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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 theX-Files.”

“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 drivers 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?”