Page 61 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

I bolted outside and skidded to a stop beside the churning water. “What the heck?” The pool water thrashed, as though full of something beneath the surface.

Theo stood on the other side of Fleur, peering into the water. “That’s not normal, right?”

“No, it’s not.”

The pool seemed . . . angry. There was no other word for it. Its water thrashed like a wild animal that had found itself caught in a net. I could feel its rage. Which made no sense. But I’d return to that thought later when the pool wasn’t boiling itself dry.

Theo stepped forward, and the water thrashed harder, splashing over the sides.

“Theo, stay back . . .”

He ignored me, leaned forward, peering deeper into it. “What’s doing that?”

“Theo . . .” It was him. It wanted him. I could feel that too.

Fear tugged at the edge of the rage now. My fear. For Theo.

Something was coming. The thing I’d seen in the pools from the rooftop bar a few nights ago. The lurking, searching thing. It had found what it wanted, and it was here.

“Get back!”

A hulking, dark shape leaped from the water. Man-shaped, with arms and legs, but wrong, limbs elongated, skin rough like tree bark. It launched itself at Theo.

Theo dodged, moving fast. His reflexes seemed to make the creature hesitate, but then it lunged again.

Fleur roared, ran at it, then leaped onto its back and clung on, turning herself into a human backpack.

The pool still churned and Theo stared, watching Fleur ride a weird humanish monster.

That thing was why the pool was angry. It wasn’t supposed to be here. I could stop it. Maybe.

I dropped to my knees and thrust my hands into the water. The pull was there, like it had been next door, but it didn’t want to drag me in. It needed me. The water took my hands, wrapping around them, holding on, not threatening. The water wasn’t the threat. The creature was.

“Fleur, get off it so I can hit it,” Theo yelled.

Fleur locked her arm around the creature’s throat and rode it like a bunking bronco. “I’m stuck!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an older man emerge from the house with a shotgun. From his aged but striking face, the dark hair and soft dark eyes, he could only be Theo’s father, Leander. A vampire dad with a shotgun. Okay then.

He aimed across the pool.

“Don’t shoot!” Theo yelled, thrusting out a hand. “Fleur, let go!”

“How?!”

The creature bucked and stumbled, flinging its long limbs behind it to try and pull Fleur off.

The pool still churned, furious and . . . terrified.

An electric surge sparked up my arm, and a second creature crawled from the pool’s edge, this time closer to the house. Leander aimed the shotgun and fired. Half the creature exploded into splinters, but the other half kept on lurching toward him. Another shot, and its middle blasted apart. It flopped to the ground, then collapsed back into the bubbling water.

As it schlopped into the pool, two more pairs of wooden limbs reached from the surface, clasped the pool’s edge, and heaved their bodies from the water.

They were going to keep coming. I had to stop this.

The pool wanted them gone. We all wanted them gone.

C’mon brain. We can figure this out.