I looked at Jessica. Guilt seized me, but she was impenetrable, too hard to understand. She didn’t give me accusation any more than she’d given me any signs of guilt earlier.

I went on, “I was closer to Teacher’s gate. I found the wavelength with my agent. Later, I’d chase that wavelength and find it to hold onto it.”

“I welcome Jessica stepping in to clarify matters of powers, but is it possible it started you on the road?”

“Days passed. No. I know my power, I know my control and… no. I’ve experienced the transition, or the way one switch flips when she uses her power, and the dominoes start following, thought patterns and the familiar changing to the different, the unfamiliar. This doesn’t feel like that. It feels subtler, different focus, different playing fields.”

“You don’t think she could have learned subtlety? Based on what I know of Cryptid, he’s a great believer in secrecy and secrets.”

“It’s too long term, too… soft. Amelia Lavere dwells in the moment. She’ll dwell in the past if you give her cause or if she gives herself cause, but she doesn’t look to the future. Hell, she won’t look to the future enough to keep her arguments straight over a single conversation. She used to be annoying about it but she’s gotten worse.”

“You don’t think she has that capacity.”

“She has every capacity. But she doesn’t have that intent, that planning. The danger Cryptid poses is that he’ll give her the slippery slope with long term ramifications and she’ll take the moment to leap off that slippery slope. People will get hurt in the end.”

“You sound sure.”

“Ninety-five percent. She didn’t alter my power to have some creeping effect or long term change. She didn’t affect my emotions that way either. Not that subtly, when she’s a sledgehammer.”

“But you’re still concerned,” he said. “You said it’s possible.”

“Trigger phrases, in case I cross her and she decides she has no other way to have me? She’d put something like that in. A tweak to memories? I’ve gone over stuff, nothing jars, and I remember the PRT worksheets and guides on resisting master influence. Nothing stands out there. But it’s possible. By the timeline, I don’t think she had me long enough to do something comprehensive or take her time with me and then erase memories after. But… possible.”

I felt like I was ranting, rambling, trying to keep my forebrain fixated on stickers and environmental details, and away from mental pictures or imagining the full ramifications of a given statement, while the rear half of my brain was the driving force, pushing the cart from behind.