Sam I Am (16 page)

Logan blinked, confused. “What?” she asked, trying to keep her voice down so that the other students wouldn’t hear her.

But Dominic didn’t seem to care about the other students. He raised his voice anyway, his tone one of stark frustration. “Don’t shut me out like this. Not now.” He pulled her back against the lockers behind her and pinned her there, one hand now a firm grip on her arm, the other braced against the locker door behind her.

“After everything we’ve been through together, you think that I’m just going to let you go? Just because you have a messed up family?” he asked her. He wasn’t yelling – not quite. But his tone was harsh and more than a little hurt and his eyes were fierce where they caught and held hers.

“Logan, listen to me.” He lowered his voice and leaned in, trapping her beneath him. “I’m sorry that I’ve never had the guts to tell you this before, believe me. But after what we’ve gone through in the last few days, not a thing scares me anymore and that’s the truth,” he told her, his entire being now radiating an intensity that was lighting Logan’s blood on fire.

If students were still watching, she didn’t care. Her entire world had become Dominic Maldovan and his eyes and his voice and his body, which was terribly close at that moment.

“I care about you, Logan.” His gaze flicked from her eyes to her lips and back again. His voice lowered once more, now becoming a whisper. “I have for
years
. If you think something like this is going to push me away, you’re wrong.” He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Logan had never felt so shocked, so confused. She heard what Dom was saying and she could understand him well enough, but she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to believe what she was hearing.

Dominic cared about her. He really cared. About her? Of all of the girls he could have… he wanted
her
? She shook her head. Just a little. She opened her mouth to say something, but realized she had no clue what to tell him. So, she shook her head again and said, “Dom, I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell me that you’ll give us a chance, Logan. Don’t shut me out. That’s all I ask.”

Logan hesitated and Dominic waited, his gaze piercing and steady. He wasn’t going to let her go until she agreed. That realization thrummed through her like magic.

“Okay,” she finally breathed. “I won’t shut you out.” She offered him the smallest of smiles, but it was from her heart.

He returned the smile, his grip on her arm lessening up as relief flooded his handsome features. “Let me give you a ride to the hospital?”

“But you hate hospitals,” she whispered.

“I don’t care, Logan. I’ll go for you.”

Logan blinked, once more at a loss for words. So, instead, she nodded.

The warning bell rang, and the two of them glanced around to see that the hallway had mostly cleared out.

His smile broadened. “Okay, then,” he said. He leaned in, slowly, with the obvious intent of trying to kiss her yet again – but a throat being cleared at the end of the hall brought him up short.

Dominic gritted his teeth and clearly tried to hide his mounting irritation. He straightened and he and Logan turned to face Mr. Lehrer, who was watching them with mixed emotion. Part of his expression was bemused. But there was a troubled aspect to his eyes.

“I need to speak with you both,” he said, coming nearer. “In my office, as soon as possible.” He paused, shoving his hands into the pockets of his corduroy sports coat. “I’m sorry,” he added, as if it were an afterthought. Then he turned and strode down the hall toward his classroom.

“What do you think that’s all about?” Dominic asked softly, his expression troubled. He obviously hadn’t liked the look on Mr. Lehrer’s face either. It was foreboding.

Dom turned to look down at her. She was hugging herself and suddenly aware of it under his scrutiny. “I don’t like seeing you afraid,” he told her softly. He reached out and took her hand in his, slowly sliding his fingers over her wrist and her palm until he intertwined them with hers and squeezed gently. “I’ve been wanting to do this since the fourth grade.”

Logan looked down at their hands, feeling bewildered. But she didn’t pull away. Not all the Samhains in the multiverse could have made her pull her hand out of his in that moment. It felt too good.

It fit.

When Logan and Dominic came into the classroom hand in hand, it was to find Mr. Lehrer leaning on the edge of his desk and Meagan Stone sitting on one of the desks closest to him. Both of them glanced up as the pair entered and, though Meagan looked slightly pleased at seeing their hands linked, it was obvious that neither of them was surprised.

“Please have a seat,” Mr. Lehrer instructed calmly.

I really don’t like the look on his face,
Logan thought warily. She could tell he was starkly worried, troubled, and even a touch angry. So she looked away, her gaze sliding from his to a poster hanging on the wall. It was a photographic shot of Stone Henge beneath a full moon. The moon cast a bluish light over the scene, reminding Logan of her dreams.

“I’m afraid I have some troubling news,” Lehrer said after she and Dom had taken seats beside each other.

“Don’t tell us Sam’s not dead,” Dominic said, a half smile on his face. He had obviously been joking, trying to lighten the dark mood of the classroom.

However, when Mr. Lehrer didn’t reply and he and Meagan exchanged worried glances, Dominic’s green eyes widened. “Oh holy fuck.” He leaned forward in his seat. “You’ve got to be shitting me!” he exclaimed softly.

“I’m afraid not,” Lehrer continued.

Logan’s fingers and toes began to tingle. She felt and heard a building roar in her eardrums. The world was slipping slightly. “He’s… he’s not dead?” She wasn’t sure she’d said it out loud. It seemed she had, but her voice sounded as if it were coming from far away.

“He was never dead, Logan,” Lehrer explained.

Logan fought off an encroaching faint. It wasn’t like her to faint. She didn’t do that kind of thing. Why did she feel like doing so now?

“Logan?”

In her waning, peripheral vision, she saw Dominic stand and vault over his desk. Then he was lowering to one knee beside her. “Logan, you okay?”

“Yes,” Logan managed. Her vision had tunneled a little, but she closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose. Out through her mouth. Then she did it again. “Yes.”

