Mara smiles. "I need to figure out if I can trust you to not break the Laws further, and you need to figure out if you can trust me to be smart enough to be right about them. There's one solution I can think of, that we can do as soon as we get to our destination and the car is stopped—an exception to the prohibition against mind-reading. It's called a soulgaze, a natural phenomenon that occurs when a wizard makes extended eye contact with another person. It gives each person a sense of the other's character. That would allow me to guess when and how you are likely to lie, and you to see what sort of reasoning processes I use to understand the world."

"Yeah, not gonna lie, getting a real 'it's okay when we do it' vibe here that has me concerned. But like, whatever, probably better if I cooperate at this point. Just uuuh, have wizards already worked out a principle with these things of 'don't ask questions and then get mad when they're answered honestly?'"

"I will endeavor to make sure you're better off for cooperating with me! I hope you will likewise endeavor to make sure I'll be better off for considering extralegal options instead of turning you in to be killed immediately."

"I've heard people say I'd be better off if I cooperated and found it to be a lie before, but those people actually were the legitimate authorities. Maybe this time the legitimate authorities are smart enough to lie that they're individuals acting extralegally to gain my trust though." The fact that it's a hot fat woman with pink hair doing all this does feel suspiciously like she was selected specifically to gain Katie's trust by someone with intimate knowledge of her personality.

"I don't think they're generally smart enough to think of it. My daughter is, but she'd probably be too much of a woke moralist to go through with it."

Despite the diss, affection is evident in her tone when she mentions her daughter. Katie might also notice she doesn't look old enough to have a kid who's grown up to become a cop herself.

"So apparently you're old enough to have an adult daughter, but also you have pink hair and use "woke moralist" as a pejorative. Are all wizards this cool, or is it just you? Actually, wait, sorry, is the pink hair even a choice or are magic people just born that way sometimes?" She was gonna say 'weird' instead of 'cool', but averts it at the last second. Mara's already gonna find out she's attracted to her from the 'soulgaze', might as well start flattering her now.

"No, most wizards are more of the opinion that the Amish are suspiciously technologically advanced and linguistic evolution should have stopped with Latin. There's reasons for some of that, too, to be fair—I'm sure you've noticed technology breaks more around you than the average person, and most wizards can't afford to keep replacing stuff. The pink hair is a dye job, but it's one I'm very attached to. As far as I'm concerned I'm a pink haired woman tragically born into a blonde woman's body."

Katie has some feelings like that about her own body, but she's holding out on them for now. Probably they will be seen in the Soulgaze. "Huh, that makes sense.. Are wizards more likely to be super clumsy and have ADHD symptoms too?"

"Nope! Our only shared disability is the technology thing. We do age slower once you get past physical maturity, though; it's not just the skincare routine that has me looking like this."

"Well that's nice, assuming I live long enough for it to matter. My only skincare routine is not going outside."

"Legit."

The car slows to a stop in Mara's driveway. The garage, immediately in front of them, is a recent construction; Mara's house itself, a considerable distance further along a trail, is an antebellum plantation house. The grounds are spacious, beautiful, well-maintained, and absolutely devoid of any sign of useful economic activity. Mara turns towards Katie, looking down a little so she doesn't actually meet her eyes.

"Are you ready?"

Whoa, nice. This is easily in her top 5 places to be kidnapped to. "As I'll ever be, assuming there isn't some crucial step you've forgotten to tell me, like that I have to hold my breath or I'll explode or something."

"Nope! Just hold eye contact."

Mara looks into Katie's eyes, and bares her soul. It comes across as a series of images. An overall sense of Mara's personhood, represented as a dragon with pink sparkly scales, exhaling little puffs of smoke as it contentedly sleeps on a hoard of treasure. A series of core memories and the emotions associated with them.

Marrying a man younger and smaller than her, desperate for her money as his own rich family have thrown him out, and reshaping him from a thug and a bully to someone delicate and submissive and feminine, divorcing him and arranging him a new marriage with a male friend of hers. The satisfaction of having another human being fully in her power, to mold as she wishes.

Dyeing her five-year-old daughter's hair pink to match hers, at her request. Offering her a choice of lavish vacations for her Sweet Sixteen and shaking her head and smiling as she asks her to give the money to charity instead. Promising someone worthy—her own blood—the world on a silver platter, and delivering just to see what she does with it, feeling baffled but supportive.

The simple, visceral joys of life. The best sushi rolls she's ever had and the cities she tried them in. Sampling different wines and strains of weed. Her first time getting the technology-breaking-aura suppression spell to work long enough to play a video game.

