Page 106 of Forget Me Not

Penn grimaced again. “Too vague.” She could sense what people wanted, but not necessarily their greatest desires all the time, since that could range from ‘lunch’ to ‘a nap’ to ‘a reliable babysitter’ to ‘be President’ depending on that person’s mood on a particular day. Or so she had once explained to Ray. “Some are quietly wishing everything would calm down—so that means even those who have no idea what is going on know thatsomethingis up. Others… someone eyed your desk today, with I think an idea about being boss someday. Weird, since you’re hardly ambitious and someone could get a promotion without getting rid of you.”

Ray was being shunned, but he didn’t say that. He just reached out to smooth down Penn’s hair and get swatted for it. “They don’t mind that I’m gone. What about you?”

“Oh, how dare you think I…” Penn briefly closed her eyes. “Sorry. Long day and I’m a little defensive. You meant, what did they want from me? They find me useful but they’ve never liked me. Not even the other women in the department like me much. ‘Slippery being bitch’ and all. Doesn’t matter how nice I am. Also several of them think I’m fucking you. They always have. Not sure if it’s wishful thinking or what.”

“Oh, sure, they make it all about Ray,” Lis chimed in. “And those beings, they just can’t help themselves. You know how they are.”

“Exactly.” Penn nodded at her. “Thank you.”

“But they still shimmer for him,” Cal interjected in a worried voice. “For both of you. Not like how humans get horny for fairies. Real shimmer, like longing.”

“Yet another reason Ray makes a great poster boy for whatever they were planning.” Penn let Ray fix her hair this time. She must know he needed the contact. Maybe she needed it too, and it gave Ray something to focus while the others picked him—his situation—apart.

Calvin was at least slightly hesitant to do it. “Giving Penelope’s theory more weight, I don’t think that this is necessarily about getting rid of the were, or being, detective. It could be, of course, but unless the department is suddenly worried about PR, they have never had a problem finding reasons or ways to get rid of people they don’t want around.”

“Like the others in the first wave in the ’80s.” Lis sighed.

“Exactly.” Weariness was audible in Calvin’s voice as well. “They might be worried about what Ray knows. But there were quieter ways to be rid of him—yes, even a hard-to-kill were. This could just be a means to an end. Two birds, one stone.”

“But we don’t know for sure that this was originally about killing him until we know what the spell was supposed to do.” Benny stopped when Cal made a weak noise. Ray imagined Benny pulling Cal close but didn’t turn to look. Benny went on, only a touch gentler. “I mean, since we pretty much all agree now that the amnesia was an accident.”

It was all logical and sound and Ray hated it. Despite that, his voice was level, calm and nearly human. “Whether it was the primary or secondary motive doesn’t really matter, in the end. It was about hurting me. Specifically me.”

Penn looked at him. “In a radically different way that it would have hurt a human.”

“Yeah,” Benny agreed. “A human would be upset… depressed…angryto have isolated amnesia and not know their spouse or spouse equivalent, but for a were… it’s catastrophic. Anyone who knows anything about them, even the lies, would expect disaster.”

“We discussed that before,” Cal reminded him. “Ray would either be out on medical or psych leave for, what? Years? Or retire. Firmly out of the picture, never mind how they destroyed his life.”

“Or,” Penn was the one who seemed ready to snarl, “he could have hurt himself. And don’t think that wouldn’t have ended up in the news in a way this mysteriously didn’t. Out of the pictureanddiscredited—and not just him, anyone like him who tries for anything in the future.”

“I think,” Ray interrupted all of them, “it’s not about the effect onme. They would have to know me to guess at that.“ And according to Cal, Ray hid his true self from others. “It’s about the effect ona were.“ A grieving were in a drive-in B-movie was all frothing rage and murder. “They can be rid of me, kill me, but they did this where they did it so that the werewolf would become a monster they could put down. Two birds,” he added, echoing Calvin. “But nothing personal.”

“Nothing personal?” Outrage made Cal’s words shake.

“No officers I knew, or knew well, were waiting for me outside that alley. Or in the hospital. Or… today. And if the people who set this up knew me better, their spell probably would have worked right the first time. Those are facts, Callalily.” Ray almost didn’t know his own voice. But he’d thought of this already and had more time to accept it than they’d had. “They had a were detective who was being nosy, and they had a need to cause a scene, even if we don’t know why yet. Their plan should have worked. You said that you want me to be myself in public. That’s what you asked for, Callalily. But I think the fact that I hid myself from others is all that saved me in that alley. We can argue about why I did that and how I should’ve seen this coming earlier, how I put my faith in people who don’t even like me and for that I’ve allowed things like this to happen to others. Weshouldtalk about it, but right now, I’m tired, and they are still planning something that we need to discover, and stop, if we can.”

He turned to look at Cal. Cal deserved at least that. “We can alter the bargain we struck, if you like. End it now.” Cal had the right to change his mind. Ray certainly wouldn’t blame him.

Cal rose up an inch off the ground, wings furious. “You said you hadn’t decided anything, you lying liar!”

“I need some air,” Penn declared stiffly, startling Cal enough that he closed his mouth to look at her with concern and his feet hit the floor. Without another word, Penn left Ray to go outside, where she paced in front of the windows once, then stormed off to the side of the yard.

Ray turned back to Cal. Before he could open his mouth, Cal said, “Yeah, you have to go after her.”

Ray spent another moment breathing in Cal’s scent and then went after Penn with Cal’sfrustration/hurt/fearclinging to him.

***

“YOU AREN’T WRONG,” Penn insisted the moment Ray had closed the door behind him. She’d loosened her collar. A few steps closer and Ray picked up some of thestress/fear/worrystill in the air around her. She continued to pace, but on a smaller, shorter, jerkier path.

Ray stopped at the end of one of her loops, where a solar garden light had just flickered to life.

“I’m not like you.” Penn glanced at Ray without pausing, too agitated to slow down. “I mean, not in the respect that I intentionally hid anything about myself from them. I didn’t set out to do that. I just thought…” She gestured vaguely and made a rude sound when Ray waited without helping or interrupting her. “I thought… this is what you do. This is how it is. The village… I’ve never lived there, never known anyone who lived there until Cal. I grew up in a little house in a little town down the coast, and any other beings in the area didn’t mingle with us. This was… I took some classes in community college. The city was trying to change its image. I was recruited to be part of a bright new future. Which tarnished early on, but that’s anything in life, I thought. Nothing is perfect or like you think it will be. And I was better than so many of the humans there who hated me and… I liked that. I thought that mattered. Then there was you, the two of us.”

She was going to be embarrassed later for revealing so much.

“Penn…”

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