Page 29 of Soul Sucker

“So do I, and stop staring at my boobs.”

He manufactured a sigh. “It’s a shame you don’t fraternize with your workmates.”

She stepped away and shot him a dark look. “Stop playing your little games with me.”

“What games?”

“Morosov, your shields are very good, but I’m an empath. I know when you’re talking shit to distract me.”

“From what?”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Feehan reappear and beckon to them. Ella started to walk away pausing only to shoot her final remark over her shoulder.

“From your guilt about Natasha.”

He opened his mouth, then realized she wasn’t even waiting for an answer. Did he feel guilty about Natasha, or was he just still angry with her for letting down the team? He’d tried hard not to let his personal devastation leak into his work, but Ella had seen right through him. She seemed to understand him better than anyone except his own mother. That idea made him want to puke his guts up. He glanced surreptitiously around. If he did want to puke this was the place for it. The whole vibe made him uncomfortable.

Feehan was talking to a tall man in a white coat Vadim assumed was Dr. Clegg. Ella joined the group and started to listen as well, her expression intent. Vadim had already noticed how quickly she slipped from lazy inattention to complete alertness.

The three of them moved away and he made himself follow. The good doctor might think that everything in his morgue was dead, but Vadim knew better. Some of the lost souls floating around needed to be dispatched before the atmosphere became even more polluted. Not that “souls” was the right word for what remained here. Most of these creatures had no belief in a Christian god. Dr. Clegg unlocked a door and ushered them inside.

Vadim leaned against the wall and watched as Feehan and Ella approached the corpse as if it might wake up and start talking. There was nothing there. Even he could sense that. No humanity, no magic, no nothing. He focused his attention on Ella, who had paused by the victim’s head, her hand on the pillow almost touching skin.

Dr. Clegg glanced down at his notes. “We have a twenty-seven-year-old female empath. Apart from higher than average levels of alcohol in her bloodstream, she was a very healthy woman.”

“Were there any signs that she had been tied up or abused?” Feehan asked.

“Nothing to indicate that at all.” Dr. Clegg pulled aside the thin cotton sheet that covered the body. “A couple of bruises, but nothing significant—apart from the fact that her brain seems to have been traumatized.”

“Yes, I was going to ask you about that. I think Ella mentioned what she’d sensed—or more importantly— what she hadn’t sensed, when she tried to get a reading.”

Ella shrugged. “I could’ve been wrong.”

Vadim considered her. She sounded almost uncertain. Was she beginning to lose it, too?

“No, you were right, Ella. There’s a distinct lack of activity.” Dr. Clegg hesitated. “When I did an MRI, I discovered her hippocampus appeared to have been liquefied.”

“What exactly is that?” Feehan asked.

“It’s a part of the brain located in the medial temporal lobe that we think plays an important role in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term.”

Vadim glanced at Ella who looked as shocked as he felt. He didn’t recall the pathologist in Russia mentioning the hippocampus. But it made a sick kind of sense. Dr. Clegg continued speaking. “I used conventional scientific methods and Otherworld diagnostics, but I couldn’t pick up anything else.” He shook his head.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“And I hope you don’t have to see it again,” Feehan said. “But we’re pretty much convinced we’re on the trail of an Otherworld killer.”

“I thought as much.” Dr. Clegg wrote something on his clipboard. “Humans have been known to eat each other’s brains, but they tend to make rather a lot more mess getting to them.” His gaze traveled over the dead woman. “This was very precise.”

Dr. Clegg headed for the door, followed by Feehan. Vadim lingered to watch as Ella wrapped her arms around herself as if she was cold.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked around as if she hadn’t realized he was still there.

“I was just trying to see if I’d missed anything, if there was something…” Her words trailed away.

“From what I read in your report, at the time you were pretty certain there was nothing left. What’s changed?”

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