Because of her power, everything that happens in the story (at least up to the incident on the moon) is OK with Pat Conley. She would just have reverted it if it wasn't. She can perfectly manipulate everyone, all of the time, if she cares to.
She's a parallel to Jory: she's "lived" far longer than her apparent age suggests, and she uses the people around her for her own benefit, without regard to consent (she can just retry in different ways until they agree!)
When the story kicks off, she allows herself to be discovered, and creepily demonstrates her power to Joe Chip. It seems she is experimenting with actually getting some semblance of informed consent, and letting things go as they will. This promptly gets them all(?) killed.
In Jory's world she tells Joe her power doesn't work. In fact it does, it's just that Jory feeds on someone no matter what she does. How many times did she try to prevent it, before giving up and letting Wendy Wright be killed?
Even though she's protecting Joe to the bitter end, suspicion falls on her to the amusement of Jory, who can see what she does. Despite her power, for the first time since her childhood (and heaven knows how many actual human lifetimes that is ago) things happen that she doesn't want.
It results in Joe - the guy she loved, and who she risked everything for the sake of him loving her back in a meaningfully consenting way - thinking she's a murderous traitor.
