Page 39 of Forget Me Not

Decades ago, Calvin Parker had been sent to the village as punishment. Everyone on the force knew about it, had talked about when Ray had first joined. Parker had gone willingly, unconcerned with his tanked career despite his brilliance, because he had been with the fairy he’d loved and they had been raising their son.

Funny for the opposite to happen now, although Ray wasn’t amused. “Punishment for something?”

“Officially no.” Cal hummed. It seemed he was trying to be delicate again. “It justhappensthat you don’t get those cases. Even if someone else is on vacation.” Penn was watching Ray carefully, and Ray wondered bitterly if even Penn expected him to turn into a raging, murderous beast. It was only for a moment, and then he realized she was just worried. It was in her scent. Ray wasn’t well, and she didn’t know if this would make it worse. “However,” Cal continued, “if you were to ask me, or say, anyone in the village who knows you, then we would say something that some might call a conspiracy theory and accuse us of being tinfoil hatters, or like, fascist pinko radicals or whatever the newest insult is. What’s that funny one, Penn? Libcucks?” He snort-laughed. “Libcucks.”

“Just say it,” Ray ordered through gritted teeth.

Cal put down his phone. “We think, Benny and I, that something is going on down there, and they don’t want you and Penn to witness whatever is it is.”

Ray realized he was breathing hard again and that his hands were clamped to the edge of the counter.

“Ray?” Penn asked. She had been asking it. Cal was twisting his hands together but keeping his distance. Ray vaguely suspected Penn had told him to and found it intolerable that he had been that distracted, even only briefly. He met her eyes as she spoke again. “Ray, it would be natural for you to doubt this, no matter who said it. Everything that led up to this is gone, for you. This must seem out of nowhere.”

“There’s a flash drive hidden in my desk.” Ray barely kept from snarling it. Penn was startled. Ray pointed fiercely to Cal. “Where onlyhewould eventually find it.”

“Um.” Cal swallowed audibly. “What?”

“What’s on it?” Penn didn’t seem pleased to learn that Ray—past Ray—had taken that step.

“How should I know?” Ray didn’t shout, but he could have. “All my memories of him for all that I know. My last will and testament! A treasure map!” He wasn’t in a fit state to do anything and it galled. He shouldn’t be yelling. He shouldn’t even be close to yelling, much less at Penn and his… Cal. Ray dragged a hand through his hair. “There are new locks on my windows, Penn. I have a security system. Yesterday, I was… I was unconscious for unknown reasons, and today, no one has called.” He didn’t want to look at Cal and those knowing, swirling eyes. “They were at the hospital last night to restrain me, if necessary.” To shoot him, but he wasn’t going to say it with Cal present. Penn’s gaze was heavy because she understood what Ray meant. “That drive being hidden says I noticed. But according to Callalily, we don’t talk about it.”

“Callalily,” Cal echoed awkwardly. “Of all the times to call me Callalily, you choose when you’re trying not to have a breakdown over breakfast.”

“I’m not—” Ray shut up at the twin expressions of worried disbelief from the other two.

“I don’t know what you did or didn’t see, or did or didn’t acknowledge before.” Cal was quiet. “Penn might know some of it, but you were alarmed enough to push me away from it, so something happened. You know, that theory about the frog in the boiling water? It’s kind of nonsense in the real world because frogs will jump out of a hot pot, but the idea is, if you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put it in warm water and slowly turn the temperature up, it won’t notice it’s being cooked until it’s too late. That could be it. Or, maybe, it was just good old-fashioned denial. You put all your faith in something or someone, and you see things but tell yourself you didn’t, or that they had some other explanation. And now, this whole deal had forced you to consider your world like a stranger.”

“Or maybe it’s connected to you,” Ray snapped.

Cal’s head went back. Then he fluttered his wings and came closer. “I’m not your moral compass, Ray. Whatever you do, you decide to do it because you think it’s right. Not always what’s right for you, but what you think, or what you’vebeen told,” he pronounced that with cutting emphasis, “is right. And you haven’t said a word to me about any drive hidden in your desk. Presumably because you decided it wasrightnot to worry me.” He raised a hand and shook his head, apparently at Ray’s audacity, then started to leave the room. “Is it in the candy tin? You motherfucker. I thought that was weird for you to have in there.”

“So, anyway,” Penn drew Ray back to the discussion while Ray listened to Cal poking around in his desk. “We called in to say we’d be at the scene, but we wouldn’t take charge of it. It was all very political of us... of me, let’s be honest. We made our way over there on our own, in my car. You didn’t want to arrive with Benny and Cal, for the sake of appearances.”

Ray, still distracted by Cal’s muttering, looked at Penn expectantly.

Penn really didn’t like where the conversation had gone this morning. She glowered, then glanced away again. “There’s been someglamourtalk recently. More than usual.”

“Only at the station. Not in the village. They know better.” Cal returned. He had no sign of the drive on him, but he was eating some of the candy. “The police being there again but not around the burned-out markets had people tense and angry. Tenserand angrier. And then, in the middle of it, not suspiciouslyat all, Raymond gets whammied with the spell to end all spells.”

“I suppose that sums it up,” Penn finished dryly.

Ray turned his head, keeping Cal partially in view but needing to look at Penn to keep his mind clear. The locks, the security system, the secrets, yesterday, all of it had been done to protect Cal. He had no doubt. Ray had obviously not been the were he should have been, but he had at least wanted Cal safe and had acted accordingly.

“So what were we working on?” he asked Penn, and noted the skip in her pulse. “Officially,” he added.

“Afterward, we were going to head to the more respectable homes that wind up toward the bluffs. There was an empty house that was apparently adopted by an elf. Not even to live in it. Just, according to Florence, she had a “need” to take care of an abandoned thing. The owner eventually sent security to remove her and destroy her efforts. Florence did not react well to the security. There is some debate over whether this was self-defense or not considering it was not the elf’s property, and what level of fear the elf might have felt to justify the kind of damage to the property that resulted.”

Cal was licking his fingers.

Ray’s voice was like gravel. “Must have been quite the fight.”

“You should see an elf defending their stuff,” Cal offered.

Ray ignored this, too. “Why were we on that?”

“It’s not a high priority. It’s one of several things we’re working on. That was simply our plan for the evening, to go look over the house again.” Penn swirled her cup without drinking from it, restless or anxious. “It’s just… odd. The hired security types seem to have vanished once the reports were filed—we didn’t take those, by the way. Patrol guys did. Damage to the house is hard to prove also since it was already in a state of disrepair—except for what the elf had been fixing. The only other witnesses, to the tail end of the thing, were goblins, who have also since disappeared. Although, they are goblins, so that might be the least suspicious part about this.”

“But we were still investigating anyway.” Ray made it a statement and not a question, and pulled his hand from the counter to flex his fingers.

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