“Logan,” Mr. Lehrer was beside her now too, and he leaned on her desk and peered down into her gold eyes. “I don’t want to have to tell you all of this, but since it’s you he’s after, I have no choice.” He seemed to be watching her carefully, waiting for any further signs that she would check out of her conscious state.

“I’m fine,” she assured him, though she felt anything but. “Go on.”

Dominic grabbed her hand and squeezed it gently. It helped. In fact, it helped a
lot
.

“Very well.” Lehrer pulled up a desk that was near hers and sat on its edge. Meagan had already stood up from the desk she’d been occupying and now she came to kneel beside Logan as well.

“Logan, by now you know all about me being a witch,” Meagan said. “Mr. Lehrer is our grove leader. But there are other members in the group, and one of them is what we call a Seer,” she explained, speaking quickly but quietly.

“This morning, as we met to discuss what had happened with Sam Hain, the Seer had a vision,” Lehrer continued. “It wasn’t good.”

“Where is he?” Dominic asked. He said it as if it was all he wanted to know.

“We don’t know,” Lehrer said. “We barely know why things didn’t return to normal. At first, it was suggested that Meagan hadn’t completed the spell properly.” With that, he glanced at her and her cheeks reddened. “But I was there and I heard each and every word she spoke. She faltered in a few places, through no fault of her own, but she finished it and she finished it right. That wasn’t it.”

“Then what was it?” Dominic asked.

“It’s the moon,” Logan said then, before Mr. Lehrer could reply. The interruption caused a brief pause of silence to fill the room. Logan looked up at the poster on the wall, and then she met her history teacher’s gaze.

Lehrer straightened his glasses and nodded. “Yes. We believe it
is
the blue moon.”

“It’s holding the door open for him,” Logan went on, recalling once more the full, blue-colored moon from her dreams with Sam. It was always there, hanging prominent and stark against Sam’s sable skies. It had been tinted blue for a
reason
. It was symbolic. It was special; sacred to Sam Hain.

Again, Lehrer nodded, more slowly this time. He was watching Logan so carefully now, his expression one of keen interest and troubled wariness. “Logan, I know how shocking this must be for you to hear,” he told her. “I can’t imagine how frightened you must feel.”

No, you can’t,
thought Logan, because what frightened her most was something that she could never admit to her history teacher or to her friends, and most of all, to Dominic. What scared her more than anything else was that Sam Hain was
tempting
to her. He had a hold on her that defied description. He offered her an escape from this world – and an existence elsewhere. Somewhere beautiful and safe and warm and far away from everything that could ever harm her.

That’s
what frightened Logan. The enticement. The persuasion. She was afraid that if Sam ever got her alone again, she would give in to him. Just as she had done before. And this time, there might not be anyone around to save her life.

She looked up from the desk that she had been staring at and peered into Dominic’s jade green eyes. His grip on her hand tightened. She had more to live for now than she had before. Maybe it would make her stronger.

“I don’t understand,” Dominic said, not taking his eyes off of Logan. “There have been blue moons in October hundreds of times, if not thousands. What the hell makes this time different?”

“It could be one of several things,” Lehrer explained. “For one, Samhain has never been given solid form before. Something in Logan’s writing literally gave the Lord of the Dead
life.
That’s a powerful transformation and it might have been the first domino in a series of changes that affect the way the portal to Samhain’s world works.”

Oh, that just makes me feel fantastic,
thought Logan.
I’ve created a monster.

“Something else to consider is that it’s possible that no one has ever…” He cleared his throat and shot Meagan a guilty, nervous glance. “That no one has ever misspoken on the first part of the spell. Until now.”

“That can’t be true,” Logan said quickly, defending her friend. “Druids have been around for thousands of years and let’s face it – no one gives a perfect speech. I’m sure witches have messed up before. It isn’t Meagan’s fault.”

Meagan was blushing furiously now, but she had yet to come to her own defense. Instead, she shrugged. “Thanks Logan. But since there aren’t enough records to know for sure, it’s possible that Mr. Lehrer is right.”

“It matters little anyway,” Lehrer sighed. “Whatever the cause that has created this flux in our worlds, the effect is the same. Samhain is still out there somewhere,” he said. He glanced at Logan and she met his gaze. “And I think we can safely assume that when he can, he will come after Logan.”

“You honestly have no idea where he might be?” Dominic asked again, tearing his gaze from Logan’s to spear Mr. Lehrer with it. He was getting really angry; Logan could see it in the stiffness of his back beneath that leather jacket, and the tight way he clipped his words when speaking. His grip on her hand had also become slightly painful.

Lehrer took a deep breath and shook his head. “Not really. But I can tell you this much. Meagan’s spell threw a wrench into his plans. It hit him where it hurt, sapping his power and strength. Most likely, his spirit left the form it inhabited the way a human would flee from a burning building. But it wasn’t destroyed. He would probably want to take on solid form as soon as possible after that.”

Dominic mulled this over. Logan watched as a muscle twitched in his jaw. “So, what you’re saying is that he… possessed someone else? Someone nearby?” he asked.

Lehrer nodded.

“Probably someone else in the gym,” Meagan supplied. “Which narrows it down to almost every senior student in the school and quite a few of the teachers as well.”

“You’re telling us that somewhere in this school, Sam Hain is walking around dressed as someone else? In someone else’s body? And it could be
anyone
?” Dom asked.

“Any senior,” Lehrer corrected with a nod. “But yes.”

Dominic swore softly under his breath and ran his free hand through his hair. “It could be one of my band mates, for Christ’s sake.”

“It could.” Lehrer sighed again and pushed himself up and out of his desk. “Which is why you need to be aware of a few very important things.” He moved back to the big desk at one end of the classroom and walked around it. Logan watched him open his top drawer and pull out several small leather pouches. Each was a slightly different color, but it was clear that the discoloration was due to aging.