Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
Summer stared at the patient chart for the third time, the words blurring together as her mind wandered to the scarred body in the morgue, the surgical precision of those transformation marks, Vincent’s revelation about Fabian’s mysterious meeting.
She read the same paragraph about chest pain protocols four times without absorbing any of it.
“Dr. Vale?”
She looked up to find Dr. Ethan Rooke standing beside the nurses’ station, his face carrying an expression professional concern. She guessed he’d been watching her for a while.
“Everything okay? You seem a bit… scattered tonight.”
Summer forced herself to focus on his face, noting the lines of fatigue around his eyes, and how his graying hair was even more disheveled than usual. “Just tired. Long couple of days.”
“Hmm.” Ethan didn’t look convinced. “Lisa mentioned you’ve been making some small mistakes. Obviously, nothing dangerous, but not like you. Forgetting to initial charts, leaving examination rooms without turning off equipment.”
Heat flushed Summer’s cheeks. She always prided herself on her attention to detail, her professional competence. If her distraction was affecting patient care, the situation was unacceptable.
“I’ll be more careful,” she said.
“Not what I’m asking.” Ethan moved closer, lowering his voice. “Summer, I’ve been doing this long enough to recognize when someone’s dealing with a personal crisis. You don’t have to tell me what’s going on; I really don’t want to pry, but if you need time off, if you need to talk to someone…”
“I’m fine,” Summer said automatically, then caught herself. “I mean, I’m handling it. Whatever it is.”
Ethan studied her face for another moment, then nodded. “Just remember—the work will always be here. Take care of yourself first.”
Before Summer could respond, the ambulance radio crackled to life. “Tulane ER, incoming trauma, ETA five minutes. Male, approximately twenty-five, found unconscious in the Quarter. Vitals stable, but patient exhibits signs of severe disorientation and memory loss.”
Summer grabbed the radio. “Any signs of drug use? Head trauma?”
“Negative on both. Patient claims he doesn’t remember the past week. No visible injuries except some unusual scarring on his torso.”
Summer and Ethan exchanged glances. “We’ll take it,” Summer said into the radio, already moving swiftly toward the trauma bay.
The patient was confused and agitated on arrival; his eyes darted around the ER as if he expected to find threats in every corner.
Summer’s Le Voile senses immediately detected the wrongness of his condition.
The metallic aroma of corrupted magic she now associated with hybrid experiments oozed from the man’s pores.
“What’s your name?” she asked gently, checking his pupil response with a penlight. When she touched his head, the silver fire on her palms flared. She switched off her penlight, slipped it in her pockets, and pressed her palms to her thighs to suppress the glow.
“James. James Morrison. I think.” The young man frowned. His voice was hoarse. “I was… I was walking to work. That was Tuesday morning. But they keep telling me it’s Thursday night.”
“What do you remember about Tuesday?”
“Nothing after leaving my apartment. I woke up in an alley about two hours ago, and I can’t…” He gestured helplessly. “There’s just nothing. It’s like someone erased part of my life.”
Summer examined the scarring beneath the hospital gown.
They were the same precise surgical marks she’d observed at the morgue; these were fresher, still pink with recent healing.
This man had undergone the transformation reversal process more recently than the victims she’d examined with Vincent.
The heat in her palms flickered again as her magic revealed more about the patient than conventional medicine would, it was all she had available in the mundane world.
“James, I’m going to run some blood work, okay? Just to make sure everything’s functioning normally.”
While the lab processed his samples, Summer made careful notes in his chart.
Memory loss spanning multiple days. Unusual scarring consistent with supernatural transformation.
Accelerated healing was something normal medical staff might simply attribute to good genetics.
She knew she was building a database of symptoms, documenting patterns her colleagues couldn’t see; her assessments painted a terrifying picture for anyone who understood the supernatural implications.
Three more cases arrived over the next four hours.
By the time Summer’s shift neared its end, she’d treated six patients with identical symptom clusters—memory gaps, disorientation, unusual scarring, and the lingering aura of magical corruption made her supernatural senses recoil.
All were young adults, all in seemingly good health despite their mysterious injuries, all found wandering different areas of the French Quarter with no memory of recent events.
“This is getting strange,” Lisa observed as they processed the latest arrival’s paperwork. “Six patients in one night with the same memory issues? Maybe there’s something in the water.”
“Or something in the air,” Summer murmured, thinking of the Halloween celebrations reaching their peak in the next few nights. Perfect cover for supernatural experimentation, when costumed figures could move freely through crowds and screams would be dismissed as part of the festivities.
At seven a.m., Summer strolled out of the hospital into the humid New Orleans dawn, her mind spinning with implications and possibilities.
