Page 72 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

What was Theo doing here? He was supposed to stay behind. Didn’t the Witherbornes ever listen? And now he’d been caught, giving Jeremy exactly what he needed to open some kind of gateway that would bring all his unidentified supernatural family members through for a big party. It seemed unlikely those family members were placid, peace-loving beings who’d be good neighbors. They’d probably all be like Jeremy, who now looked like an evil Groot in a turtleneck sweater.

As the only human in the room, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do about all of this. One vampire had been pinned to the wall and the other was being manhandled by security.

“Bring him to the pool,” Jeremy ordered the guards. He turned his elongated timber-skinned head to fix his hollow eye sockets on me. “Come along, Owen. You won’t want to miss this.”

He slammed Bentley into the floor hard enough it made a crater. Bentley wasn’t moving after that. It was so brutal and so fast, all I could do was stare at his body in the pit.

Theo bucked, fighting against the guards. The two big men couldn’t be human, or Theo would have been able to fight free. They had the same dull eyes as the rest of the housekeeping staff and grounds people.

This was all very alarming.

I should probably have been sobbing on my knees by now, but the wine was in my veins, keeping my nervous system eerily calm. I watched it all like watching a movie. Sure, it was terrifying, but it couldn’t be real, could it? All I needed was a bucket of popcorn.

“Come, human!” Jeremy barked.

I got to my feet and casually followed Jeremy outside, walking on autopilot.

Theo kept glancing over, his wide eyes begging me to do something, anything. He clearly had no idea why I was going along with all of this. That made two of us.

I’d just seen Jeremy skewer a vampire through the chest with root arms. What could I do that wouldn’t get me instantly unalived?

As we moved across the back patio, the ominous topiaries shaped like people began to creak and rustle, and slowly, they turned to watch us pass. What had Jeremy said, something about rooting here? And Geraldine had said he was something to do with the earth. That all tracked with moving gardens and living bushes shaped like people. He was clearly connected to the land around his house, but not in a touchy-feely, green-fingered kind of way, more of a controlling, manipulative way. He made the staff and the gardens move to his will. He was a bully, I realized, thinking hard with every step. I had experience with those types of men.

The pool glowed ahead, lit from below. Rippling water made the light dance along the box house’s walls. Where the light played, shadows moved too, so the house and the gardens seemed to ripple, making all of it seem ethereal and unreal.

Part of me was still convinced this was all a weird dream. I’d wake up soon.

Anytime now.

One of the guards shoved Theo to his knees by the pool, and he went down hard, wincing.

Jeremy moved behind him, and as the guys stepped away, Theo looked over his shoulder at Jeremy’s approach. More weird woody arms sprouted from Jeremy’s sides, hideously jointed tentacle things, turning him into some kind of splintery spider that was only vaguely man-shaped now. He looked like the kind of thing you’d wash down a drain hole and hope it never came back to haunt your dreams.

Theo’s gaze swung back to me. Pleading.

Bentley was probably dead, and Theo’s parents didn’t seem willing or likely to arrive anytime soon.

He only had me. The pool boy.

I was going to have to make myself useful. Which meant making my body move and my brain think outside the fuzzy, disassociation fog.

C’mon brain, we can do this.

The pool began to simmer. I could feel its restlessness in my chest. It didn’t want this either, whatever this was.

I had to get Theo away from the water.

Jeremy’s root-leg things snicked outward, joints clicking, then came around and latched onto Theo’s arms, locking him still.

Theo breathed hard through his nose. His chest heaved.

He stared at me, eyes silently begging for help.

I wasn’t just going to stand there, was I?

Think, brain. Do what you’ve been doing for twenty-three years but do it better. I gave my head a shake and blinked away the fogginess.

I could do this. The fuzzy was going, fading, washing away.