Fletcher’s face turns white, grief about to take over. Matthew puts his hand up. “But she’s breathing.”
They all look a little closer and they can all see the gentle rise and fall of Ellis’s chest. She is breathing.
John mops his brow with a polka dot handkerchief. “Only for her, Fletcher. I enjoyed that too much.” He takes a seat to get his breath back. His hands are visibly shaking.
Matthew grabs hold of his bag. “I don’t think you need me any longer, Elodie. I’m no expert on medicine for the dead.” He leans in to kiss her cheek. “Good luck with...” He gestures at the room, Ellis, Ember, everybody else, and Elodie smiles wanly. “Thank you for coming. Thank you for helping.”
“Any time.” He lingers for a moment, hand on her arm, and then nods to John and Fletcher before heading out of the door.
Fletcher throws his arms around John before returning to Ellis’s side. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet, we don’t know what she will make of it yet.”
All eyes are on Ellis, waiting for her to come around.
Ellis
Death is weird.
I can think just as I thought before, and I can hear voices around me that sound just like Fletcher and his mum, but I know they’re not dead. Maybe there’s a transmission period. Like I’m dead, but my brain hasn’t figured it out yet.
It didn’t hurt as much as I thought, either. It was pretty boring, pretty unspectacular. Pretty shit.
But then who says dying has to be exciting?
But now this is weird, because I can definitely hear Fletcher talking about me, asking his mum if he should wake me up. Bless, he can’t have realised that I’m dead. And then I get an itch on my face, move my hand to scratch it, and hear gasps. “Ellis?”
Okay, itching doesn’t seem like something dead people do. And that is definitely Fletcher. Oh, my word, I don’t think Sadie’s magic worked. Maybe I just passed out. Maybe her spell wasn’t strong enough, or she died too long ago, or I don’t even care.
I am alive. I open my eyes, a little blinky from the light but I see Fletcher, a look of relief pass over his face. I see his mum peering over his shoulder, her face etched with concern, and then weirdly, because he wasn’t here when I passed out, or whatever it is I did, I see John. Good old John, my buddy, my breakfast pal.
I sit up and grin at him, at all of them. Ember and Talia and Vann are bound and sulky looking. But everyone else looks relieved but also, weirdly, cautious.
Like they might be... scared of me.
Ah, maybe they were scared that I was dead, and now they are happy that I’m alive. Nothing worse than watching somebody die, right? Nothing worse than watching someone you thought was dead, wake up either. I know I’d have a heart attack if one of our lovely bodies suddenly woke up! Every undertaker’s nightmare, right there.
I reach out to Fletcher so he can help me sit up, and I hear a weird noise come out of my throat, real low, like a growl. I clear my throat, trying not to notice the worried looks that they are all exchanging.
This is weird. There is something more going on than they thought I’d died and then I made a miraculous recovery. This is strange.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, and reach out for Fletcher, getting an odd feeling like I just want to bite him. And I’m suddenly so thirsty, and my word does his skin look good. Just there on the curve of his neck, just where I see the brief beat of his pulse, just where I can almost hear the blood rushing through his veins, red, glistening, satiating.
I cover my mouth. What’s wrong with me?
I look to Fletcher and then to his mum and then to John. I blank out everybody else. “Fletcher?”
There’s pain in my voice; I don’t understand what’s wrong with me, why I’m feeling like I feel, why I’m thirsty like I am. Why all I want to do is rip open Fletcher’s throat and feast on him, on his blood, on his life force.
And then I know.
I’ve read enough vampire books and watched enough vampire films and watched enough vampire TV shows to know.
Horror fills me, and I stumble to my feet, tears scalding my dead old face as I back away from them all, away from the room full of food, and crash into the hallway. I run blindly up the stairs and burst into the first room I come to.
I throw myself on the bed crying.
Dramatic, but I am a teenager.
A dead teenager. Forever a teenager. I will always be seventeen. I howl again, I will never outgrow my teenage spots, or my teenage awkwardness or my teenage anxiety.
I am wailing when I feel somebody sit on the bed beside me. I know – because I don’t want to bite him – that it’s John and not Fletcher, or anybody else with a pulse.
I sit up and tuck my knees into my chest. He puts an arm around me. “I was an old man when I was turned, as you can see. Fifty-seven years old for the rest of my life. I was furious. I felt cheated. I felt disgusted with who I was and what I’d become. I felt it all.” He rests his head on mine. “You will too. But don’t hate me. Please. I couldn’t bear it.”
I kiss his cheek. “I don’t hate you.” I take a deep breath, refuse to think about what’s just happened. “I’m assuming there was an excellent reason. I know you wouldn’t have done it for a laugh.”
He smiles. “It wasn’t funny. I almost killed you. I almost went too far.”
I shudder. “Was I dying?”
“Fletcher came to me. He didn’t know what else to do.”
“So now what? I’m pretty hungry. Can I
