Page 1 of Forget Me Not

Chapter One

RAY DIDN’T KNOW where he was or why he was there. He didn’t know if the sky was dark or light, why he was cold, why his pulse pushed against his skull. He should have known those things. That thought came and went, crisp and shaped like words, which made it human, although Ray did notfeelhuman with his senses streaming too much information to his aching head.

He inhaled, hoping for clarity, and only just turned his head in time for his vomit to spill out onto pavement that smelled of rotting food and piss and traces of rats. The rats were the safest scent to a were’s senses, notclean, but cleanerthan the mess left behind by careless humans. City wildlife bathed itself. Rats, foxes, and opossums were only animals making do in an environment someone else had created. Humanschosefilth.

Ray was somewhere in the city, then. He realized his eyes were closed and cracked them open, only to snap them shut again. The light was orange and dim, but still far too much for a wolf’s eyesight at the moment. He took another breath, carefully this time, his face turned away from the pavement.

It was afternoon, or evening. He was in a city, in an alley. That was all he knew.

Ray wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then slowly, with his jaw clenched, reached up to prod at his skull. No bumps. No blood. No heat. But he could have healed. The dangers of rapid werewolf healing; the surface sometimes healed before the wound itself did. That had happened before, although he couldn’t seem to recall a specific example.

Injured or not, he was still in pain. He was also on the ground, a realization that made him sit up, too much, too fast. His stomach roiled, but he didn’t vomit. Penn would’ve been proud.

Penn. Ray shielded his eyes before he opened them again. He ignored the sharp sting that made him blink and swept his gaze over the space in front of him. No sign of Penn. Or of anyone else, for that matter.

On his knees, squinting in the glow of the evening sun, Ray patted his chest, finding no injuries, before discovering his wallet and his gun where they ought to be.

He inhaled again. Vomit, still warm—not automatically objectionable to a were’s nose despite what humans would think, but hardly pleasant. Piss again. Food waste from one of the bins nearby. Old sweat and something else, something almost wild, only in the air for a second before it was gone. A hint of grass, like what sprung up sometimes between the cracks in the sidewalk. Plastic and metal. City smells.

The pavement was stained and uneven. It had not been repaved in some time. So he was not in a nicer part of town. Something somewhere smelled vaguely of pears, but almost artificially, like candy or cheap bodywash.

Ray grunted as he lurched to his feet, then swayed and fell against the wall that marked the end of this alley; the back corner of a building, although he couldn’t say which one. He had to blink away more tears of pain, then sparkles at the rush of blood through his head. Despite the light, the air was not warm. He remembered it was early autumn, although he did not know why that knowledge was so clear when nothing else was. Ray shut his eyes and focused elsewhere, using his ears this time. There was noise, like what might have been a crowd of people, but it was distant.

Ray’s ears were ringing. He was almost embarrassed that he hadn’t noticed that before, and swatted irritably at one as if that would stop the sound. His growl was high and alarmed, and carried over the din of the faraway crowd and his pulse in his ears and the ringing, but it didn’t drown out closer, newer,brightnoises.

Bright, Ray thought again, locking his throat, and opened his eyes as he tracked murmured conversation and the scrape of rubber or plastic-soled shoes on the ground. If he strained, he could hear two separate heartbeats. One of them was quick, almost like a bird’s.

He straightened, leaving his back to the wall, and sharpened his attention on the narrow mouth of the alley a moment before two figures rounded the corner and came into sight.

They were… not tall. Which meant they were not weres or trolls or even particularly large humans. They were average and slightly below average height for human men, if they were men, if they were human. One did not seem to be, the fading daylight catching on a slow fall of sparkle that meantfairy, although Ray did not see the outline of wings behind him. But the one who seemed to be fairy was dressed like a fairy—shirtless despite the autumn chill. He had bothered with human social niceties only to put on jeans and green tennis shoes. He was white, his skin tone almost but not quite golden, and his short wavy hair was brown until the light revealed streaks of gold and green.

The other figure wore a blue sweater with a collared shirt beneath that, and slacks that looked pressed. He did not have pointed ears or shimmer with unknowable sparkle. He was Black, with short curls and high cheekbones and a slightly amused expression on his face as he listened to the other one.

The not-fairy turned toward his friend, smiling, and Ray finally spied the jewel-colored wings emerging from the friend’s back and the pointed shape of an ear as the friend briefly stood in profile. Then the friend—the fairy, and itwasa fairy despite the jeans and the shoes and the small wings—turned toward Ray.

The fairy’s smile froze. He raised an arm in an attempt to block the other one from moving forward, like a driver might do to the person in the passenger seat of their car at an unexpected stop, although the other one simply batted his arm down. Then the fairy seemed to forget about stopping his friend. He took a step forward only to halt again, his head tipped to one side, curious or confused.

His attitude made the other one pause at last, frowning.

They were near each other in age. At least, as far as Ray could tell with how fairies aged—or rather, didn’t age. The two of them moved comfortably together. Ray didn’t think he was wrong to label them friends. But one of them had the cloud ofuncomfortable/itchyabout them that meant spell-casting, and they were here, now, when Ray didn’t know what was going on.

Ray inhaled, and the itch of magic made him wrinkle his nose and curl his lip in a snarl that he barely kept silent. With the scent of human magic came sweetness, wafting through the filth of the alley like the steam from a cooling pie in a cartoon. Fairies always smelled like that, like cane sugar and corn syrup and fruit juices, because they were nearly always eating and they favored sugar over any other foods.

The strangers were staring at him, both of their heartbeats quick now. Ray cut off the growl that had slipped from him, that should never have happened in front of them, and shook his head. The resulting throb behind his eyes nearly made him growl again.

“Ray?”

Ray focused on the fairy who had said his name, and scowled when the fairy faltered to have a were’s attention. Lots of people knew Ray’s name, especially in the village, where most of the fairies in Los Cerros lived. Ray stood out, as a werewolf surrounded by humans and as one of the only two beings detectives in the Los Cerros Police Department. Reporters liked to try to interview him if they saw him, although Penn was better at public speaking and anything requiring diplomacy. They chose not to interview her either out of sexism or fear of her sharp teeth, or perhaps both, but Ray deferred to her in front of them anyway, and left her to answer their questions.

The fairy’s eyes were wide, and full of shifting, swirling colors that matched his pretty little wings.

Fairies were always pretty, or beautiful, or striking, although they smelled of candy, and they went on and on about “colors” and “shine” without explaining themselves, and the ones who could sometimes floated inches from the ground, creating windstorms with wings much, much larger than the ones this fairy had. Perhaps because of their love of sugar, fairies were in near constant motion that was difficult to track when Ray was supposed to be working. Fairies… the thought slipped away before Ray could finish it.

“Ray?” the fairy asked again, taking another step forward.

“Don’t.” Ray bit out the word and raised a hand between them, although the fairy was too far away to touch. The fairy stopped, exchanging a glance with his friend. Then they both moved closer at the same time.

Ray growled, deliberately this time. A warning that would either make them afraid or would lead to jokes later, when they were somewhere else and they wouldn’t expect a werewolf to be around to hear them. He wondered if they didn’t realize what he was. Some didn’t until the moment Ray’s eyes would glow or they watched him heal far too fast to be human.

---