The doctor’s lavender eyes flicked up to mine as her large lips curled with amusement. “You should relax for the remainder of the day.”
“Good advice, doc. What if I need some extra help getting relaxed? Can you get me a prescription for the good stuff?”
“What would you like?”
“How about whatever you were giving Josephine Pressman? Just give me whatever was in the mystery pills. The ones that didn’t match the shape of the pills they were supposed to be.”
All signs of amusement drained off her face. “You know about that.”
“She wasn’t taking the pills, by the way. She was onto you.” I started stripping off my wet, blood-stained clothes. That’s right. I’m getting changed right in front of you, like an old person at a community center pool. I’m a crazy no-nonsense witch, and I do what I want, where I want! Or maybe I’m just light-headed from all the plasma loss. Who can say? It’s still intimidating though, right?
The doctor turned away from my nudity. “The pills were simply a placebo,” she said. “They weren’t even vitamins. Just cellulose.”
“Figured as much.” I hadn’t guessed the pills were a placebo at all, but my interaction with Griebel had put me in the mood to pretend I knew everything. “The real treatment was the mind-wiping amber rock, wasn’t it?”
“That was for her own good. So she didn’t have to suffer.”
“For her own good. Sure it was.” I dropped my clothes to the floor with a wet slap before reaching for a towel. “I believe they used to shove ice picks into people’s frontal lobes for their own good, too. So those patients didn’t have to suffer from their afflictions.”
“We did what we could. Treatment options in those days were limited.”
“Are you serious? Dr. Ankh, how old are you?”
She turned back to look at me again. “When I said we, I meant the medical establishment. Not me, personally.”
A likely story.
I was tucking in the top of my towel when my mother returned. She didn’t have the pomegranate soda I requested. She did, however, have a tall, dark-haired man with her. I rechecked the tuck of my towel and reached for a robe as well. Of course, reaching for the robe made the towel come undone. I used magic to get myself covered up before everyone saw everything. By the look on the man’s face, I hadn’t been quick enough.
“I ran into your friend Chet,” my mother said to me. “I mean, he says he’s Chet, but how can we be sure?”
Chet continued to look horrified about seeing a couple of my freckles in the areas where freckles were sparse. It was him, all right.
“Zara, it’s me,” he said. “Your neighbor.”
The two of them crowded into the small bathroom.
“Welcome,” I said with a wave. “I think we could get a few more people in here if we tried. We should call up Knox and Rob, tell them to bring some dates.”
My mother asked, “Who?”
“Two other guys who also work at the department,” I explained.
She blinked at me. “Zara, I’d like to meet more of your friends. I want to be part of your life.”
“Uh, sure.” I rechecked the closing of my robe.
Chet looked at my mother, then at Dr. Ankh, who was back to poking the spiky thing, then at me.
He said, “You shouldn’t have questioned the gnome without backup.” Apparently, someone had filled him in on the afternoon’s excitement.
My mother cut in. “She had me. I was there as her backup.” She waved a dainty hand and explained to Chet, “I was there via remote, with one of my trained blue jays.”
He replied, “A tiny bird? That’s not anywhere near adequate backup.” He gave me a stern look. “You could have been killed, and right out in the open, in broad daylight.”
“You sound more upset about the witness,” I said.
“You were careless,” he replied.
My mother let out a low whistle and asked me, “Is he always so bossy like this?”
“Yes.”
She looked him up and down. “I like his twin better.”
Chet clenched his jaw. “That thing is not my twin.”
She asked, “Then what is he?”
I chimed in, “Yeah, Chet. If Archer Caine is not your long-lost identical twin, then what is he?”
Dr. Ankh answered, “He’s a parasitic twin.”
We all whipped our heads to look at the doctor.
“You heard me,” she said confidently. “He’s a parasitic twin, and we have evidence.”
“No way,” I said. “A parasitic twin is, by definition, attached to the host. And I don’t see any Archer-sized lumps sticking out of Chet. If that lookalike were a parasite, he’d be missing major functions. He sure wouldn’t be joining people for lunch.”
