Mercy Blain’s house was on fire, but that wasn’t her biggest problem.
Flames licked orange tongues up the walls; great billows of greasy smoke poured into the night sky. Emergency service vehicles were gathered about the burning house, lights strobing across fences, gardens and the shocked faces of neighbours standing about in slippers, nightgowns clutched at their necks.
An ambulance sat in the middle of the street, back doors flung open. Inside the pool of light spreading from the ambulance doors, Mercy stood with the dog in her arms, ignoring the paramedics. Her body was shaking and tears were coursing down her cheeks. She could hear nothing—not the jets of water shooting into the flames, not the hoses slapping onto the pavement, not the shouted directions of the fire-fighters. Mercy could hear nothing but the high-pitched ringing of her own pure, absolute terror…









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