Kate Pearce - Death Bringer

“I’ll certainly try.” Ms. Phelps gave them a distracted smile. “Brad Dailey, one of our second-year medical students, didn’t show up for class this morning. As it was a scheduled test day, his professor contacted student-support services to follow up on him. This student has missed quite a lot of school this year, and Dr. Blinz wasn’t happy about it. He wanted to make sure Brad received an official warning.”

“So what happened?”

“One of the junior administrators called his apartment. Eventually Brad picked up and started screaming incoherently into the phone. The administrator alerted the emergency services, and they went to check on him. When the police forced their way into his apartment, they found Brad in the bathroom trying to rip his face off.” She shuddered. “At first the paramedics assumed he’d taken some kind of drug that hadn’t agreed with him, but after he was sedated and brought here, the doctors realized that wasn’t the case.”

“So what do you think is going on?” Ella asked.

“As I was just telling Mr. Feehan, I have no idea. The poor boy can barely form a sentence. The staff has run every test they can think of, and nothing abnormal is showing up. In these cases, we normally contact you.” She looked helplessly at Vadim. “I do so hope you can help him.”

“We’ll certainly do our best, Ms. Phelps.” Vadim said. “Is Mr. Dailey capable of speaking to us yet?”

“I believe so. He’s been restrained for his own safety, but the medication should be wearing off by now. Not that you’ll get much sense out of him. He’s just babbling.”

“What’s he saying?” Ella turned off her cell phone and stuck it back in her pocket.

“Something about that not being him in the mirror. A classic hallucinogenic drug response, but he’s not testing positive for anything at all.”

“Maybe there’s something new on the street. Do you remember the frozen addicts?” Feehan glanced at Ella. “No? You’re probably all too young, but in 1982 in Santa Clara County, right down the street from here, some addicts took a new substance called MPTP that brought on the symptoms of Parkinson’s and literally paralyzed them overnight.”

Ms. Phelps nodded. “That’s a possibility we are aware of, but until we can confirm anything, we’d still like you to take a look at him.”

“Morosov and I would be glad to help, wouldn’t we?” Ella raised her eyebrows at Vadim, who was still smiling at Ms. Phelps. “Can you show us to Mr. Dailey’s room?”

“Sure.” She rose to her feet. “I’ll make certain you aren’t disturbed.”

When Ella came out of the office, Jose handed over her white coat. “Here you go, babe. Are you free for dinner tonight?”

“Sorry, no.” She patted his arm. “But thanks for asking.”

“Ella’s busy.” Vadim added and placed his hand in the small of her back to usher her along. He didn’t say anything else, but she sensed both his sudden alertness and a hint of his magical power wafting around.

“ Keep it down , Morosov. You’re like a skunk marking his territory. ”

“ That guy wouldn’t pick up magic if it bit him in the face. ”

“ Don’t you mean pecked? ”

“ You’re hilarious. ”

“ I know , and by the way , don’t call me Ella at work , okay? ”

“ As if I would dare .” His smile showed a lot of teeth.

Ms. Phelps stopped at the last door in the hallway. “Mr. Dailey is in here. I’ll ask the nurse to step out of the room, but she’ll be outside if you need her. If you require more urgent medical assistance, just press the red panic button.”

“Will do.” Ella went in first, nodding at the nurse as she passed her in the doorway. Brad Dailey was strapped to a gurney on the far side of the room. His face was bandaged like a mummy’s, and his terrified gaze darted around the space, fixing avidly on Ella as she approached.

She sat on the side of the bed and took his shaking hand in hers. A hint of residual Otherworld magic trickled through her senses. “Hey. I’m Ella Walsh, and this is Morosov. Can you try and tell us what’s wrong?”

His chest heaved and he started to struggle against his restraints, his hands turning into claws. Vadim came up beside her.

“It’s all right, Mr. Dailey. We just want to help you. Take a deep breath and tell us what’s wrong.”

Ella shivered as she felt Vadim push some kind of calming magic through her and into Brad. Whatever it was, it seemed to be having the right effect, as he slowly relaxed against the gurney and his breathing evened out.

“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.”