Free Secretly Sam by Heather Killough-Walden Page B

on to make use of every pen within any kind of proximity to her. Logan had stayed for sleepovers a few times and used some of Meagan’s pens to jot down ideas she’d awoken with in the middle of the night. All Meagan had had to do was break the pens open and let some of the ink spill out into a bottle of water.
    She and Lehrer cast the protection spell, which focused on the possibility that Samhain would again take on the form of a vampire or other creature Logan had created if and when he came after her. But half-way through the casting, Meagan received a disturbing call from Dominic Maldovan. The sound on the line had been scratchy and muffled, as if the connection were terrible. Dominic sounded frantic. He said something about the railroad tracks south of town, and about Sam. The rest of the message, Meagan couldn’t comprehend. But before she could ask Dom to repeat himself, the line went dead.
    She tried to call him back of course, as did Lehrer, but both calls went to voicemail. Their texts went unanswered as well. So Lehrer instructed Meagan to grab the spell components and her backpack and told her she could finish the spell in the car.
    Now they drove hastily through the empty, wet streets of a sleeping town. Lehrer switched his windshield wipers into high gear and adjusted his headlights so that there wasn’t so much back-glare. They were headed for the unfinished development just south of the city. There were railroad tracks there that intercepted with city limits; this was Mr. Lehrer’s best guess as to the location Dom had been talking about.
    They couldn’t call the cops; they’d figured out that due to the proximity of the police during the accident with Alec, Sam might now be one of them.
    The most they could do was quickly finish the protection spell for Logan – which Meagan had just done – and then actually contact both Logan and Katelyn and fill them in on what was happening.
    Meagan attempted to do that now as she dropped her leather backpack back onto the floor boards of Lehrer’s car and pulled the cell phone out of her other jacket pocket. She’d forgotten to plug it in earlier that night, and the battery was down to 36 percent. She hated that. She hated it when it wasn’t at least at 91 percent. It was just a sort of OCD thing with her. She would normally never let it get this low… but then nothing about life had been normal lately.
    With a frustrated face and a pursing of her lips, she pressed the phone icon on her screen – and was blinded by the sudden glare of headlights up ahead.
    “What the – ” Lehrer sat back in the driver’s seat beside her, squinting against the blinding light. A distant rumble on the road grew in volume, a building roar. It sounded as if the ground were shaking, as if a massive engine vibrated toward them down the dark, wet street.
    The headlights grew brighter, closer . Meagan shielded her eyes with her phone hand.
    An image of death, fate, and possibility flashed before her mind. The witch in her, that beautiful magical being open to the infinite, complex fractals of the universe, recognized the split-second moment where roads connected and paths crossed and destiny could be decided.
    And in that moment, she reached out with her free hand and pulled the steering wheel out of Lehrer’s grip. The car careened off the road with frenzied speed. The wheels wobbled, skidded insanely, and the car shot into the bushes to the accompanying cacophony of a semi truck screaming past.
    The car bounced painfully as it flew through tangled underbrush and soared nose-first into a ditch. For the briefest moment, there was the smooth nothingness of air beneath the tires. Then the ground rushed up to swallow them, the airbag in front of Meagan detonated, and she felt a force so powerful, she went instantly numb.
    There was a ringing in her ears as her vision receded, and she had the strangest instant of complete clarity. She absolutely, positively knew that Samhain had