Page 10 of Forget Me Not

He tucked the bags away again and nodded absently when someone greeted them as they passed.

Either Ray carried candy to please his… to please Callalily, or Callalily had put it there. Ray made a rumbling sound and Penn reached back to smack him lightly.

“The car,” she reminded him pointedly. “Cal later.”

The others should know him. Should know what Ray had forgotten. But Ray worked his jaw and nodded again, dropping his shoulders as they walked closer to several patrol officers. The officers still had to look up to meet his eye, but not as far.

Behind them, still behind the tape, were the residents of the village, human and otherwise. Ray saw pointed ears and one or two very large figures, one with skin of green and brown. Several of those watching were also holding up their phones, steadily recording the scene until an officer would notice them and shout something. It didn’t stop them recording, but it did make most of them step back.

Ray frowned while Penn stopped to whisper to someone about the alley half a block down, but looked over the older officer that Penn trusted enough to send to watch over Callalily and Benny. Hardell was his name. Ray remembered that with perfect clarity. Hardell glanced to Ray, but nodded grimly and started off in the direction of the alley.

Penn’s car was ahead. Across from it, on the opposite of the intersection, was the plaza, one of the original social centers from the town’s early days. It had a fountain that had been slightly modernized in the 1990s to be more artistic than practical, and behind that was the wall with the mural of a creature on it. The Beast, it was often called, although Ray had always just thought of it as a big cat, or something catlike.

He and Penn were in the part of town at the start of the fairy village, or what had become the fairy village in past decades, although the overlap with Old Town made that distinction artificial. It was not a bad neighborhood, but it was not an area that saw the same investments as the rest of the city. Back in the ‘80s, before that small effort with the fountain, it had been known as a fairly seedy district. Of course, that had been mostly for bigoted reasons. And, cut off from the rest of the city’s resources, the residents of this area had done the best with what they had. The human, mostly white, wealthier residents of Los Cerros had still been more than happy to visit the village when they’d wanted a good time.

Ray couldalmostrecall the sound of someone telling him that story, but then the wisp of a memory was gone.

Some of those in the crowd had started to watch him. Ray realized he’d stopped, and stepped after Penn as she unlocked the car.

“Will he…”

“Get in the car, Ray.”

He bared his teeth at her.

Penn bared hers right back, then huffed. “He’ll find you, Ray. And even if he didn’t, you’ll find him. Ray finds Cal, always and ever. Now get in.”

Head aching, Ray got in.

Chapter Two

THE CAPTAIN in front of Ray smelled nervous. A lot of people smelled nervous when visiting hospitals, so Ray didn’t bother wondering about that when the bigger question was why the captain was there. Ray leaned more than sat on the edge of the bed in the exam room he’d been urged into after his bout of tests, and watched Captain Meyers, who was not even Ray’s captain, stiffly reassure him that the department was behind him.

The man was in his dress uniform, which made Ray think he’d been prepared for a press conference or had been on his way somewhere else when he’d heard the news about Ray, and the department had sent him to the hospital as some sort ofgesture. Though Ray didn’t understand the gesture, either. Ray wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t injured as humans would understand it. He also was not grieving a loss, not exactly, but since Captain Meyers hadn’t mentioned anything of that nature, Ray didn’t think that was the reason for this visit.

Meyers’ attention darted from Ray to the door every once in a while, as though wondering if he could make it out before the were could reach him. Ray and Meyers were not close, but the man should have known enough about Ray to behave better.

Unless he was here to check to see if Ray was in his right mind.

Which was the reason Ray had not stood up to finish getting dressed, since he would have towered over the man, and was letting Meyers go on about department resources without pointing out that he already knew all of that.

Outside the exam room, several officers were gathered in the hall. The room next door had a kid who had somehow gotten a quarter down his windpipe without asphyxiating, and two doctors were quietly debating how best to deal with it while the kid watched a cartoon. Penn had left Ray to get dressed, which was when Meyers had appeared.

Ray briefly missed his old captain, Murphy, who would not have been nurturing in a moment like this, but at least would have left Ray alone to dress in peace and would have spoken quietly—once reminded—to spare Ray any more headaches.

“Your… were healing seems to have taken care of you.” Meyers stumbled over the wordwere. Ray regarded him impassively until the man went on. “Nevertheless, protocol is for you to be cleared by a doctor as well as a psychologist.” The doctor who had been attending to Ray had disappeared with Ray’s test results and x-rays a while ago. She’d taken some of Ray’s blood, leaving Ray to idly wonder if human scientists had learned how to screen for magic in blood forensically, if such a thing was possible. If they had, they almost certainly hadn’t studied it in werewolf blood. “It will be costly to lose you, but we are seeing to your current caseload.” Which seemed fast, but Ray had difficulties with time in a building like this, in rooms without any windows. His tests had taken hours, for no clear reason. A few of the techs had smelled of fear. Ray’s eyes, it seemed, were giving away Ray’s thoughts when he overheard jokes about how he should see a veterinarian, or when someone out in the hall had a quick heartbeat but not the right heartbeat.

“It is regrettable, but it is necessary,” Meyers continued, although he had said that before at some point. “An attack of this nature—”

Meyer’s voice cut off. Ray directed his suddenly fierce gaze elsewhere. A poster on the wall described the symptoms of the flu and advised humans to get vaccinated. Ray idly pondered if the aching bones and exhaustion of the flu were anything like what he was feeling.

“An incident of this nature,” Meyers began again, cautiously, “will not be tolerated. This was obviously the work of some magical degenerate in the village with no respect for us, and we—you’re certain you remember nothing?”

For the second time, Ray shook his head no. Then he swung his attention back to Meyers, hoping his eyes were a respectable-to-humans blue and not the too-bright blue of an animal in the dark.

“Good. Good. I mean, that’s fine enough for now. If you do remember something, be sure to tell whoever we assign to the case.” Meyers gave Ray a wide smile and stepped back toward the door right as it opened.

The noise from the hall was briefly louder; rubber-soled shoes on a polished floor, elevators arriving, machines beeping, gossip and whispers,They’re attacking even a were now. Shows you how little they respect anything. Then Penn stepped into the room, her eyebrows flying up to see the captain there. She had packets of food and a water bottle in her hands and then suddenly a polite expression on her face instead of surprise.

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