"I only have your word on Ancora being bad news. You demonstrated the knockout trick but that part they'd mentioned."

She tenses up, hugs herself a bit.  "You're not going to get me to - demonstrate - that, if that's what you're asking.  I guess maybe the other direction, but - no, that wouldn't give you any information anyway, would it."

"I was not asking! I do not want to experience it! But I'm pointing out that I only have your say-so."

"Fair enough.  . . . I'm pretty curious about your general impression of Ancora.  Or I guess your specific impression; I haven't heard a lot of details, or just - why you think they're alright."

"They seemed motivated to help. They were even upset about the holed planet. They were pretty weird, but they did say there weren't unethical psychic powers when I asked and I didn't have a reason to think they were - even competent enough to lie to me, let alone motivated to."

"'They were even upset about the holed planet' is not, uh, inherently reassuring.  What about - actually, could I have some stuff to write with."

Yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen.

She writes a bit, tears off the page, folds it into eighths, and sets it aside.  "What do you think happened when they went and got me.  Like, approximately."

"They said they warned you but were in a hurry about it and you didn't contradict them so I'd been imagining they, like, showed up wherever you were, said they were taking you to another universe or that your help was needed or something like that, and then poofed you here?"

"They didn't say anything; they showed up in my living room and did some sort of weird wordless incomprehensible telepathy thing and then imitated a statue for a bit before porting us without any more-immediate advance notice.  I guess you probably don't want to take my word that the lack of contradiction was out of - befuddlement, and trying to process what was happening - "

"No, that sounds, uh, psychologically plausible. I'm sorry."

"Yeah so!  If you acknowledge that that sort of communication gap can happen, then - I'm not saying they're definitely one hundred percent evil on purpose, but even if they're internally a saint that's still a problem, and one that calls for really careful consideration and handling, I'd say.  And once again it could be anywhere in between; they could be aligned on the resurrections and then have a totally reprehensible opinion about what to do with the people afterwards, or something, or - anything!  It could be anything; they're an alien you can't communicate effectively with and you're just trying to hand them more power without understanding what they'll do with it."

"My prior experience with aliens has been mostly encouraging but I acknowledge that I do not know as much about Ancora as would be ideal."

She sighs.

" - You're not handicapped by having to get your evidence through a party you can't put weight on trusting; can't you find some way to not have to take my word for the mind control and stuff?"

"If there's something written down about it in your world I can get it from there. If it is not so much discussed in writing..."

"Well, can't you find out?"

"I mean, if I conjure the entire written corpus of your entire planet and search through it, probably eventually, but I like to be a little more precise than that when I'm being an infosec hazard."

" - 'kay.

"You know, you also basically only have my word that I tried to kill you.  Like, I did, and it would be a super weird thing to lie about, but . . ."

"I suppose it's possible you decided to knock me unconscious for some unrelated reason and then claim it was a murder attempt but I don't think it's likely."

"Right but so, I didn't lie about that - or like I sort of did, a little at the beginning, but I didn't mean to and it's not like it was remotely convincing - and obviously it would be stupid to overgeneralize that and assume I'm being a hundred percent truthful about everything, but - is the fact that I fessed up to that any evidence at all about the rest of what I'm saying?"

"I guess? I am not, like, a world champion at social deception games, or a psychologist, or anything. Also, like, at least one of you or Ancora has seriously misled me recently and you are probably more humanish and therefore more legible to me, an ex-human, than they are, but I also know I may not be working with a full list of vampire powers or psychological effects, because Ancora did not give me the same list as you."

She makes a frustrated noise and puts her face in one of her hands.

"Can you get, like, security footage of when I was attacked; would that be any convincing."

"If you were being recorded, sure, can you give me more to go on there?"

"I don't know for sure if I would have been in view of any cameras, but it was at the school and I know they have at least some - would have been, um, March 29th, sometime between like, I dunno.  Six and eight pm?  If you get me a map of the school I can point where it was.  - I guess the cameras might automatically turn off for the weekend or something, too."

"Name of the school should do me."