Page 59 of Forget Me Not

Penn’s expression went blank. “I’ve been…” A scowl broke through. “Sirens can be just as guilty of stupid hopes and pipe dreams and denial as anyone else.”

Ray returned the books and files to his lap while he waited her out. After a few moments, Penn continued, gesturing sharply with the licorice. “It’s about telling yourself that you’re putting good back into the world despite everything. That the sacrifices will be worth it for someone else in the future. That you’re paving the way and that justice moves slowly. Then… something like this happens. One terrible day to make you wonder if there even is a future. If…” She stopped abruptly to glare at the candy in her hand. “There’s only so much I can ignore. Up there, as one of them, I’d be signing off on everything I don’t want to see, everything they keep from us. And…”

She glanced to Ray.

“And I’d be alone down there?” Ray guessed.

Penn dropped her shoulders. “And you’d be alone down there.”

Ray reached out before he could think better of it. Then he did think better of it, but he put his hand on her shoulder anyway. Maybe sirensdidhave a pack instinct. Penn sighed and drooped a little more.

“Whatever you want, you have it, Penn,” he promised.

She flashed a brief, tense smile. “I know. We’ve always understood each other. No need to spill our guts here. But…” Penn lowered her voice, as if even now someone else might be listening. “I thought, if I left you alone there, something terrible would happen.”

It wasn’t an idle fear. Penn sensed wants.

“To them, or to me?” Ray asked, although something terrible had already happened.

Penn shrugged her shoulder beneath his hand;yesto both. She exhaled, then looked out at the street traffic.

“We made a mistake, didn’t we? A bad one.” Ray wasn’t being idle either.

Penn shrugged again. “We’ll square up with that later. You have enough to deal with at the moment.”

“Dangers I can’t even remember.” Ray was too tired to growl. “And you’re impaired, having to follow me around. You should take care of yourself. I can deal with them.”

“You would still risk for your life for any of these people in there, Ray. You always will, maybe. For anyone in your town. Cal would say…” The emotions Penn was keeping in check made her pause to clear her throat. “Cal would say they used that.”

Calhadstarted to say something. Ray wrinkled his nose, partly for that, and partly for the sour smell of old vomit and cheap alcohol occasionally drifting to him on the breeze.

“He would also say something about dogs, and leashes, and then apologize for it,” Ray remarked dryly. “Though he wouldn’t smell all that sorry.”

“Well.” Despite her efforts, Penn’s voice broke on the word. She forced it smooth. “We’ve always been pet monsters. You might not like to hear it, but we are. To them.”

Ray curled his lip. “I am not on a leash. They might think so. Cal might even think so. He might claim that I leashed myself.” Ray’s hands were fists. “But if I did, it wasn’t to them.” He couldn’t tell if he was lying. “I can’t imagine myself as anything else because there is nothing else that would allow me to…” He didn’t have the words, so he paused again. “I need to know that I have done something. That those like him are safe, even if I don’t know what else to do with him. I thought this was the way.”

“It’s your home, your city.” Of course, the siren phrased it for him, better than he ever could. “You want it to be better. To protect it. You want it so much you believed it and they let you. You convinced yourself it was the only path. Maybe I did too.” Penn’s hypnotic tone faded, leaving her tired and perhaps even scared. “I think you’ve felt that way for a while. I think if Cal hadn’t taken the hint and stopped coming in, you would have said something sooner or later. Well, done something. Speaking is not really something you do unless you have to. You’ll protect him if it kills you. He has witnessed that in action and knows it well. They’re the ones who fucked it up.”

Ray could suddenly growl again. “He is supposed to be mine.”

Penn smiled, all teeth. “He knows that.”

“They don’t.”

Ray’s fierce anger seemed to cheer her. She pulled her shoulders back.

“First things first. Something terriblehashappened. Something that very likely was meant to be much worse. We deal with that—but there is a reason Cal was mad that you mentioned the horrible possibility of what was meant to happen. Well, lots of reasons. But this one is important too. You don’t get it because you tune out talk of magic.Weres.“ Penn snorted before explaining. “Magic-users, Ray, even the nonhuman ones, worry about saying things aloud, speaking things into being. Maybe it’s good that you hold in your words. Whatever you have clearly been worrying over, all the grimmer scenarios… don’t say them aloud until you have to. Just in case. We have enough on our plates at the moment.”

Something like that implied the mere act of speaking was using magic. Weres were right, then, to avoid words when gestures worked just fine. Although Ray suspected, if what Penn said was actually true, that intent mattered, and magic could be conveyed silently as well.

He scratched his nose despite knowing he had not and would not be using any magic. He merely spoke the truth, however painful. “No one, Penn. No one is investigating my… myattack,“ as Cal and Penn had called it, “as they should have. Because they either don’t care—or they already know who did it and they don’t care.”

Penn sucked in a breath. She tapped her knee with her forgotten stub of licorice. “So, we find who did this.”

“And if it’s more than one of them?” With a cover-up involved, it would be.

“One ofthem,“ Penn echoed. Not one ofus. Penn didn’t dwell on it. “I don’t know. I don’t even know who we’d report it to, if anyone.”

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