Dr. Ankh dropped a towel over the spiky thing, turned around completely, and fixed her gaze on Chet. “Moore, when was the last time you had a full physical?”
He puffed out his chest. “I’m in excellent shape.”
“Take off your clothes and prove it,” she said.
I looked past him, at my mother. “We should give these two some privacy.”
She pouted. “But it just got good.” She gripped the doorway, prepared to battle anyone who tried to physically remove her. Fair enough. It was her bathroom. We would all stay and watch Chet get a physical exam.
He continued to clench his jaw. “I’m not taking off my clothes.”
“Because you already know,” Dr. Ankh said, her lavender eyes widening. “You know it’s true.”
My mother and I exchanged a look. This was getting good.
Dr. Ankh picked up the gnome’s spiky ball, safely contained in a fluffy towel, and nodded for us to follow her out of the bathroom and over to the seating area. My mother and I sat on the sofa while the doctor took the chair. Chet paced around the sofa, refusing to sit.
The doctor opened her medical bag and took out a metallic cube the size of a Rubik’s cube. She set it on the credenza at the side of the room and then took a seat on the chair across from us. Chet continued to pace.
“That’s a projector,” Chet said to us. To the doctor, he said, “It’s not cleared for use outside of the lab.”
She had a handheld device, bigger than a phone, and was looking at the screen. “One minute and I will present my evidence regarding the parasitic twin.”
My mother leaned forward, resting her chin on her palms girlishly. “Aliyah, what is a parasitic twin?”
The doctor looked up at her. “You know how everyone has a dark side? The parasitic twin is theorized to be your dark side, come to life.”
I sensed an opportunity to cut the tension in the room. “Then you must be wrong, because Chet Moore doesn’t have a dark side. Unless you count hiding zucchini inside innocent chocolate cake.”
Nobody reacted to my joke.
Dr. Ankh watched Chet as he paced the room behind the sofa. “He did make short work of my predecessor, Dr. Bhamidipati.” She looked directly at me. “I believe everyone called him Dr. Bob.”
She was right. Chet had torn Dr. Bob to shreds. Feathered shreds. Chet Moore did have a dark side.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “He was protecting me. And his fiancée.”
“He had full backup in the room, and he made the kill.” She looked down at her phone screen again. “As a matter of fact, I have the footage.”
Behind me, Chet growled. “There is no footage,” he said.
“That’s what they told you,” she said. “Or at least that’s what your friend who tried to erase the files told you.”
Chet fell quiet. Eerily quiet. He was as still as a statue.
“Relax,” Dr. Ankh said. “This is good news.”
Nobody moved or spoke. I was barely breathing.
Dr. Ankh went on. “Chet Moore, you are not responsible for whatever your parasitic twin is doing or has done. Don’t you see? This exonerates you.”
There was a whirring sound in the hus
h of the room. All of us turned to see a blue rectangle the dimensions of a wide-screen television on the wall, being projected from the little box.
We watched as the blue became the interior of a room, as seen from the ceiling. The resolution and crispness of the image was so perfect, it was though a portal had opened up and we were seeing into another reality.
“And here comes Zara,” Dr. Ankh said.
My head felt dizzy as I watched myself enter from a door at the corner of the room. The recording was so crisp, I could almost smell the cleaning products and dust in the hospital room.
And then the action started.
Chapter 30
The time stamp on the security footage read 11:59 p.m. when Dr. Bhamidipati, also known as Dr. Bob, arrived and took a leisurely stroll around the foot of a comatose patient’s bed. The young woman lay motionless yet radiant, still beautiful despite the abuse she’d suffered.
The third person in the underground hospital ward was me, seated next to the bed with a strange crown on my head. I also had, in a plastic bag, a rather convincing fake bloody eyeball. I was dressed in black leather and ready for battle.
