Page 35 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
Shudder waited until they had all greeted him and settled. Then he spread his hands, indicating the group. "Here they are. They've all taken vari names, so you can forget the born ones. Over there—" he indicated the nervous girl, "—that's Echo. The twins are Resonance and Frequency. This young buck at my feet is Hawkwind. The tall beauty to your right is Wave, and the young woman sitting on your left is Morphea."
"I remember you." Damien turned to Mohawk-girl…Morphea. "I heard you through the screams."
"Yeah." She met him stare for blank stare.
"Thank you."
Morphea shrugged. "It's what I do."
"So what do you do?" Hawkwind asked, all belligerent teenage bluster. "Toby said you're vari. I'm not talking to any norm investigators."
Blaze bristled for both of them, but Damien answered first. "I'm Damien Hazelwood, and I'm a locator."
"Oh. So you find shit like lost buttons and stuff."
"No." Damien stared out into imaginary landscapes, the vague glassy look the one Blaze recognized as him trolling through unhappy memories. "I never could find things. I find people." He shook himself, coming back in from the dark. "And that's Blaze Emerson. He's a sparker."
Hawkwind's eyes flew wide. He gaped at Blaze as he blurted out, "TheBlaze Emerson? Took down the Mescap Syndicate on his own?"
"That's me, kid. Though I'd recommend backup for something like that. Didn't come out of it so good. Stuck in a damn hospital bed for three weeks."
"And he calls me reckless." Shudder had the nerve to wink at him.
"I only risk my own skin."
"Gentlemen." Damien massaged his temples with both hands. "If we could stay focused. Please."
"You want to ask things," Echo murmured. "Your brain is a mess."
Wave opened her hand, palm up. "So ask. You can't be scared of us."
Damien nodded, apparently not offended. Blaze wondered if he could be.
"Dr. Parma sent me. She said students had been vanishing from the Western Academy. Sometimes en route to and from the Academy, sometimes directly from school. Your pictures were among the missing students. I went to the school, picked up the trails. Six led here, but only six."
"Okay. But that's not a question, Mr. Locator Man," Morphea said. "You getting to a point?"
"It's a relief that you're safe, the six of you. At least some of you are." Damien hesitated, maybe struggling for words as he sometimes seemed to. "I thought when I started that I'd find you all in the same place. That the truth would be easily uncovered. But the truth, as the playwright said, is rarely pure and never simple. I don't know what's happened. I don't understand it at all. I hoped you might help."
Frequency leaned forward. "You said, 'some of us are.' What's that mean?"
"I've… we've only found eight. You six. The other two were dead."
That shocked the kids. Symptom of youth. You believe bad things happen, but you can't actually die.
"Dead? Who?" Hawkwind whispered.
"Katie Hempstead and Cory Tanner."
Echo wailed and burst into tears. Wave slid over on their rock to hug her.
"Shit," Resonance spat out. "I thought since they weren't here…"
"You thought what?" Blaze prompted.
"That maybe they—"
"Shut up! You can't—"
