Page 39 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

“Would you like to see it?” Jeremy asked brightly. He slapped his thighs and stood, suddenly energetic. “I think you’ll be impressed. Your predecessor was.”

“See uh . . . See what exactly?” Where he’d killed Jay? His murder dungeon?

“The pool, of course.” Jeremy chuckled.

Oh, the pool. That was a relief. “Sure.”

He walked me through the house, passing several silent housekeepers who didn’t look up. They were so expressionless I’d mistaken them for mannequins at first glance. I spotted a music room through one of the oddly placed doors. A large piano sat in the corner. Everyone with money had to have a piano. Perhaps it was in the rich people rules?

The box house held an eerie, sterile quiet. Like the gardens outside, everything inside had its place. Every rug had been lined up perfectly with the walls, every chair angled parallel with the tables. My pattern-loving brain noticed all of it. Every picture at perfect right angles with the walls and floor, every ornament at an equal distance to its neighbor, not a cushion out of place. Real houses didn’t look like this. Real houses were lived in, like the Witherborne mansion, with its wonky doors and tired rugs. This one looked and felt like an AI image of a modern house, but the AI had forgotten to make it imperfectly human.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I let it ring out on silent.

Jeremy walked me out a back hallway, onto a vast, shaded patio area with a long, covered walkway that ended at the pool. It was all very James Bond villain lair.

“Here’s the pool, obviously. The pump house is over there, if you’d like to take a look. You’ll find everything in order. Mr. Green was very thorough before he regrettably stopped being thorough. Stopped being most things, in fact. Especially helpful.”

I made a mental note to always be helpful, then headed down the little slope to the pump shed and made a show of opening the door, as though I hadn’t been shoved inside it last night. In daylight, the pump system was even more impressive. “That’s an Elite XS system,” I said, failing to hide the awe in my voice. “They’re well known for excellent efficiency, but can be temperamental.”

“Mm, yes. It does have its quirks.”

I turned back and caught Jeremy’s face doing complicated things in an effort to make him look innocent.

At least with vampires, they were mostly predictable. Make them angry, get the fangs. I had no idea what Jeremy was thinking, what he truly wanted from me, or the lengths he’d go to get it. The only thing I was certain of was that I wasn’t here just to look after his pool. There was more to Jeremy’s employment offer, and Jay had died for whatever that more had been.

Something caught Jeremy’s eye over my shoulder. His expression hardened. “No, that will not do!” He strode around the pool and clicked his fingers at a gardener trimming a hedge. “You there, come with me. I’ve said to you before, this is quite unacceptable. The flowers must not escape their beds.”

On my own by the pool, I took a minute to take in my surroundings in daylight, now I had official permission to be there. Everything appeared to be normal. It was a nice pool, as pools went. Deep, real deep. I hadn’t noticed its depth before. So deep, in fact, that the water darkened considerably at the end in front of me.

I crouched and dangled my fingers in the warm water, sending out ripples.

For a pool that hadn’t had a maintenance guy for over a week, it was remarkably clean.

Not a speck of dust or stray leaf. No bugs floating upside down. Nothing ruined the sparkling surface.

My fingers tingled, and a brief thought told me to whip them out of the water. Unfortunately, I ignored that thought.

Something grabbed my fingers and pulled my hand under the surface, almost yanking me in.

Alarm lurched through me. I dug my heels in and tugged back, but my hand stayed stuck below the surface.

Something had hold of me, but there wasn’t anything down there. Just transparent rippling pool water.

I grabbed my wrist and heaved. The soles of my shoes slipped on the slabs, and for a second, the only way for this to end was with me in that pool alongside whatever had a hold of me.

No!

The thing let go.

I sprang backward, falling onto my ass. My phone clattered out of my pocket and skidded across the patio. Damn, there goes the screen. I breathed hard and sat for a beat. Had the pool just tried to eat me? No. That wasn’t a thing that happened. There had to be a reasonable explanation. Maybe I’d gotten tangled in some kind of clear plastic net?

I rolled onto my hands and knees and crawled to the pool’s edge, then peeked over.

My distorted, wide-eyed reflection stared back.

There wasn’t anything down there. Just a whole lot of water, that deepened so much the bottom turned black.

Something had caught me.