Dr. Bob and I started our showdown with verbal sparring. The security footage Dr. Ankh was playing for us also had sound, and it filled the room. I listened with everyone else, surprised by how much less dramatic the whole thing seemed on the recording. But then, it wasn’t a Hollywood movie with multiple closeups and special effects. It was just me, trying to bluff the evil doctor into admitting to his evil plans. Which he did. After some prodding with my balls of lightning, some gunplay, and finally a cheap yet effective use of my telekinesis. Basically, I was the puppet master using a comatose woman’s body as my puppet. It did serve its intended purpose as a distraction, but that didn’t make the visual of the woman’s hands lifting under the hospital sheet any less eerie.
At that point in the footage, Dr. Ankh hit the pause button. “The first time I saw this, I thought the patient truly was waking up.”
My mother said, “When Zarabella sets her mind to a task, she’s excellent.”
Chet grunted. He was still pacing the room like a caged wolf. “Keep going,” he said.
The department’s new doctor resumed playback, and we watched as her predecessor made a deadly mistake. When Chet came through the door, along with his backup of Rob and Knox, the doctor shifted into his giant bird form. The bird tore into the air, its enormous wings creating a windstorm inside the room. He smacked noisily against the ceiling, and his enormous wingspan in front of the ceiling’s security camera blocked part of the view of the room.
I didn’t need to see what happened to feel the horror. I’d gotten the doctor’s gun, and I fired at the bird as it attacked me. It was self-defense, and I shouldn’t have felt guilty, but I still jerked in pain at the sound of each shot.
My mother elbowed me and whispered for me to pay attention.
I opened my eyes wider and watched as the surveillance footage showed me something I hadn’t seen that night.
“This is slowed down,” Dr. Ankh said. “One third speed. Should I go slower?”
I waved for her to not touch a thing, and I shifted forward on my seat. Then I got to my feet and walked over to the wall, careful not to break the projection beam coming from the cube.
“Back it up to before the wolf jumps,” I said, and the doctor did.
We all watched in silence.
Chet, who had shifted into wolf form seconds earlier, jumped at the giant bird who was bearing down on me. As he soared through the air, he split into two. It had seemed at first to be a trick of the light, a shadow, but there was nothing for the shadow to be reflecting on. There were two wolves. Chet and his parasitic twin. Working together, the two wolves tore apart the bird like it was a toy.
I couldn’t trust my memory of that chaotic night, but seeing the crisp image on the screen was believing. Instead of two monsters tangling in a mess of fur and feathers, teeth and talons, there were three. No wonder Chessa’s bare legs had taken some deep scratches that night.
And, in reviewing the footage and watching for glimpses of myself, it was no wonder I hadn’t witnessed the wolf splitting in two. I’d had my hand over my eyes for the gory climax of the battle. I hadn’t truly looked again until the noises had stopped. By then, Knox and Rob had the bird and the two wolves surrounded. Except there was only one wolf, and a shadow that might have been a wolf but was only a shadow now.
In the castle suite, as well as in the surveillance video, everyone was so silent that I heard the soft thwack of the handgun hitting my ankle on its way to clatter on the floor.
The light in the room brightened, and that was when Chessa really did wake up. I watched with a clenched jaw as she, the victim, actually offered me comfort. And then, finally, I let out a laugh of relief when Rob complained about the unfairness of getting hit by a stray bullet despite being the smallest member of the team.
* * *
We watched the footage a dozen times. After turning into wolf form, he became two wolves, tore the bird apart, and then, while some stray feathers blocked the view from the camera, he must have turned back into a single being.
“I didn’t feel any of that happen,” Chet said from where he was pacing a hole in the floor. “If this were real, and I split in two, I would have felt something.” He directed an expression of disgust at the doctor and then the silver cube. “This is fake.”
“You can ask your friends,” Dr. Ankh said. “Your associate in the data department retrieved and verified the footage herself.”
Chet shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up.”
