Page 4 of Forget Me Not

Most wouldn’t think a werewolf could feel fear. This fairy did. And he was right.

Ray did not back up, because he couldn’t and because he wouldn’t. But something in Ray’s attitude made Callalily close his mouth and swallow. He crept forward a step.

“I’d hurt even a fairy if I had to.” Ray warned when he should have just pushed past them and left the alley, found Penn and figured out what the hell had happened.

Several emotions flickered across Callalily’s face. Then he smiled, a flash, there and gone. “No, you wouldn’t. Not my Ray.” He took another step, waving off Benny and continuing forward while talking quietly, almost under his breath, like he knew Ray would hear. “Sometimes I think you do what you do because you were given no other outlet for how much you…” He abandoned that thought for another. “What do I smell like?”

Ray offered him another silent snarl, not in the mood to try to explain the way weres categorized smells, which was not at all like how humans seemed to, and likely fairies as well. “This alley stinks,” he said shortly, with Callalily’s heartbeat growing louder as Callalily inched closer. “And it’s itchy.”

“Magic. From Benny.” Callalily jerked his head toward Benny in explanation. “What else, Ray Ray?”

Ray could give them the exact contents of the nearest trash bins if they wanted. But he didn’t think that was what Callalily was after. “Coffee with pumpkin syrup and whipped cream.” Ray dragged in another long breath. “Your friend has on some aftershave, but it’s not strong. Both of you use perfume-free detergent.” The same brand Ray used, as well as oatmeal soap, also like what Ray had at home. The kind that didn’t make him sneeze like artificially scented soaps did.

“That’s real stuff.” Callalily dismissed this, his gaze intent on Ray’s face. “Give me the rest of it.”

Ray didn’t have to give him anything and growled for it. Callalily should not know about the other ways weres processed scents, how some learned to name emotions, or linked scents to ideas more than to solid, tangible objects. Ray stared hard at him until the fairy finally stopped moving, then Ray’s attention dropped to Callalily’s bare chest once again, the line of Callalily’s throat and the hum of his pulse. Callalily was close enough now that Ray could find more,wouldfind more, if he nuzzled beneath one pointed ear.

“Worry.” Ray was softer than he meant to be. The way he was with traumatized children, or bullied elves, or lost werewolves with no place to go. Callalily was none of those things, but Ray pushed the rumble from his voice before he continued. “Fear.” Though not necessarily of Ray. Everything in his scent was nearly as it had been when the two of them had first come into the alley.

Peach cobbler. Daisies and grass. Honey. Lemon trees. Things were more about the essence of spring and summer than any actual single smell. Ray scowled for that, for finding so much beneath the surface of a scent he had labeled merelysweetonly moments before. He inhaled again, trying to discover more about who this fairy was from the contact traces clinging to him.

“Coffee,” he said aloud, instead of anything about the seasons that he would have had to explain. “Sweetened and hot. The pumpkin was for your friend.Yougot some expensive treat of a latte, extra caffeine and raspberry syrup.“ Ray could almost taste it, and thought such a drink ought to be repulsive, not make his mouth water.

Ray’s face felt hot again, then his neck, the skin prickling. He met Callalily’s unreasonably knowing stare and took another breath. His heartbeat blocked out the distant sounds of the police, of Benny. “Spring and summer,” Ray said quietly, “heat and sex and sunshine.” Weres were creatures of the moon, and yet…. “You smell like….” He leaned down, inching toward warm skin. “You smell like—you.”

Callalily raised his eyebrows. “Well, I should hope I smell like me.”

Ray remembered to blink. “Who are you?”

Callalily flinched hard and fell back a step.

Ray blinked again, shaking his head despite the ache. Callalily’s eyes were so bright. Ray didn’t want to breathe in and know what emotion had brought tears to the fairy’s eyes.

“Asking a fairy their name?” Callalily asked, a wobble in his voice. He flinched again at the concerned, “Cal,“ from his friend. He nodded as if responding to whatever Benny hadn’t said, then met Ray’s stare. “You truly don’t know me?”

“I…” Ray tossed his head again, but his thinking remained slow, his senses distracted by the pervasive scent ofCallalily/Callalily/Callalily. “I know you,” he began cautiously, because they had met, now, and to deny it felt wrong. “But I don’t—“ The lack of more information made him reach up to pull at the knot in his tie.

This, for whatever reason, made Callalily sigh and then offer Ray another smile, small and sad. “Ray, I’d like it if I could check you to make sure you’re really okay. Earlier, you said youwould befine, which implies you are not finenow.“ He paused to clear his throat. “I know you heal, but that doesn’t mean things can’t go wrong. Like last year, you know? When there was thatincident,“ the sound he made was reasonably close to a wolf’s growl, “and you got hit with a piece of fragmented bullet from a ricochet, and it went under your skin, and you skin kept healing over it so the doctor had to cut you open to get it out.”

Ray stared blankly at Callalily while his heartbeat rocketed up to something like panic and the pain in his skull became almost blinding.

“On your left arm,” Callalily added as if realizing Ray had no idea what he was talking about. “Right here.” He pointed to a spot on his own forearm and held his breath when Ray slowly pushed up his sleeve enough to feel for a tiny, tiny scar for a wound he had no memory of receiving.

“Ray.Ray, just listen. I can see you freaking out, Ray, but you’re fine. Ray, please, you’re scaring Benny.”

Ray raised his head and took his hand from his arm.

“I’m notthatscared,“ Benny asserted quietly. “But I would like to know what the hell is going on.”

Ray snorted, but then whispered, more tired than he could ever remember being, “I think I’d remember a doctor slicing open my arm.”

“Your eyes are glowing,” Callalily answered, just as softly.

“You need to…” Ray swallowed, then forced the words out. “You need to leave here, in case I… do something. Find my partner. Find Detective Del Mar. She should be—“ He had no idea where Penn was. “She should be close.”

“You could never hurt me. Well, not seriously. Not in a way I haven’t asked for.” Callalily smiled again when Ray turned to him, startled. This smile seemed happier, if distant. “That’s one of the things you made sure I knew. Just like how you told me once, if something happened, like if you couldn’t shift back or something, I am supposed to get closer to you, not farther. I am supposed to tell you to breathe. So breathe, Ray. Breathe deep.”

“I don’t know you!” Ray insisted with a snarl that was already fading.

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