Immortal Souls (The Immortal Souls: Magic & Chaos)

Chapter 37

It took well over two hours to make the trek to Jamie's house. Before they left Sam suggested using a portal to travel. Because apparently she has the power to open up a hole in the universe, and step through it and land somewhere else in the universe. 

And she suggested they travel through a hole in the universe, as though he'd be alright with that.

It was an interesting concept, the ability to move from one place to another without taking more than one step. But Jamie was more scared by the thought of doing it than he was fascinated, so they ended up walking the whole way there.

"Okay, we can dig the first hole here." Sam pointed to a spot on the ground twenty feet from the front door.

Jamie looked at Sam and arched an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitched in an amused smile. "We?" he asked rhetorically. "Are you going to be digging too?"

Sam stared at him as if he were insane. "You're a Vampire!" she yelled, too loudly and casually for him to feel comfortable with her saying it aloud. "You don't need help with manual labour. It's not like it's a strain for you or anything."

Jamie laughed a little, partly from a nervous feeling that someone had heard her, but mostly from amusement. He took his jacket off, and threw it on the grass beside him. It was September, so the weather was at that awkward stage where mostly it was damp and colder as the days got darker, yet every few days there were a couple of hours where during the daylight it was too warm to be comfortable in winter clothing, yet if you wore clothes designed for warmer weather, by the time the night came you would wish your coat was heavier.

Jamie had heard—or rather read and seen on TV—that Vampires didn't feel the effects of the weather. That was one of those things that he had managed to figure out for himself was untrue. His experience was that he was generally unbothered by the cold, unless the temperature dropped below freezing point, and the heat made him feel uncomfortable, as though his body was suffocating despite the fact that oxygen was, for the most part, optional.

He gazed up towards the sky, knowing by the position of the sun that he wouldn't have to suffer through the heat for much longer. The sun would set in an hour or two, and the night would bring cooler weather. With a sigh, he started digging, using the shovel that he had carried here all the way from Sam's house. "How deep am I digging this thing?"

"Not too deep. About a foot maybe. The jars aren't huge or anything."

"And what will you do whilst I dig?" he asked with a smile. "Watch and hope I get warm enough to take some clothes off?"

Sam rolled her eyes and sighed while shaking her head. "Don't flatter yourself. I'll be putting some protection runes on those trees." She placed the bag containing the jars on the ground beside Jamie. He watched as she took her jacket off, leaving her in a set of lightweight clothes; a light grey t-shirt—which seemed well fitted around the top and became looser near the end, flowing past her hips—a pair of patterned leggings covered her legs, and on her feet she wore a pair of black hiking boots. It was the first time he'd noticed that she changed her clothes. When he'd first found her in the attic she had been wearing a dress. He briefly wondered when exactly she'd changed, and why.

Sam cleared her throat, Jamie glanced at her face to find her glaring at him. "You can stop perving on me now." She dropped her jacket on top of his. "That's all the clothes I'm taking off."

Jamie laughed a little, out of embarrassment more than amusement, as she walked over to the tree behind him.

He looked over his shoulder just in time to see Sam climbing it with ease. He watched her curiously. "What are you doing?" he asked. When she told him she would be carving things into the trees he didn't think she meant she would be climbing them first.