Saltwater Vampires by Kirsty Eagar

Author:Kirsty Eagar
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780645151411
Publisher: Little Wins Press
Published: 2021-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

23

Awake

Something pulled Jamie out of sleep and he found himself lying on Tanner’s floor, spit dribbling out the side of his open mouth, face half buried in a pillow. It was unbelievable how tired he was. Too tired to wipe his mouth, too tired to wake up properly. After a moment his breathing resumed, air whistling in and out of his nose in a semi-snore, and he felt himself falling gently back into his dream like a leaf seesawing to the ground.

He was on the sandy bottom of the ocean, the dark green water pressing down on him. But this time he wasn’t panicked. He didn’t need to breathe and the weight of the water was comforting. Far above the faint surge of the swell was a rustling on the surface. Things in the depths were quiet and still and timeless. It gave him a feeling of immense peace. Down here he was cocooned from the world.

Someone was repeating, Dark-heaving, boundless, endless and sublime, over and over. Jamie turned a circle in the water, looking for the source of the words, and saw the back of someone standing not too far from him. He remembered then that he’d heard those words before, and he half swam, half walked across to the other person. Jamie already knew it was Jeronimus. He was the one who’d said those words and Jamie recognised his straggly dark hair, waving in the water like seaweed. Oddly enough, he felt no fear.

He reached out, placed a hand on Jeronimus’s shoulder and turned him around.

And found that he was staring at his own face, his own blue eyes. Then something tickled the back of his neck and he spun around. There was no one behind him. All he saw was water, stretching into shadows. When he turned around, there was no one in front of him either.

He was tickled again. And again. It irritated him, like a fly crawling on his skin, and he slapped at the back of his neck. Which was when somebody giggled.

‘Oh my God, you’re finally awake,’ said a girl’s voice.

Jamie squinted at Talia, wiping his mouth, trying to work out how she’d gotten Tanner’s room underwater and wondering what she was going to do with that feather. Then his dream dissolved and he came to completely. Talia was real, sitting on Tanner’s bed, holding a feather. The events of the night before flooded his mind.

Talia’s prop came from a red-tailed black cockatoo. She must have selected it from the collection of shells and feathers Tanner kept on the shelves above his bed. At the thought of her using it to tickle him awake, Jamie’s bare chest and arms prickled with goose bumps. He pulled his cotton blanket up to cover himself, feeling exposed. She’d seen him dribbling and snoring – not a good look. But she looked good, her hair in two loose plaits.

‘We were getting worried. We thought you might have turned. Tanner’s been trying to wake you up for hours,’ she said, nudging his arm with her foot so that he looked down at her black toenail polish.

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