Page 2 of From the Noblest Motives
Blaze startled Damien out of his thought circles. "Seems a little convenient, don't you think?"
"The cake colors?"
"Ah, no." The twitch at one corner of Blaze's mouth was almost a smile. "Not the cakes. The bracelet."
"Yes."
Blaze nodded, obviously accustomed to Damien's reversion to single-word answers. "No trails, no hint of those four kids we couldn't find, and out of the clear blue fucking sky, some informant dances into Guild Center with Hillary's bracelet."
"Unnamed informant."
"Right. Who just happens to know the coordinates where they found it. Pretty good odds this is a trap, Twitch."
Damien gave half a shrug. "Maybe. We still have to look."
"No arguments there. But if it's not a trap, I can't figure how to put the pieces together so they make sense." Blaze flicked him a look, concern lurking in his eyes. "You sure I can't give you a firearm? Something small?"
"I'm sure. I have my shovel."
It was a dark joke and a terrible one, but Blaze snorted in amusement. He might have been the only person alive who understood it.
"How close?"
Damien consulted the readout on the dash. "A little to the right. Should be just past that stand of scrub over there."
While Damien had been born with an unusual variant talent that allowed him to track people's trails, he needed a starting point. For the first part of this job, most of the trails had started at the Western Academy, a school specifically for variant children. The kids who were still missing—Hillary, Deshaun, Maia, and Danilo—hadn't crossed or paralleled any of the other trails Damien had been able to follow. He suspected they had been heading to school and never made it there.
If the bracelet, confirmed as Hillary's by her mother, had been found at the coordinates up ahead, there was a good chance Damien could pick up her trail. Unless someone stole it from her and lost it there.
Unless it was planted there by a third party for some reason I can't puzzle out. Unless a crow picked it up and carried it an unknown distance from Hillary's last actual location. Unless… Stop it. Right now.
"Twitch? You getting anything?"
"Just an itch so far." Damien flapped a hand toward Blaze. "Slower. Slower. Wait… stop. Let me out."
Blaze whipped his head around as he eased them to a stop. "You okay? Did somebody die here?"
"No." Damien slid from the vehicle, realizing the answer had been too short and sharp. "Nothing like that."
Fingers tingling, the energy of human life signatures humming in his brain, Damien hurried to the spot where the paths called to him. The sun made the day too warm for a jacket, and in only a T-shirt, he didn't need to strip down to read the trails. Hillary, yes, but the other three students as well—they'd all been there.
"Hey?" Blaze called softly, and Damien realized he'd been standing frozen with his eyes squeezed shut for too long.
Damien pulled in a trembling breath and eased back from the trails enough to answer as he pointed toward the west. "They came from that direction." Then toward the northeast. "And all four continue this way. If they were looking for Shade, they came too far east."
"All right. Hell of a lot more than we had before. You need a hand?"
Do I?While Damien's vision had blurred and his knees didn't feel reliable, he knew saying yes would be self-indulgent. Yes, he wanted Blaze to touch him. Yes, he wanted the support of those strong hands. But once he started down that road… Damien shook his head. "I'm fine."
"Uh-huh."
Blaze gave one of those snorts that was more exasperated than amused and stomped back to the vehicle. He didn't, Damien noted, slam the door. The anger was there, without a doubt, but muted and scrupulously reined in. In a way, he wished Blaze would stop being so careful and yell at him.
After a few minutes silent driving in the direction Damien had indicated, he blurted out, "No Dryad."
Anyone else would've answered with confusion or even derision. Blaze nodded, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "Makes sense. They didn't hook up with her, so they didn't have a guide, just a rumor about a direction. Way off course to run into any of Shudder's hooligans, too."
That Blaze hadn't said something sarcastic about stating the obvious should've been a relief. Instead it hurt. He was censoring himself, being so careful of Damien's feelings. The tiny bit of warmth from the cake discussion evaporated, replaced by frustration. Not that he had the first idea what to do about the divide between them, nor was he sure that he should.
