Secretly Sam Read Online Free Page B

in leather, and absolutely perfect. He seemed out of place in the school, as if he’d come from some city far away and much more important. His fingers moved with idle perfection across the frets and strings of his guitar, and when he thought he was alone, he sat beneath his locker after school and played.
    It was then that Logan would listen to him. Around the corner, out of sight, she would happen upon the lyrics floating like magic on disturbed air, and she would stop. She would lean against the wall and close her eyes as she felt his music somewhere deep inside. His voice crooned. When he played with his band, it was Alec that sang the songs; Dom was the guitarist, the mute musical genius.
    But in the hollow silence of the school’s skeletal inner walkways, Dominic Maldovan sang softly. Of pain. Of longing. Of things nobody could possibly understand.
    Now Logan stared down at the phone in her hand. His voice still echoed in her head. He’d called her personally, like a prayer both whispered and answered on the wind. Unfortunately, the things he had to tell her were anything but musical.
    Alec Sheffield was dead. The police had killed him.
    Logan let her hand drop into her lap and looked up through the windshield. A fat drop of water slapped the glass, making a circular design like a crown. She thought of Samhain, a king in his own realm. Her mind spun as a few more drops followed the first, and it began to rain.
    Night had fallen since she’d left her house earlier that day. At the moment, she was in a deserted tennis club parking lot on the outskirts of town. A few years back, a developer with buckets of money had come into the city and begun construction on what was supposed to have been a major establishment. He’d gone to jail for embezzlement before he’d been able to finish the development, but what he’d created lent the area the perfect, eerie feel for Logan.
    The giant neighborhood would have boasted two dozen tennis courts, three outdoor Olympic sized pools, the largest fitness center in three states, a three mile indoor running and walking trail, and an eight mile outdoor trail that wound through both natural and unnatural forested land.
    What was left behind was a piece of carved ground that had become a ghost town before it actually had a chance to be a town. Weeds grew through cracks in the peeling paint of the tennis courts and the parking lot was riddled with pot holes. The smooth white cement back alleys were dotted with the brown metal housings for wiring that had rusted together and gone bad years ago. Cul-de-sacs rounded before houses that weren’t there, and the trails reminded Logan of something Alice would have followed in Wonderland. They were always empty. No one ever came out here. She supposed it felt a little too sad for most people. Like a promise that had been terribly broken.
    But she loved it here. To her, it was perfect, right down to the railroad tracks that abutted the back end of the development. In the middle of the night, the whistle could be heard for miles.
    Normally, Logan didn’t have time to come here. Most days, there was work or school or bad weather, or Taylor and his rampages.
    But at the moment, writing was no longer an option, Taylor was with her father, and she didn’t have to be at work this weekend. She could have joined Meagan and Katelyn somewhere, but being with them right now made her feel guilty and conspicuous. It may have been Meagan’s messed up magic that allowed Samhain to come through to their world, but it was Logan who’d made him what he was now, and it was Logan he was after. It was because of her that so many people had been hurt. It was her fault they were all once more in danger.
    So, she’d come here instead. She’d walked the length of one of the trails as the sun had set. Then she’d come back and turned to stroll down half of one of the others before a nagging feeling had her turning around and heading back toward her car.
    Not ten