Page 19 of Forget Me Not

Cal’s voice was low and steady, trying to soothe Ray’s hackles back down.

“That’s Cassandra’s owl, Ray. It’s all right. There’s no threat here. You can calm down.”

“He’s not going to calm down, you nerds.” Cassandra returned to the room in a bit of a huff. “He’s awerewolf. He’s been smelling all of your worry and alarm this whole time in addition to dealing with his own. He physically cannotstopsmelling your fears, so hecan’tcalm down. So beat it. Shoo. Go wait in the kitchen or outside—you can get to the garden from here, through a gate. But donottouch anything that isn’t a rose.Nimue, maybe don’t even touch those. They aren’t in the Dead Man’s Garden, but you never really know, do you, and Miki—our gardener—is more powerful than he seems.”

Ray released a long, shaky breath and ignored the startled glances from the other three.

“We can look at the flowers,” Benny finally offered, looking at Cal. “They’re pretty. I mean, they can kill us; it’s a whole garden of poisons. But they’re pretty!” His faux-cheerfulness only made Cal look disgruntled, which was oddly charming on a fairy. Or this fairy.

Cassandra wrinkled her brow. “You’re going?” she asked Cal, as if she hadn’t just told everyone to leave.

Cal looked from her, to Benny, to Ray, then back to her. “He doesn’t know me.” He said it stiffly, without a twitch of his wings, but his voice was even. “He’s not going to bare himself in front of me right now. He probably doesn’t want me here.”

“Don’t touch the flowers.” Ray added to Cassandra’s warning.

Cal turned on him with a loud scoff, then abruptly gave Ray a view of his tiny wings. “In case it’s relevant,” Cal said to Cassandra but also to everyone, “his colors are… Everyone’s colors move. That’s not unusual. But not like a lava lamp, more like shadows on a wall.” Ray looked down at himself but of course saw no shadows on any walls. “Except not dark shadows—light shadows. Colors.” Having explained it about as well as Ray would probably have been able to explain how he interpreted scents, Cal made a small, pained noise. “His have a lot of disturbance, which makes sense. Just being attacked would do that. But… the center is gone.”

Ray looked up sharply.

“The base. You know? The like… anchor color for all the others.” Cal made that sound again. “I don’t know what the center means, exactly. Just that Ray’s always had this stable warm glow in the middle of him. Not… not warm like yellow. It’s like… silvery? But not shiny? I mean, I call him shiny because he is. He glows. But it’s not ametallicsilver. It’s just…bright. And that’s gone now. Along with a lot of the other…he used to have different, happier, feelings when I was around, if you know what I mean. Those are gone too now. Which, um, which makes sense, since he…since he doesn’t know me. But. You should know for when you examine him.“ A tremor went through Cal’s voice for the first time. “They really, uh, just cut me right out. In a matter of minutes. Maybe seconds. Ray doesn’t know me.”

Benny wrapped an arm around Cal’s shoulders and pulled him close.

Ray clenched his jaw so hard he was surprised he didn’t crack a tooth.

“Well.” Cassandra coughed delicately right as the kettle of water for the tea began to whistle in the distance. “His instincts do. They must. I can’t imagine, remembering or not, that a werewolf who had been mated would take it well to suddenly not be. It’d be like finding yourself with all the grief of a widower with no idea of why. It would have an effect, or so I’d assume.”

Ray tore his gaze from Cal to find Cassandra studying him. They were all studying him. He wanted to show his teeth and instead did nothing.

Cassandra was easier to look at than Cal. Ray didn’t care about disappointing her. She held a hand out in front of Ray as though she could feel the colors that Cal could see. “Your instincts also recognized Cal here almost immediately. That’s twoverydifferent forces of magic at work in one person, with strong emotions attached to each. They said on the phone that you feel weak? That would exhaust anyone, wolf or not. But seeing Cal again immediately might have saved you from….“ She went silent there. She must have known enough about weres to realize that they did not talk about the loss of a mate unless they had to. She coughed again. “All right. Let’s get to work. Water and tea in the kitchen, along with a soda. Lemon-lime. It’s all I had. Cal…” She lightly touched Cal’s arm when he tried to pass her. “You or Detective Del Mar should stay. I might need someone the six-foot-six panicked wolf trusts more than me.”

“I’m not that tall,” Ray objected into the quiet that followed.

Callalily—Cal—twisted around to give Ray a glare. “Heispanicked, isn’t he?“ Then he sighed so deeply that even his wings seemed to droop. “Penn should stay.”

Penn sighed too. “Now you’re being dramatic.”

”Ijusttoldyou that you probably saved him.“ Cassandra shook her head at Cal but waved him off. “Fine. Go. I’ll call you when I need you.”

Benny gave Ray a sympathetic glance before leading a still-drooping Cal out toward the kitchen and the increasingly loud kettle.

“You.” Cassandra pulled Ray’s attention to her. “Sit. You’re too tall. Far too tall.”

As though Ray were a troll or something.

Nonetheless, he sat, because the room had a low ceiling and he didn’t want to bump into anything.

The chair was old-fashioned, but comfortable and not dusty. Small, but he ignored that, long used to human things not built with anyone like him in mind. Cal and Benny didn’t fuss around in the kitchen for more than a minute, although they did take the kettle off the heat.

Ray exhaled the breath he’d been holding. Then his view was nothing but Cassandra’s round form and blue caftan as she peered at him.

Penn sat down on a narrow settee not far away.

Cassandra smelled like oranges, real ones. Not like incense or whatever people might have expected. There was a trace of marijuana around her as well, but it was distant and Ray was not inclined to care even with the ever-changing laws on the matter. Cal and Benny were quieter now. They must have gone to the garden. Ray had to strain to hear anything. Cal would be cold out there.

Ray glanced up to the watching owl, then back to the crystal Cassandra had pulled from someplace to hold in front of him. “You’re just making this up, aren’t you? You know weres and magic don’t mix.”

Cassandra’s shrewd expression did not change. “Shut up and go back to listening to Cal.” Their eyes met. If Ray’s were glowing, Cassandra didn’t seem to give a shit. “He saved you. You know that as well as I do. If you had felt only the loss and the pain, oh, what might you have done to yourself, if not to others. But he’s the same as he was, so whatever was behind this didn’t matter. You found him again. And that, I believe, is what kept you from harming yourself or anyone else. I wouldn’t take that lightly, Detective.”

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