“The science is all theoretical, at least until we can do testing, but it does add up,” Dr. Ankh said. “That night, you were surging with natural chemicals. You experienced heightened emotions, not to mention adrenaline, over protecting the love of your life. You would have done anything to save Chessa. In fact, you loved her so much, you tore yourself in two.”
He looked down at the floor. “But I didn’t stay split in two,” he said. “Only one of me walked out.”
“Your parasitic twin must have branched off permanently during another time of heightened emotion. My theory is it happened during a battle on one of your recent assignments. I’m still reviewing case reports. It’s a shame you agents haven’t consented to using wearable cameras yet.”
Chet frowned and slowed in his pacing.
I snapped my fingers. “Chet, there was that thing in the back of your van. Remember the day I saw you outside the library? It was when my dad was staying with me. You had something locked up in the back of your van, something behind the cage. I remember noticing you looked like hell, like you hadn’t slept in days.”
He glowered at me. “Don’t help, Zara,” he spat. “Just don’t.”
I gave him an equally dirty look right back. “You think this is how I wanted to spend my Monday? I should be in Wisteria right now, punching out of my shift at the library, heading home for a nice takeout dinner with my remarkable teen daughter. Instead, I’m stuck here at a dirty old castle with a werewolf, a zombie, and whatever the heck she’s supposed to be.” I jabbed my thumb at Dr. Ankh.
My mother added to the dirty looks being tossed around with one of her own. “Nobody likes a label,” she said.
“I’m not a werewolf,” Chet said through gritted teeth.
“No.” I crossed my arms. “Apparently, you’re two werewolves. One of you is pleasant to be around, and the other one isn’t. When you do get yourselves stuck back together again, how about you let your better half take over once in a while?”
He continued to glower at me. “Go home,” he said.
“She can’t,” the doctor said. “We need her.”
I turned to face Dr. Ankh. “It’s nice to be wanted and everything, but I gotta say no thanks. I can’t afford to lose any more blood.”
“Let her go home,” Chet said to the doctor. “This is all my fault. I’ll d
eal with the mess.”
My mother raised her hand tentatively. “Excuse me, Chet. We don’t know each other very well, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you’re not responsible for whatever it is another member of your family does. Whether they’re your parasitic twin or something else.”
“Mom’s right,” I said. “As much as it kills me to utter that phrase.” I left the spot where I’d been standing with my nose practically pressed up against the projection, and returned to my seat on the couch next to her. “Whatever your wolf twin has done, it’s not your problem.”
Dr. Ankh cut in with a detached, clinical tone. “The demise of my predecessor should certainly not weigh on your conscience,” she said. “Dr. Bhamidipati got what he deserved. The Pressman girl, however, is an innocent victim. But, if we determine that the parasitic twin was responsible, it will in no way impact your own record, Mr. Moore.”
“But that’s not right,” Chet said, his voice raising in volume. “It is my fault.”
We all turned to him for an explanation.
He continued, spitting the words out like an angry confession. “I kept seeing the Pressman girl around town, like she was stalking me. And whenever I caught her watching me, the world got dark. I felt trapped, like I was back there in that attic. Like I’d never left. I’d only dreamed that I’d gotten out, but I was still trapped in that wall, hooked into that machine.”
None of us said anything. I’d been there, and it had been a nightmare of a scene.
“I blamed her,” he said, his voice eerily low and growling. “I wanted her dead.” He beat his fist on his chest. “Me. I was so afraid of that machine coming back to finish me off that I wished her dead.”
The three of us women in the room glanced around at each other.
I raised my eyebrows at Dr. Ankh. Surely she had something reassuring to say about parasitic twins. Or at least a handy sedative in her medical bag. Where was Zinnia and her purse of wonders when you needed her?
Chet paced left and right, then backed up into the shadows of the corner of the room. The shadows grew, and he shifted into a wolf. The four-legged beast started running. He easily leaped over my mother and myself on the couch before heading for the open window. He jumped up on the windowsill, paused, and then fell away. Gone. In broad daylight. Where anyone could have seen him. From the third story.
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