Page 5 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

The grass had been flattened ahead, between the shrubs, like he’d said. I went first, following the trodden path, and through the palms, I finally spotted the neighbors’ house. Where Witherborne Mansion screamed old money, the neighbors’ house was all new. The enormous modern box house resembled a tumble of black blocks and glass. I couldn’t decide if it was ugly or art.

The rough path led us toward a low brick wall topped with iron railings, and there, on the other side of the wall, overly manicured gardens guided my gaze straight to a huge pool. “There it is,” I said, triumphant.

I spotted someone by the pool, an older guy wearing a black bathrobe who was staring at some kind of inflatable floating on the surface of the water. I should have stopped there. Kept the hundred bucks, turned around, job done, gone home, eaten snacks, watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine reruns. But I stayed a little while longer and looked a little harder at the thing floating in the pool.

“Huh.”

“Huh?” Theo asked, but I wasn’t really paying attention to him because that thing in the pool . . .

“Wait . . . is that . . .?” I gripped the railings and pushed my face closer.

“So, uh . . . Just so you know, maybe don’t let that guy see me . . .” Theo was saying, sounding far away now, because my gaze had glued itself to the suspicious floating thing and the guy standing at the pool’s edge in the black bathrobe and looking down at the body-shaped inflatable like it was just another Monday.

“Oh, shoot, that’s not good.” I pulled back, the weight of what I was seeing landing hard. It wasn’t an inflatable. A body floated in the pool, face down, likely very dead. “Theo, that’s—” I turned to ask Theo what he’d gotten me into.

Theo’s eyes rolled back, and he dropped to the ground as though someone had cut his strings. He landed with a loud thump.

What?!

The guy in the bathrobe looked over.

What in the what?!

A maybe murderer stared through the railings, right at me, and Theo Witherborne was on the ground at my feet.

I had about ten seconds to figure out what I was going to do.

“Well, this is a sticky predicament.”

CHAPTER 2

Theo Witherborne lay crumpled at my feet, and now the black-robe guy who was very likely a murderer was heading over.

Theo twitched.

Think, brain.

Theo had said something about the black-robe guy not finding him.

But the back-robe guy was on his way. The guy who’d calmly been standing over a body floating in his pool.

Theo was out cold.

Sunstroke, probably.

Because of course it had to catch up with him now. He wasn’t going to be any help anytime soon.

I grabbed Theo’s wrists and dragged him toward the nearest hibiscus bush. Heart pounding a hundred and ninety beats a minute in my ears, I dragged him, tugged him, shoved him, then rolled him under the voluminous foliage as best as I could. I could run, if I needed to. He could not.

As I stumbled out, the robe guy stood at the railings, watching me emerge from the undergrowth with an expression of mild amusement on his older, weathered face.

Tufts of black chest hair poked out from his robe and glistened in the sun. He wasn’t wearing any shoes. It was just his toes, right there. Stubby man toes.

“Oh, hey.” I brushed my hands together, like I’d just taken out the trash. “Possum,” I said. “It’s gone now.” I shoved my hand through the railings for him to shake. “I’m Owen. Nice pool you’ve got there.”

What the fudge was I doing? I’d skipped the part where you run after witnessing the aftermath of a murder and gone straight to introductions.

Look, I don’t get out much. Meeting people is difficult. People are tricky. Pools are easy. Pools are predictable. And this person was looking at me as though deciding whether I should join the body in the water behind him. Whatever I said next would probably make the decision for him.