned here right now. 

The newly-recruited wizards are hastily fetched from their bedrooms and workrooms.

"We have a problem." He explains Carissa's disappearance as efficiently as he can; he misses thoughtspeech a lot right now. "Which of you can cast Scry." 

All of them can; it's not a rare spell. 

He picks one of them at random, he wants them to scry for Carissa. He pulls the other two aside. "You are still greater experts in arcane magic than I am. What are our other options for locating Carissa and getting her back." 

"Does she have a means of committing suicide if captured, then you could raise her here. Since you have arbitrary material resources."

"She has a Slaying hatpin. If she is conscious and not under enchantment she could kill herself. We do not actually have the logistics to arrange Raise Dead yet, but if the scry shows that she did kill herself, then we can move quickly on arranging that." 

"I don't have Limited Wish prepped today but I can prep it tomorrow, if you have the diamonds for that and for the Raise Dead it'd be imitating," one of them says. 

"Yes, of course." They can fabricate diamonds from carbon on the ship, not in vast quantities but it's easier than mining for them. 

He paces, waits for the results of the scry. 

It takes an hour, and does not work. The wizard shrugs. "Happens sometimes. Pretty often, with all the stuff she was wearing."

"Clever Chelish girls are a dime a dozen, if it's any comfort" another one says. "They churn them out all the time."

Wow that is definitely a response. Mhalir doesn't even know what to say, at first. 

"I need to know who took her," he says after a moment. "She was my host - she knows a great deal of sensitive information about our plans. What are the magical options for finding out who it was." 

"- Wish? I can't cast that, though."

"If she's unscryable you might not have a lot of magical options. As opposed to - figuring out who had an incentive and the means to take her, and working from there. The Chelish government could do it, right - who else -"

"Other governments? If they had been watching us for some reason - I did not think we had attracted undue attention anywhere else, but it is possible. We did hire a cleric of Abadar for a Plane Shift, at one point, he might have tried to scry Carissa and noticed something off..." 

Mhalir starts mapping out the possibilities on his computer, half-ignoring them except to say he wants them to keep trying to scry Carissa. 

He - misses her? The feeling he keeps having is that together they would know what to do to respond to this, but the entire problem is that she isn't here and this feels like some deep offensive wrong in the universe. Yeerks, apparently, do get attached to hosts they get along with.

He's so scared.