The French Quarter was already alive with Halloween preparations despite the early hour—vendors setting up costume shops, restaurants hanging skeleton decorations, bars advertising special Halloween cocktails.
The celebration was becoming a city-wide obsession, and it grew more elaborate each day.
She walked slowly through the Quarter, needing the air and movement to process everything she’d learned.
The normal human activity felt surreal after a night of treating victims of supernatural experimentation.
How could people hang fake spider webs and joke about monsters when real monsters were systematically harvesting humans and transforming them into monsters just blocks away?
Near Jackson Square, a pop-up haunted house had appeared overnight.
Velvet ropes cordoned off the entrance to what had been a closed jazz club, and fake fog machines created an appropriately eerie atmosphere.
The effect was professionally done, complete with sound effects and actors in elaborate costumes.
A brass band played near the cathedral steps, their faces painted in skull makeup as they performed what sounded like a funeral dirge.
But the mournful music had an underlying celebratory rhythm which drew small crowds of early risers and shift workers ending their night.
Second-lines had already started forming, twirling parasols and tossing candy instead of beads.
Summer paused to watch a figure dressed as Baron Samedi work the crowd near Café du Monde. His skeletal makeup was so realistic it made her skin prickle, and when he offered her a cup of spiced rum with his too-wide grin, leaning close to her face, she declined and hurried past.
The wrought-iron balconies above the streets were already occupied by costumed figures who called down to the passersby, their laughter echoing off the narrow buildings.
Everything felt like a celebration of death disguised as entertainment, and beneath the scents of bourbon and fresh beignets, Summer noticed an odor; it reminded her uncomfortably of blood.
She was turning onto Dauphine Street when someone grabbed her wrist.
“Doctor.” The voice was female, urgent, and full of desperation. Summer immediately stopped and turned to face the woman.
She appeared to be in her thirties; her pale skin and gaunt features represented either really good makeup or a serious illness.
She wore a hospital gown under a thin jacket, and Summer thought for a moment she must have been in Tulane during her shift.
Then she realized she recognized neither the woman nor the unpatterned hospital gown.
Wherever she’d come from, the woman must have left before she received the urgent medical care she clearly still needed.
“Ma’am, you should come with me to the hospital. If you’re not feeling well?—”
“The pale lord,” the woman interrupted, her grip tightening on Summer’s wrist with surprising strength. “He has your wolf. Don’t trust his pretty words.”
Summer’s blood turned cold. “What did you say?” Her mind instantly recalled the words from her mother’s journal.
“I remember now. They think the process erases everything, but I remember.” The woman’s eyes were wide and terrified. “The pale lord with his pretty mansion and his beautiful lies. He collects people like butterflies, pins them to boards, keeps them alive just long enough to study how they work.”
“What do you know about the pale lord? What are you talking about?”
But the woman was shaking her head and already backing away, her grip releasing as suddenly as it had begun. “Don’t let him keep you in his golden cage, Doctor. Wolves need to run free.”
She disappeared into the growing crowd of costumed revelers, leaving Summer standing frozen on the sidewalk with her wrist still burning from the woman’s touch.
Around her, the Halloween celebration continued—music and laughter and fake ghosts—but all Summer could hear were the woman’s words echoing in her head.
He has your wolf. Wolves need to run free. The woman’s words could not mean her. She was not a wolf; she was a witch. A witch who had allowed herself to be imprisoned in a pretty cage.
The deep implication was clear and terrifying.
If the woman was telling the truth, Fabian didn’t just know where Rowan was.
He must be keeping him somewhere, holding Rowan prisoner while he played the role of Summer’s helpful benefactor.
The golden cage wasn’t just metaphorical.
She was being held captive while her mate was also imprisoned.
But where? Perhaps somewhere she’d never think to look.
She needed evidence. She needed the truth.
Summer pulled out her phone, scrolling through her contacts until she found Vincent’s number. The call went straight to voicemail, and she realized he was probably sleeping during the daylight hours.
She tried anyway. “Vincent, it’s Summer. I’d like to see you as soon as possible. Something’s happened, and I think… I think I’ve been completely wrong about everything.”
As she walked back toward Le Sang, Summer felt the pressure of the Halloween celebrations pressing down on her like a physical force.
Next Friday was October 31st—the night when the veil between worlds was thinnest, when supernatural beings would be at their most powerful.
Whatever Fabian was planning, whatever experiments he was conducting, everything would reach its peak on Halloween night.
She strolled toward Le Sang, wondering if she should really return to the mansion.
Perhaps being alone at her father’s house was safer, but Axel’s men could take her from there easily.
Both Fabian and Vincent had warned her of the danger from Axel.
Fabian, at least, could protect her in the mansion, and she was certain Le Sang was where she would discover the answers to all her questions.