A day is wasted in the TNI safehouse in Seattle, mostly getting medical attention for Angelina and Esteban. After that the team returns to Portland. Thielo has not yet returned, so Alexandra throws herself into working on the deer automaton as distraction. Angelina and Esteban are quite distressed to learn from Dr. Staadler that they will have to take sponge-baths for a week or more while they heal. There is some discussion of Esteban going to hang out at a hospital to hit on nurses, but nothing comes of it. Gavin talks to Gwen and to Dan, who is hitting golf balls into the neighbor's property, declaring them to be bastards. All of Portland, evidently, falls into this category. Tina presses her brother on what happened to him to cause his bandaged state. Luckily Angelina jumps in with a fairly well constructed lie about some mud and a car accident.
The next day Dan sullenly informs the team that a TNI shrink is coming to check up on them. Thielo has arrived late the previous night, with a bandage around his head, and Alexandra is happy enough to see him that she doesn't bother him about the bandage. Aside from that, he looks quite well for someone who went through a soft-serve machine a few days before. Esteban take the morning to talk with Tina's school and learn that she is fitting in well, although struggling a bit in math. She is doing well in English, however.
The psychiatrist arrives after lunch, a short Japanese woman with her hair in a severe bun, and introduces herself as Dr. Kaiyo Atsui. Esteban is up first. After about twenty minutes of calm talk about his background and other inconsequentials, she slaps a piece of meat on the table and asks him how he feels about eating people. Understandably, he's pretty shocked. A little later she has him open a box that turns out to have a tiny homunculus in it, carefully watching his reaction. The homonculus was alledgedly bought by TNI some time after its master died. The master's last command was "stay in the box" and so there it stays. Esteban goes so far as to warn Angelina, who's up next, not to open the box.
Angelina is more difficult with the psychiatrist than Esteban, although she does get a short explanation of Dr. Atsui's background. She spends a decent amount of the interview trying not to think about the box, which is closed on the table making little scratching noises. Kaiyo does the meat trick to her as well, leading Angelina to have words with Esteban later about his choice of warnings. Angelina's interview is possibly the shortest of the sessions.
Gavin is next. During his session Angelina and Esteban lurk outside the library doors and listen in, remaining undiscovered. Gavin is more forthcoming with Atsui, discussing atonement for past wrongs, especially his past wrongs, atonement for eating people by making sure that the malefactors are caught, and general righteousness. The doctor probes some about how he feels about clockworks, and Gwen in specific, and discovers Gavin's confusion on the subject. He likes Gwen, but is obviously queasy about clockworks in general. Dr. Atsui uses a windup mouse to startle him at one point.
Alexandra comes into the library next, and talks about the mission with the doctor. They quickly stray off that topic and on to memories and magic in general. Kaiyo cautions Alexandra that she is especially vulnerable to certain types of madness, such as that which happened to Hawley, because of the nature of her magic. Kaiyo shows her the homunculus, which she finds intriguing but impractical. They round out an hour by talking about Alexandra's history, and it becomes apparent that a couple years prior to joining TNI are quite sparse in terms of memories for Alexandra. That's enough memory for a major-charge magic, Alexandra realizes, but she can't think of any that she has done. Later she decides she must have been apprenticed to some other mechanomancer who demanded memories as payment, perhaps making a number of significant or helping with a major creation. Thielo is quite unhelpful on the subject. Thielo's interview with Kaiyo is last of all, and is fairly short.
After the sessions are over, she asks Esteban to clear his day tomorrow for some intensive therapy, and he somewhat reluctantly agrees. Although it's not like he's going to go out and have fun with the bandages on, anyway. That night he dreams of the homunculus box, only it has a tiny chihuahua inside that says "Yo Quiero Esteban" in a breathy voice. Gavin also dreams, of his door opening, snow falling through, and a shadowly courtyard beyond. It's a very realistic dream.
The next day Esteban and the doctor go to his apartment, where she gets him to take some "muscle relaxant" after some persuasion, and hypnotizes him. After some preliminary exercises, she makes him relive Jennifer's spell over and over, since he's fixated on it as a terrible thing that happened to him. Eventually he comes to realize that he's okay, that he lived through it, that he's still the same Esteban. It's a pretty freaky session (for one thing, there was a lot more than muscle relaxant in the medicine) for Esteban, but afterwards he does feel a little better about the whole thing. Kaiyo leaves after the session, determining that Esteban isn't up to another one just yet. She does leave her card, though.
That night, Gavin has the door dream again, snow drifting through his open closet door, but when he awakens a woman has stepped through and is just closing the door behind her. She shushes him and tells him that the Room needs his help. He is nonplussed, but she persuades him to follow her back through the door.
On the other side lies the Room of Cold Reflection. Gavin recalls being in the room, recalls his time in the room. He remembers the cold walkway around the edge of the courtyard, the hedge maze, and the garden inside where frozen sculptures of the people he'd wronged stared accusingly. The woman, Tracee, explains that a businessman names Ricardo DeCenza needs to come to the room. He's stepped on too many people on the way to the top and must be shown. She can't do it herself, because he had something that warned him of danger when she touched him. Her usual method is to lure people up to a door to the room, and now he must be forced. Tracee shows Gavin a quick ritual to open a door into the Room.
Gavin leaves the Room and goes back to sleep. In the morning, he starts hunting to see what he can find about DeCenza. His limited searches find out that the man is on his third wife, and alledged to be a slum lord. He asks Dan a few questions about how the Inquisition feels about personal missions, without saying anything specific. Dan is pretty unhelpful, basically saying "depends".
In the afternoon he fills in the rest of the team, first saying he had a dream telling him Ricardo is in need of a wakeup call, and then admitting that he personally has been through this particular wakeup call when they are skeptical. Everyone throws themselves into research. The summary (with contributors):
The local liberal rag hates DeCenza and has some evidence that he has had various regulations bent for his construction projects. They also have wild allegations about him being connected to the mob (Alexandra and Thielo). Angelina expresses some skepticism about mob connections, given that he's on his third wife. Speaking of the wife front, his second wife still lives in Portland, but seems to be shy to the point of psychological problems (Esteban, after doing some stake-out work including an inspired but unsuccessful minor car accident). At least some of the slum-lord allegations seem to be true from inspection of buildings and talking with tenants (Gavin again). And finally, the man himself enjoys long lunches with other businessmen, and may be cheating on his present wife with prostitutes (Angelina, doing some other stake-out work).