Pulsing music and circular green and red lights flared around Trinity through the darkness. Hands clutched her arms and pulled her backward.

“Can you hear us? Trinity, let us know.” Harlan’s voice was four dimensions away. Trinity tried to wring some response out of her disjointed mind and body, but couldn’t manage.

“Get her some water,” Victoria told someone. Dot, it had to be, by the affirmative response Dot gave.

Trinity struggled to keep her eyes open, though she tried and tried, so her friends would know she was awake and alive. She didn’t remember how any of that came into question.

“Let’s bring her back to the hotel. We don’t know where she lives,” Harlan suggested.

“That would be our best option. Get her out of here.”

Harlan and Victoria were as gentle as they could be in carrying her like a stretcher out of the bar, though that wasn’t particularly gentle.

“We came in with her,” Victoria announced. The implicit meaning: we did not do this.

Dot rushed behind them with a red plastic cup of water. “Here you go. They wouldn’t give me a glass to take out.”

“Dot, you should go on home,” Harlan said. “Thank you for sticking around, but you need rest for the night, and Victoria and I can take care of Trinity.”

“You don’t have a car yet. I’ll drive you back to the hotel.”

On the side of the street, down from the bar, Harlan and Victoria loaded Trinity horizontally across the back seats of the car.

“Drive carefully,” Harlan warned, slipping into his seat from before and tucking his legs as a pillow beneath Trinity’s head.

He ran his fingers through her hair, tracing slow circles on her scalp. Trinity, had she the awareness to do so, would have sworn she heard his breath hitch.

***

She came to from her chemical fog, properly, on a massive plush bed with clean sheets and a cream satin embroidered comforter.

Trinity opened her eyes. It was easier than it was before. It wasn’t a fight. “What happened?” she asked.

“Hey,” Harlan whispered. “Welcome to the hotel. Victoria’s out right now, but I’m here with you. What do you remember?”

Harlan sat on a mere sliver of the edge of the bed, letting Trinity take as much space as she needed.

“A bit of the drive,” Trinity murmured.

“And before that?”

Trinity tried to think of what had happened, but she only recalled leaving the hot dog place and going to a bar downtown, one she had never been to before, because Victoria wanted to experience the nightlife.

Not that she blamed Victoria for what had happened. It was normal to want to go to a bar, even if Trinity rarely, if ever, did. And the city was known for its collection of bars downtown. No wonder a visitor would want to go.

“We went to the bar. The drummer of the band wouldn’t take his eyes off Dot.” Trinity smiled. “Did they go home together? She’s not here now.”

“Dot stayed with us when you collapsed.”

Collapsed? “I ruined her shot with the drummer.”

Harlan placed his hand on Trinity’s forehead. “I don’t think she’s thinking about that now. She’ll be happy to know you’re safe.”

“Why did I collapse?”

“We think someone put something in your drink.”

Trinity frowned. “Oh. I never thought that would happen to me. I tried to be so careful.”

“I’m sorry.”

Trinity closed her eyes again. The gentle motion of Harlan’s hand as it brushed up and down her forehead soothed her. It made Trinity feel better, and it made her feel worse. She couldn’t deny the comfort Harlan brought her, and that was yet another reason she shouldn’t have kissed his wife.

Well, that wife kissed Trinity first, but Trinity asked for it again after, so she felt somewhat complicit in that.

“I should tell you something,” said Trinity.

The hotel door opened, and Victoria walked in, her cell phone in her hand and a furrow in her brows.

“Welcome back,” Harlan greeted. “I was starting to miss you. Trinity’s awake.”

Victoria approached the bed and stared directly down upon Trinity.

“Hi, Victoria.” Her confession, she decided, would have to wait.

“What were you thinking? Letting someone drug your drink? You could have ended up taken out of the bar by someone you didn’t walk in with. In fact, who were those men you were leaning on when we found you and you collapsed?”

“Go easy on her, darling,” Harlan pleaded. “She didn’t know it was in her drink. She probably doesn’t go to bars often to know how closely you have to keep a look out.”

Victoria sighed and crossed her arms. With little ceremony, she snapped her fingers twice. “Sleep deeply now, Harlan.”

His eyes rolled back until they closed, his body went loose, and his head struck the wooden headboard of the hotel bed.

“Did you tell him?” Victoria asked.

“Can he hear us?”

“He can’t hear or think a thing. Did you tell him?”

Trinity failed to suppress a gasp.

Victoria raised an eyebrow.

“No, I didn’t tell him.”

“Good girl.”

There were those words again.

“You’re lucky you’re awake now, because even without that incident at the bar, I was going to hypnotize you tonight. Look up. That’s it. Look into my eyes.”

Trinity bristled with anticipation. It was inconvenient timing, but it was what she had wanted. Her gaze wandered to Harlan, who rested so still. Her body shifted slightly, wondering how it felt to have his mind cleared out so quickly, to be so utterly incapacitated so quickly by Victoria’s hypnotic command. It had to have taken a lot of training to get him that deep and pliable.

“What did I say? Look into my eyes.”

Trinity obeyed. Victoria’s eyes were intense and hard. If she looked like she wanted to have Trinity earlier, she looked in that moment like she wanted to control Trinity.

