Page 23 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

Theo’s gaze had dropped, tracking lower. Was he looking at my throat?

“Anyway . . .” He looked out the wall of windows at the pool. “I liked Jay. We’d come out here, smoke weed, and talk.”

“Did Jay have any enemies?”

Theo snorted again. “Not subtle, are you?”

I chuckled. “I’ve been told that before.”

“I like that. Your honesty. Like it a lot.” That long gaze again. He didn’t blink, that’s what made his long glances so intense.

Oh-kay.

“I’m surrounded by people who lie to me all day,” he said, smiling but not meaning to. “My family are the worst for it. Sometimes I just need someone to tell me how shit is, so I don’t get lost in my own fantasy.”

“Your life is a lie?”

“Not my life. Me.” He looked up and blinked slowly. “Whatever . . . I’m not drunk enough for this. You’re a good listener. I hate it. Makes me wanna talk.” He flopped back, legs spread, and gazed out at the glowing pool again. “Last thing I said to him was how I wanted out of this TV drama. Then he was gone.”

The sadness and loss in his voice was real. And if I believed him, then he really was alone. “You knew he was dead in your neighbors’ pool that morning, that’s why you sent me over there?”

Theo dropped his gaze. He’d draped his arm over the back of the couch cushions, and tapped his fingers there now. “Yeah. But I don’t know who did it. The neighbor, maybe. Bentley, probably. But he’d take great pleasure in telling me if he had. Also, he’s a shit liar.”

“He’d do that? Kill someone to get to you?”

“Absolutely. He once massacred my snail farm. Dead snails everywhere. It was fuckin’ brutal.”

There was a lot to unpack in that sentence. I had no idea where to begin, so I left it packed and untouched. “Then Jay didn’t have anyone in his life who could have done this to him? You think his death is related to you?”

“He was a good guy, no enemies that I knew of. People knew we talked, knew we came out here, blinds drawn, and they assumed we were sleeping together. It wasn’t like that, he wasn’t . . . He was straight. Or I would have smashed that on day one.”

“You’re not? Straight, I mean?” I tried to ask it casually and wasn’t sure I pulled it off.

“You think I could be?” He grinned. “One, I’m a vampire. We’re all bi. The whole bloodline goes back long before some ancient king somewhere decided everything had to be binary. And two, being straight has too many rules. I’m an equal opportunities lover. If something feels good, why limit yourself?”

I nodded, suddenly very interested in the label on my beer bottle. “So, you think whoever killed Jay did it to get to you personally?”

“Yeah, and I wanna think it’s the neighbor, Jeremy Briar. They’re weird as fuck over there. And they have it out for us.” Theo fell quiet for a moment, thinking. “I followed Jay over there . . . He sometimes did work on their lawns. New gig for him. He’d been there a few months, and he’d been different since starting there. More guarded. Pretty sure the Briars were feeding him lies about us. I thought maybe the wife was into him. Never met her, never seen her, if she even exists. That’s why he was going over there at weird hours. Weird hours for you lot—humans, I mean. I heard his car, I went to take a look through the fence, and that’s when I saw him. Just like you did.”

“You didn’t think to call the police?”

“Right, because we both know how that goes.”

He didn’t know my details, but he knew enough to know I was law enforcement averse. “Did the Briars move him to your pool?”

“Must have. How else would he have got there?”

“Bentley? If he wants to frame you, get you out the way so he inherits?” It was public knowledge Bentley was a dick.

“He’s the obvious one, and he’d have done it too, if he’d known Jay was dead.”

“I uh . . . after I left you in the bush, I took him out there to find you.”

“You did? Shit. If he’d found me in the hibiscus, I’d never live it down.”

“He could have seen Jay’s body in the pool then.”

“What was he wearing?”