With a gasp, Mirabelle jolted out of sleep. She fumbled with the sheets, shoving them off her sweaty body as though they were claws threatening to drag her back into the darkness. It was a dream; she tried to tell herself. Only a dream.
Unfortunately, her body wasn’t understanding what she tried to tell her brain. Her heart pounded away in her chest at an alarming rate. Mirabelle’s breaths came in short, desperate puffs of air. She was covered in sweat from head to toe, as though the fire she had been surrounded by in her dream had been real.
But it had been real, she reminded herself. With her vision blurry, Mirabelle closed her eyes, and just like that, the image of the flames pouring out of the Fowler building while the fire alarm went off was back in her mind’s eye, front and cente