“That’s it. Keep focusing on them. You may blink if you must, but otherwise, don’t look away. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Trinity replied.

“Good girl. And you love it when I call you that, don’t you, good girl?”

Love was a strong word, but Trinity found herself agreeing. “Yes.”

“And you’ve had a busy day, haven’t you? And you’re tired, aren’t you?”

No hesitation. “Yes.”

“Good girl. And you find it so easy to listen to me, don’t you? You’ve been waiting to hear my voice for so long.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s so easy to do whatever I ask of you.”

“Yes.”

Victoria’s eyes were so piercing and her words so authoritative, yet true. Trinity wouldn’t have noticed if she remembered how to say anything besides that one word. There was nothing else that needed saying.

“Your eyes are getting so tired. Close them for me, now. All you need to do is listen to my voice, and you love listening to my voice, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Trinity’s eyes closed. Cool relief flooded her.

“You can just sink so easily for me now. Deeper down. All the way down into sleep.”

Trinity felt the sensation of falling, though there was nowhere for her to fall. The hotel bed was secure, but she felt herself pass through it. Briefly she remembered a glitch in a game she had played once where a player could go through walls into the void of darkness by riding a bike just the right or wrong way before the maps could load, and Trinity knew then that she was in her own void of darkness, because Victoria had moved her mind in just the right or wrong way before her thoughts could load.

“Feel your head becoming so heavy now, sinking down as far as it can. And the more your head sinks, the more your mind sinks. Because, of course, your mind is in your head, and so they’re connected.”

Trinity drifted downward until she ceased to notice any sensation at all, except for Victoria’s words slinking into her mind.

“That’s it. And you can let yourself stop thinking so easily. Thinking takes a lot of effort, and you don’t need to do that right now. You’ve had such a long day, and your mind must have been so busy. And it’s hard being so busy. Let yourself stop now. I’ll think for you.”

What a thoughtful offer. Trinity could only do two things: accept that offer and slip deeper into the trance Victoria crafted for her.

“It’s so easy to stop thinking. It’s so easy to stop moving; look, you’ve already done it. And it’s so easy to stop speaking sometimes. Some words, some ideas, are not meant to be shared. You know, don’t you, my good girl, that our kisses and this trance are so easy to stop speaking about. You don’t need to tell anyone. You can’t tell anyone. Because if you try to tell anyone, you’ll find your thoughts and your words just stop.”

Victoria’s words constricted and constrained Trinity. But, they had such an effect on her, she hadn’t the strength to refuse them and the commands they contained.

“But now your thoughts can start again. Feel yourself rising up into wakefulness in one, two, three, four, five. Open your eyes. Wide awake, there you go.”

Trinity blinked a few times. “I didn’t ask you to keep me from talking about the…”

The what? Her thoughts slowed to the pace of cold molasses pulling a Kate Bush and running up that hill. Her lips fell still.

She noticed Harlan still in his obedient sleep, and having left the thought of what she was not supposed to discuss, her thoughts flowed freely again.

“It did feel good,” Trinity admitted. “It felt so good to be controlled so powerfully. I shouldn’t have expected anything different from a professional.”

“And you can have more of it,” hummed Victoria, “if you continue to be a good girl for me.”

Trinity squirmed as she sat up in the bed. “I’ll try my best. Have you ever had your mind just shut off like that?”

“Once or twice, but I like to be in control.” Victoria grinned. “Which is where it seems like we’d both like me, isn’t it?”

Trinity nodded. “Yes.”

“You’re cute,” Victoria said. “I think I’ll keep you. Until I have to go back home, at least.”

Back home. Forever and a day away, back on the west coast where the sun never went away and the beaches rolled like vacation photographs.

“But you’ll be back, won’t you?”

“Or I’ll send for you to be whisked away to stay with me.” Victoria bent over and kissed Trinity on the cheek. “Okay, time to wake the husband.”

Victoria drew away from Trinity and looked down at Harlan. “Listen to me, Harlan. Suddenly you can hear my voice again. Anything you’ve noticed while you were so deep drifts out of your mind until it’s lost, like a balloon floating beyond the horizon. It’s gone. You don’t need it.” She snapped twice more. “Wake up.”

He opened his eyes as if nothing had happened. Trinity wasn’t even sure, to look at him, if he knew he had been put under at all. A pulse of warmth burned through her at the idea that Victoria could have trained him so well without him even knowing.

He continued to speak as if he had no idea the conversation had ever changed from Victoria’s scolding of Trinity for the vigil kept over her drink. “Next time we can bring one of those lids she can put over it, and she’ll be fine. Or we could simply skip the bar. I must say, that one was a bit more energetic than I’m comfortable with, too.”

“Thanks for looking out for me,” Trinity said. Not that she could look out for Harlan quite as she wanted to. Not that she could tell him that she…

She…

Not that she could tell him that…

“Trinity?”

“Oh, sorry. It’s been a long day,” she murmured. “I guess I zoned out a bit, there. I think we all could get some sleep, what do you think?”

It was Victoria that answered. “I think that’s a fine idea.”