Dreams of Fire (Maple Hill Chronicles Book 1) by Elizabeth Alix

things.
    Pressing the lids back on her half finished food, she left the sidewalk table and headed back towards the house. Walking back through the humid evening shadows, a measure of peace stole into her mind soothing her agitation. It really was a beautiful little town, and she wanted to be able to call it home more than anything at this moment. Driving off into the sunset to some random destination was not something she wanted to do at all.
      Oscar met her at the door with a plaintive meow, and she opened a new can of food for him and cleaned the litter box. The house felt ordinary. Her appetite returned enough for her to finish dinner. She surfed the ‘net for weather and the news on her laptop and learned that thunderstorms were predicted for the Hudson Valley tomorrow. Perhaps the heat and humidity would cool off for a few days.
    Feeling pensive, Marianne sat at the piano for a while and did fingering exercises and worked her way haltingly through some more of Bach’s pieces for Anna Magdalena. She turned out the light and fell asleep on the mattress, feeling much better.

    Marianne dreamt of fire again: all consuming, terrifying fire that burned everything in its path from furniture to curtains, to walls and floors. Smoke filled the air making it hard to breathe. Someone was screaming, trapped in the basement, unable to get out. Someone she loved. She searched for a way to reach the cellar door, but veils of smoke and flame cut her off. Increasingly desperate, she prepared to hurl herself through the flames to get to the stairs.
    She jerked awake as her dream self jumped. Panting, heart pounding in her chest, it took several disoriented seconds to understand where she was and realize that she was in darkness and silence. The dream had been so real; it was almost as if she’d been teleported from the inferno to her quiet room. She had been convinced someone was trapped in the basement. Just a dream, she thought, trembling slightly with relief.
    She lay back weakly on her damp sheets. Her skin cooled in the slight breeze from the window, and Oscar’s heavy, warm weight pressed against her leg.
    Rats, another night of crappy sleep, she thought in frustration. She couldn’t go on living like this with interrupted sleep at night and jangled nerves during the day. She needed to talk to someone who would listen to her, or she’d go mad.
    It took her a long time to fall asleep again, in spite of Oscar’s reassuring presence.

Chapter 8
    Geoffrey Chubb put down the phone and glanced out the office door. Everyone was busy out there even on a Friday, and he had a few minutes before his next meeting. Toggling between windows on his computer screen, he brought up his email. There was no news from Perry yet. They were drinking buddies, and Perry worked downtown for an architectural firm close to NYU. Geoffrey had asked him last night to keep an eye out for Marianne because she’d been unusually effective in evading him for the last several days, and Geoffrey was annoyed. Perry had located her once before.  
    He sent off a carefully worded email to Perry asking him to keep looking. He wanted to be sure no one could tell what he was doing. Not that it was illegal or anything, just that it wasn’t work related. Then he had an idea and skimmed through his address book. Yes, he still had the phone and address for one of her old professors. She might have told Wentwroth where she was. He’d have to think about how to word a message if she didn’t’ surface in a day or two.
    He’d sent her a couple of emails saying she’d left her stuff at his house in hopes of eliciting a response. She’d always risen to the bait in the past, and he’d had fun meeting with her only to tell her he’d thrown it away already and no longer had it. She’d teared up, and he’d enjoyed pretending to be sympathetic.  
    He flipped to the retail business newsfeed he subscribed to and idly read the entries. Doing some homework before this