Free Gallagher Girls 5 - Out of Sight, Out of Time by Ally Carter

course, there are the perfect day, perfect moment, perfect life dreams that come sometimes and make a person hit the snooze button for hours, trying to go back to sleep and make the perfect moments last.
    This wasn’t like that.
    At first, it felt like the school must have been on fire, because the smell of smoke was so thick and real. I was too hot, smothered. Everything was crashing down around me, pushing in from all sides, and yet my arms couldn’t move. I struggled against the bonds, heard talking and laughter, and fought harder.
    I had to escape—outrun whatever it was that was chasing me—before the fire of the tombs caught up to me, before the smoke became too strong.
    And then the fire was over. I was suddenly cold, and my feet were bare. My blood felt warm as it ran over my skin, but I kept running anyway.
    I had to keep running.
    There was something rough against my hands, and yet I kept clawing, fighting, trying to find my way out.
    “I should have known you’d be here.”
    The words were new. They didn’t belong there. And because of them I had to stop. To think.
    “The least you can do is look at me when I’m talking to you.”
    And that was when I knew the dream was over. I turned to see Bex twenty feet away, arms crossed, staring daggers.
    “Where am I?” I asked, but Bex just rolled her eyes.
    “Yeah, you’re lost. You know every inch of this mansion, Cam. If you expect me to believe that you of all people are lost—”
    “This is the basement,” I said, looking up and down the darkened hallway. I knew there was a narrow staircase behind Bex, leading to the foyer above. To my left I saw the old Gallagher family tapestry. Behind it lay my favorite secret passage, and beyond that, the world.
    “What am I doing here, Bex?” I asked, suddenly afraid. “What time is it? How did I get here?!”
    But Bex didn’t answer. She just looked down at my bare feet and said, “If you’re running away again, you might want to remember your shoes.”
    She was starting to walk away when I yelled, “I’m not leaving!”
    And then she spun back to me. The cold indifference was gone, replaced by a terrible rage as she shouted, “Then what are you doing wandering the halls in the middle of the night? What are you doing down here? Why…You know what? Never mind.”
    “I don’t know. I was asleep and—”
    “Sleepwalking?” Bex asked, then gave a short laugh. “Likely bloody story.”
    “I wouldn’t lie to you, Bex,” I heard myself shouting. “I have never lied to you.”
    For a second, her expression changed. My friend was there, and she believed me. She missed me. She was as terrified as I was. But whatever she was going to say next was drowned out by the sound of pounding feet.
    “Cammie!” Abby appeared at the end of the hallway. “Rachel, I have her,” my aunt yelled, but she didn’t stop moving until she held me.
    “Don’t do that,” Abby said, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. It was the first time anyone had dared to touch me since I’d tried to kill Dr. Steve. “Cammie, don’t leave your suite in the middle of the night again. Do. Not. Do. That.”
    And then my mother was there, pushing past Bex, pulling me from my aunt’s arms and into her own. “Cammie, sweetheart, look at me. Are you okay?”
    “Of course she’s okay,” Bex said.
    “Bex,” Abby warned.
    “She’s fine! She’s just a…” Bex started, but she stopped when she saw my mother’s eyes.
    “Cam”—Mom gripped my arms so tightly it almost hurt—“what are you doing here?”
    At the end of the hall, Professor Buckingham and Madame Dabney were rushing closer, both of them in housecoats, their hair in curlers. It might have been funny. I might have wondered if the two of them had been in the middle of a sleepover, complete with mani-pedis and facials, if Liz and Macey hadn’t arrived by then too. I saw Liz shaking, trembling in a way that probably had nothing to do with the drafty hall.
    “I came