Layla
Someone was screaming.
High-pitched, frantic. Unending. Someone was screaming like they were being torn apart alive. Chased by the hounds of hell. Plummeting to their doom. Screaming like the world was ending.
A woman?
Was a woman screaming?
For a moment, my mother’s face swam before my eyes—had she screamed as the car tumbled off the bridge? Had her final moment been one of terror? Had she cried as her life ended?
But her image shredded before my eyes like a torn canvas, and the screaming continued. A dream.
No, not a dream. Not screaming.
It was too high, too loud, too constant.
An alarm? An alarm!
I sat up so fast my head spun. My eyes fluttered in the darkness of the sprawling bedroom. Somewhere in the vast house, an alarm wailed, ripping the silence of the night into
