“I hope you weren’t planning to send him to law school. He seems to have been bitten by the bug.”

“Whatever makes him happy. We’re quite proud of him. You should see the story he wrote for the school paper.”

He might as well have given the kid a million bucks.

We chatted for a minute or two about the election. His campaign manager came by and hustled him out the door to an appointment, and we took our leave as well.

“WHO’S SAMMY?” Stacee asked when we were in the car, driving back to the paper.

“A friend of his. She ran away last Wednesday.”

“On Halloween?”

She had asked a simple question, but it stayed with me, making me feel a chill down my spine.

What could scare a witch on Halloween?

BY THE TIME I had finished writing my story, it was late afternoon. I called Frank and arranged to meet him for dinner, then sat thinking about Sammy. An idea came to me.

I called Mrs. Riley at Casa de Esperanza. Luckily, she remembered me. She told me that everything had been a little disorganized at the shelter since Mrs. Fremont’s death, and she started crying.

I tried to calm her down and commiserated with her. She said the kids at the shelter weren’t taking Mrs. Fremont’s death very well, and there had been a lot of behavior problems as a result. She asked me if I was going to Mrs. Fremont’s funeral the next morning, and when I told her I was, she broke up again. This didn’t make what I was about to do any easier, but I went right ahead.

“Sammy Garden is going to be staying with me for a couple of days and she asked me to come by and pick up a few of the things she left behind.” It was a bald-faced lie, of course. If she hadn’t been coping with the aftermath of Mrs. Fremont’s death, I’ve no doubt Mrs. Riley’s suspicions would have been raised. Instead, she told me how relieved she was to hear that Sammy was safe and with someone who cared about her, and invited me to come on over.

I felt like a first-class heel as I drove over to the shelter, but I didn’t see any other way to try and search through Sammy’s belongings for some clue as to where she might have gone or what might have frightened her away.

As Mrs. Riley led me back to Sammy’s room, she said she was about to leave the shelter to make a run to the grocery store, but Paul Fremont would be around if I needed anything. I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with this news, because I wasn’t so sure I could fool Paul as easily.

When we reached the door of the room, a tanned young blonde with a street-hardened look scrutinized me. Mrs. Riley introduced her as Sarah, and told her I was there to collect some of Sammy’s things. If there wasn’t such obvious animosity between Mrs. Riley and Sarah, perhaps the older woman might have caught the look of pure skepticism on the girl’s face.

As soon as Mrs. Riley left us, Sarah closed the door to the room and leaned up against it. “You’re a liar,” she said, giving me the kind of look that starts fistfights.

I ignored her and went over to the closet. “You might as well show me which of these things are yours, so I don’t take them by mistake.”

“If Sammy asked you to get her things for her, she must have told you what they looked like.”

I shrugged and moved my face closer to the clothes and started pulling out some of the ones that smelled most of incense and herbal oils. I was careful to shield my bloodhound act from Sarah, and the look on her face as I turned around with Sammy’s clothes told me I had appeased her to some degree.

“Where is the little bag of bones?” she asked, lighting a cigarette.

“Are you worried about her?”

“Are you kidding? She’s a pain in the ass.” But she started helping me gather shoes and underwear. I was glad I didn’t have to sort Sammy’s underwear out the way I had picked the clothes.

“Something tells me you are worried about her,” I said.

She stopped what she was doing and gave me the eyeball again.

“You don’t know where she is, do you? You made up some story so you could search her stuff. Are you a cop?”

“Reporter,” I said, pissed to be busted by a smart-mouthed kid.

But Sarah had dropped the hard act and was looking at me in wonder. “You’re the reporter she talked to? She told me she was going to get her name in the paper, but I didn’t believe her.” I watched as she reconsidered me in this new light. For all I knew, she could go running down the hall and fink on me to Paul Fremont.

Instead, she said, “Where do you think she is?”

“I don’t know, but I’m worried enough to come in here and lie to some pretty nice people in order to try and find out. Did she say anything to you?”

She shook her head, then said vehemently, “Sammy is such a fucking idiot!”

I knew better than to take that at face value. “She didn’t mention anything that might have been scaring her?”

“She told me that something had gone wrong in the coven, that people weren’t what they said they were. She was really upset about it. But I wasn’t into her dumb witchcraft thing. You know what? I really thought she was gonna drop that bullshit. She even talked about it. Halloween night, she said she was going to get away from those nutcases and find new friends.”

She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes and turned away from me. I didn’t want to insult her by acknowledging that I saw she wasn’t so tough, so I turned to the desk and looked through some papers.

“Hey! There’s some personal stuff there – nothing of Sammy’s.”

I stopped and turned around. “Where’s her journal?”

“What journal?”

I was banking on the hope that teenage girls still kept diaries and journals. Sarah had backed me down once; I wasn’t going to let her do it a second time.

“You know what journal.”

She shrugged and put out the cigarette, much to my lungs’ relief, and flopped stomach-down on one of the beds. I thought she was just ignoring me, but then I saw she was reaching under the mattress. She tugged at something and brought out a small, spiral-bound notebook about the size of her hand. She held it out to me. “There’s nothing in it about where she went. I already read it.”

Just then there was a knock at the door, and she quickly sat on the notebook. “Who is it?”

The door opened as a voice said, “It’s me, Paul.”

“I asked, ‘Who is it?’ “she said angrily. “I didn’t say, ‘Come on in.’”

“Hello, Irene,” he said to me, ignoring Sarah. “Mrs. Riley tells me you’ve heard from Sammy. That really is a relief. I’ve been worried about her. Of course, with everything else…”

His voice trailed off and he looked away. I felt awful. I wanted to just confess what I was up to – I couldn’t do this to Mrs. Fremont’s grandson. But before I could say anything, Sarah was up off the bed, and to my shock, embracing me.

“Everything’s such a mess now!”

She was sobbing onto my chest. My hands were full of Sammy’s clothes, and here I was being hugged tightly by this kid who, moments before, had been ready to spit in my face. It was only when I felt her slip the journal between the clothes and my chest that I realized what she was up to. I freed one hand and put an arm around her, and picked up my cue.

“There, there, Sarah, it’s hard on all of us.”

Paul Fremont was watching us, puzzled but immobile.

Sarah looked up at me and said softly, “Well, at least Sammy’s safe.” As she spoke, tears welled up in her eyes, so that by the time she turned to face Paul, she didn’t have to fake her crying.

I studied him as he looked between us, but couldn’t figure out why Sarah had reacted to him as she did.

“Paul, maybe you could find one of the other girls to comfort Sarah. I really have to be going. I can find my way out.”

He nodded, but put a hand on my elbow as I passed him in the doorway. For a moment, my heart leapt into my throat, but he only asked, “Will you be at Grandmother’s funeral tomorrow?”