Free Sam I Am by Heather Killough-Walden

speaking on the other side.
    There was a unified moment of stunned silence between the three of them. And then Robert’s hand was wrenching the knob to the right and shoving the door open. He and his wife rushed into the room, Logan on their tails.
    Meagan was alone, and she was still lying on the bed, her eyes closed, her body immobile. However, she was talking. Her lips moved rhythmically and slowly.
    Deirdre and Robert ran to their daughter’s side. Logan stayed where she was, frozen in the doorway, her gaze transfixed by the silver spiral of life around Meagan’s neck that shimmered beneath the room’s low lighting.
    And then she seemed to jerk herself awake. She spun around and raced back out into the corridor. “Nurse!”
    It was twenty minutes later that Logan found herself walking slowly and numbly back to her car. The night was cool, the moon half-full, and she was feeling slightly nauseated with exhaustion. There was a gritty, metallic taste on her tongue and a fuzziness in her brain. She wondered, rather half-heartedly, whether she should even drive herself home.
    But for a town the size of hers, it was very, very late, and the streets were deserted. Even if she drove right across the median and into the oncoming lane, no one would be coming the opposite way.
    So, she reached her car, jammed the key in the lock, and gave it a stiff turn. Once she was behind the wheel, she fastened her seatbelt and fell into a deep silence.
    “ October,” Meagan had said. “October” and “the door is open. ” What did that mean? Over and over again, she’d whispered those words. They didn’t make any sense.
    Did they?
    Logan pulled the brown leather pouch out of her jacket pocket and turned it over in her hands. She could feel the lumps of objects inside and she caught the faint scent of some kind of herb.
    She untied the string holding it closed and dumped its contents into the palm of her hand. There were several polished stones, along with what looked like dried blackberries, still on the vine stem, and what smelled like leaves of mint. There was also a tiny, newborn tree branch; Ash, maybe. Some of the stones, Logan recognized: tiger’s eye, some kind of topaz, a small piece of cinnabar, something that looked like amethyst – maybe fluorite. She jostled them with her finger and closed her eyes in recognition.
    Of course. It was obvious what these were. They were spell components.
    Or perhaps magical charms. Protection maybe?
    Logan thought of her friend’s penchant for the bizarre. Or, what other people considered bizarre, anyway. Haunted houses, ancient grave yards, leaf-less trees and fleshless phalanges pounding out Danny Elfman music on a keyboard. That was the heart of Meagan, with her long black hair and violet-gray eyes and love of all that is strange. Her classmates, for the most part, considered her a freak.
    Logan, personally, had always secretly sided with Meagan. She wasn’t sure why she’d never said as much, but Logan was right there with her on her love of Halloween. She loved the night and the full moon and the smell of incense. She loved warm fire places on windy nights, lightning storms in the afternoon, foggy mornings, and unsolved mysteries.
    Logan’s favorite color was orange. Because she loved jack-o-lanterns so very much. Her favorite book was Bradbury’s Halloween Tree. And she was pretty sure that she, herself, had a “pumpkin fire soul.”
    Perhaps that was why Meagan had befriended her years ago. It had sort of happened quickly and Logan couldn’t even recall what had set the friendship off. But one day, she turned around, and it wasn’t only Katelyn that was standing beside her. Meagan was there too. Meagan trusted her. Maybe she felt that Logan understood.
    I understand what? Logan asked herself.
    And in the next moment, she had her answer. It dawned on her like a light bulb switching on or a splash of cold water on a tired face. Meagan Stone was a witch. She’d been in the