She gets a sense of Mara's thought processes, her reasoning processes. Not all of it fits into sensory impressions or is instantly unpacked into legibility, but it's all burned into her brain, a black box that she can consult to tell if she should trust her in any given situation.

Katie wishes she had a cool flashy soul-representation and a bunch of memories of her doing glamorous things. Her life has had a couple big important incidents like that, but really it's more about broader overall patterns made up of a million tiny little incidents. Hardly anyone likes her, and she likes hardly anyone. People force expectations on her that she never consented to. They make up nonsensical arbitrary rules, insist they're fair and principled despite blatant evidence to the contrary, and get mad at her for questioning them, let alone violating them. They don't think for themself, they just mindlessly follow along with the group. Katie sees them as no better than animals. Not that she actively wants to hurt them, or at least, not all of them. People generally don't feel that way about animals (Katie feels better about animals than most, but actually worse about humans, because they have the capacity for dishonesty, which she hates more than anything), y'know, it's one thing to torture rats to death for fun, but if they're eating your food supply you leave out traps, and you might feel a little twinge of cathartic pleasure seeing them get their necks snapped. She tries to be nice to people, and treat them fairly, and give them the benefit of the doubt, but she just can't help but feeling like she's better than them, like she deserves better. I mean, just look at them. Look at the way they behave. Look at their terrible taste in everything. Look at their active disdain for beauty and excellence and invididuality. She just does whatever she can to look after herself and make the world as beautiful as possible, and if that has to come at the expense of the peasants, they can take it up with God. It may come as a relief to Mara, though, that Katie does not perceive her as one of the peasants. Quite the opposite, in fact. She seems to exhibit beauty and excellence and individuality in spades. Mara is hot. Mara is powerful. Power is hot. Mara is large. Size is power. Power is hot. Size is a mark of hedonism. Hedonism is freedom from inhibition. Freedom is power. Power is freedom. Freedom is hot. Katie wants to be free. Katie wants to be powerful. Katie wants to be hot. Katie wants to be large. Katie wants Mara to feed her until she is large. 

"Oh, you are fascinating. I think I have an idea of what I can do with you, now."

Mara reaches a hand out to run her fingers through Katie's hair.

"I told you, don- wait, what?" She shivers at Mara's touch.

"I like you. I like the way you think. I like the way you see the world. It's given me," she blushes slightly, "a lot to think about myself."

She continues stroking Katie's hair as she talks.

"The way the Council handles practitioners like yourself, who have broken the Laws but not yet pushed their mind and soul past the point of no return, is that they can be apprenticed to any wizard willing to vouch for them, to be executed along with their master if they slip up again. I think the 'along with their master' bit is a huge waste, personally. I would be happy to train you in control of your magic, but I don't want my ass to be on the line. So, what I propose: you live with me, so I can watch you, make sure you don't violate the laws again. I don't tell anyone what I saw tonight, presenting you to the Council as a new wizard with a clean record. You obey my rules and I teach you magic and Latin."

"Is the Latin thing necessary for magic, or just your own weird niche kink?" She wants to lean against Mara but there's a car in the way so she just kind of awkwardly puts a hand on her thigh.

"It's the language of the Council," Mara says with only a slight roll of the eyes.

She places her own hand over Katie's hand, gently.

"Care to join me in the house?"

"I'd love to. Are all the wizards in all the non-Europe parts of the world pissed about that? How does- huh, wait, didn't you say killing people with magic eats your soul, I guess that would mean magic wouldn't be able to nullify Europe's technological military advantage over the rest of the world."

Mara puts an arm around Katie's waist to help her keep her balance with the handcuffs as she leads her to the house.

"Yes, the Council is a European-dominated organization, and yes, there's some resentment from its non-European members over this fact."

Mmmmmm that feels nice. She eagerly jumps at the chance to lean against Mara properly. "I guess learning Latin isn't a complete waste of time. Not on the top of my list for languages, though. Wish the Jews or the Japanese were in charge of the magic world instead."

Mara squeezes Katie tighter as she leans.

"Huh, why those two?"

"Because they're the ones who make all the good art, because they're still in touch with their pasts and weren't spiritually lobotomized by Christianity/Islam/communism like the rest of us."

Mara reaches the door to the house, and invites Katie in as she brings her across the threshold.

(The handcuffs are suppressing Katie's magic for now, but once Mara feels confident to take them off, she wants her to have her full power.)

"So, the Japanese make the best art...are you an anime fan, then?"