“It wasn’t my face in the mirror. What the fuck happened? Who the fuck am I?”
“When you say it wasn’t your face, do you mean you saw someone else’s reflection in there with you?”
“No, it was just supposed to be me.”
Ella glanced at Vadim, who was listening intently.
“And it wasn’t your face.”
“No. That’s why I tried to pull it off.”
“You thought it was, maybe, a mask of some kind, a practical joke?” Vadim asked. “Did you get drunk last night?”
Brad nodded eagerly. “Yeah, yeah, that’s what I thought, that some of the guys had gotten into my room and stuck stuff on me to scare me, like, you know?”
“Medical students love their pranks.”
“But it wouldn’t come off.” Brad’s voice rose. “It was me, but it isn’t me!”
“Since you damaged your face so badly, it’s hard to tell what you looked like before this happened. Do you have any recent pictures of yourself?”
“Sure, on Facebook and my cell.”
“Would you object if we looked at them?”
“You can look as much as you like, but you won’t ever see me with brown eyes and black hair. I’m fucking blond like you.”
Ella checked out the thick black hair sticking out from the top of his head. It didn’t look dyed, either.
“Okay, so if we accept that you woke up this morning with someone else’s face, how do you think that happened?”
He went silent, his gaze fracturing, his whole body caught up in some internal struggle Ella could only guess at.
“I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.” Tears slid down his face. “What’s going to happen to me now? Who am I? What am I going to do? My girlfriend dumped me last night for being too immature, I sat and had a few drinks with some guy and that was it.”
“Did the guy come home with you?”
“Don’t think so. Although I’m not sure how I made it home.”
“Perhaps he helped you?”
“And took my face?”
“Maybe. Do you remember what this man looked like?”
“Not like me.”
“Like you now, or before?”
“Neither. He was like kind of older than me.” He glanced at Vadim. “About your age, but sort of average looking. You know, unremarkable?”
“Can you tell me the name of the bar you went to and your girlfriend’s name?”
“It was the Blue Flamingo in Little Italy, and my ex’s name is Penny Jordan. She’s a student nurse here at the hospital.”
Vadim was busy recording the information, so she focused on Brad. Part of her wanted to reach into his mind and extract the terrible memories, but she couldn’t do that yet. They needed more information from both him and his associates before they could make any firm decisions as to how to deal with his horrific recollections.
“Listen, Brad, will you concentrate on getting better while we go and gather more information for this case? It’s possible that something or someone did steal your face. We’ll do our best to get it back for you.”
“You believe me?”
“Somebody has to.” She held his gaze. “We work for the SBLE, and our specialty is solving cases like yours.”
“You’re like the
“Kind of, but keep that to yourself.” She squeezed his hand. “All we need you to do is hang in there. Something is very wrong, and we’re going to do our best to fix it, okay?”
He took an unsteady breath. “Okay.”
She stood up and Vadim walked to the door and held it open. Ella gave Brad a brisk nod. “We’ll be back. Stay strong.”
He nodded and they went out past the nurse. Ella kept going until they reached the sanctuary of the administrator’s office. Feehan and Ms. Phelps weren’t in there. She shut the door and turned to face Vadim, who was already firing up Brad’s cell phone and investigating his wallet.
“That poor kid.” Ella shook her head.
“He’s hardly a kid. According to his driver’s license, he’s twenty-three.”
“Don’t split hairs. Would you like to wake up and not recognize your own face?”
“Some days, yes.”
“Morosov...”
His smile was brief. “I agree that this is a difficult situation. Did you get a sense of Otherworld from him?”
“Yes, but that was pretty much a given, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know. There have been some pretty inventive human serial killers.”
Ella perched on the corner of the desk. “You think the guy in the bar drugged Brad’s drink and brought him home, intending to carve up his face and kill him?”
“It’s possible.”
“Apart from the fact that we both felt Otherworld magic around him.” She chewed slowly on her gum and blew a big pink bubble. “It’s got to be Otherworld.”
“Why, because you can’t imagine a human doing such a terrible thing?”
“Of course I can. I’ve seen those movies with Anthony Hopkins.”
“Who plays a fictional character.”
“I
He put down Brad’s phone and met her gaze. “Because there aren’t many beings like that even in Otherworld, and those are usually incredibly powerful and well connected.”
“Damn.” She blew another bubble. “So we’re going to have a hard time finding this guy and executing him.”
“Oh, I think he’ll come back.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I just do. I’m going to suggest to Mr. Feehan that we restrict access to Brad’s room and that he’s monitored 24/7.”
“And
“That’s certainly a good place to start. Do you want to go ahead and leave me to talk to Feehan and Ms. Phelps?”
“No, I’ll wait. They’ll probably be back in a moment, and we need a ride from the boss, remember?”
Vadim subsided into one of the chairs. “I’d forgotten.” He passed Ella Brad’s cell phone. “He definitely doesn’t have black hair.”
While she waited, she flicked through Brad’s photos and then checked out his social-media pages. “Gawd, I hope his parents haven’t seen these pictures. If I was paying for my kid to attend medical school, I certainly wouldn’t appreciate seeing him grinning, drinking, and fondling women in every bar in the city.”
“I’m sure your parents felt the same way.”
“They never saw a thing.” She tossed him the phone. “That was one good thing about the empath college being in Otherworld.”
The door opened and Feehan came back in with Ms. Phelps.
“What did you think of the patient?”
“Well something’s not right, is it?” Ella slid off the side of the desk. “We’re going to talk to his ex-girlfriend and visit the last bar he was in.”
Feehan hesitated. “Ms. Phelps has a request.”
