Page 131 of Forget Me Not

“It’s a long story.” Penn got tired of waiting, or just antsy, and tossed one of the bags to Ray, who caught it without turning. “Grab your radio too, and your book.”

“Mami’s is good. She feeds us sometimes.” Strider paused. He, ifhewas the case, still had to look up at Ray. “We don’t get weres here much, unless they’re at Mami’s to get laid. They like fairies. Fairies are friendly. Theyreallylike weres.”

Penn slid Ray a smartass look and Ray was too distracted to snarl back at her. Penn shoved another bag at him anyway, then went to work putting out the rest of the candles over Strider’s protests. Ray shushed him. “I can’t carry these and climb down the fire escape.”

Strider drained his cup but stopped in the middle of throwing it and his peanut butter into a backpack. “I’m not leaving without my gear.”

“So we take the stairs.” Penn turned off the radio, handed it to Strider, then was on her way out the door. “Third floor window is unlatched. We can leave the bags on the balcony, get them one by one. As long as we areout. Let’s go.”

“Bossy,” Strider commented.

Penn spun around.

“Don’t,” Ray warned Strider. “Just move.”

Ray ought to be in front, if only because he could see what they couldn’t in the dark, but his arms were full and Penn was on high alert. She reached back, impatiently gesturing for Strider and Ray to keep up, and skipped down the stairs two at a time, on feet so light she was nearly flying.

That was probably why when a step snapped beneath her foot, she jumped over the next one, landing hard two stairs down.

The entire staircase groaned at the impact, shivering.

Penn froze. “Ray, tell me they didn’t weaken the stairs with that stuff too.”

Something cracked below their feet.

“Rot,” Ray said, with mold and decay tingling in his nose. “But I can also smell—”

The boards beneath Penn gave out, the carpet sinking, sending her tumbling down toward the foot of the stairs. Strider reached out, maybe to catch her, but Penn’s leather jacket had nothing for him to grab onto and the action made him lose his footing. He hit the wall, then crashed onto a lower step.

Wood splintered, the rotted carpet giving way. Strider’s leg went through the hole to his knee. His shout would probably carry to the first floor, but that was the least of Ray’s concerns. The wood beneath him shuddered with the weight of one werewolf carrying several large bags stuffed to bursting.

He managed a warning growl and then something big snapped midway down the staircase.

Ray fell, landing hard on something that crunched beneath him but thankfully kept his head from hitting the floor. He curled up as debris rained down, the ground or the entire building shaking. He felt pain all along his side, but it wasn’t sharp or hot. Nothing was. It all just hurt in an all-over, disorienting way. His ears were ringing.

The air above him swirled with plaster and dust and whatever else had been in the decades-old carpet.

“Penn.” His voice cracked. Ray tried again. “Penelope?”

A small complaint came from a few feet in front of him—Strider. Another, softer noise came from farther in front of them both.

Ray shook his head, which did not stop the ringing and made the throbbing at the back of his head a hundred times worse. He pushed himself up anyway, stifling a gasp at the pull in his side. Ribs maybe, possibly broken. Cal would be annoyed with him. Cal would—Ray couldn’t think about him now. He sank his teeth into his lip until he was on his knees, then slowly got to his feet, ducking under a part of the staircase that hadn’t collapsed.

“Strider? You okay?”

“Fuck, man,” Strider answered. Which was something at least. Ray turned to find the human wedged beneath a large chunk of stair and carpeting, but eyes open and alert.

Downstairs, they were quiet, possibly trying to determine if this was part of the damage to the building or something else. They would probably investigate before they did anything.

Ray gritted his teeth and hauled the section of the stairs up until Strider could wriggle out. He let it crash to the ground again, panting, then had to climb up over the lower stairs to get out of the hole they’d found themselves in. Penn was on the landing, against the wall where she must have landed when she fell. Pieces of wood were on top of her, as if they’d flown up into the air after the crash. She was still, her eyes closed.

Ray kneeled down, taking her wrist even though he could hear her heart beating. “Penelope?”

“NotPenelope,” Penn answered weakly. “That means I’m dying.” She opened her eyes, looking toward Ray, probably without seeing much more than a large shape in the dark. “We need to get out of here.”

She didn’t really try to move. She put a hand flat on the ground, maybe to push herself up, and then cried out before she shut her mouth hard.

“That’s bad,” Strider said somewhere behind Ray. Strider couldn’t see in the dark, but living here, he might be more used to the lack of light than Penn.

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