Page 75 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

“Jeremy?” He blinked wet lashes fast.

“Big bad root guy, wants to drain your blood, mix it with the pool, open a gateway for a family reunion. That guy.”

“I don’t understand half of what you just said,” he croaked. “Was I in the pool?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I hauled him to his feet beside me and held him vertical as he wavered, legs wobbly. “Why did you come? I said to stay behind.”

He snorted, then wheezed, still trying to catch his breath. “No way . . . am I going to let you . . . walk into murder mansion . . . on your own . . . Idiot.”

“You’re the idiot who got caught.” Damn, it was good to see him breathing and talking and smiling. For a horrible few moments there, my world hadn’t had a Theo Witherborne in it, and that world had been a duller, more somber place.

I didn’t want to let him go, I realized, standing there watching him pant and drip water all over the ground. His hair had glued itself to his pale face, but his eyes blazed, as though he were more alive now than ever before.

“Yeah, well, you were taking too long inside,” he croaked. “You could have been dead, and Bentley’s a waste—wait, where’s Benny?”

I winced. “Still inside, I think. I’m not sure he made it.”

“We can hope.” Theo bent over and clutched his thighs. “Man, I am not okay.”

“Yeah, but you’re walking, so let’s get out of here while we can.” I didn’t wait for him to argue, I just took his hand and led him away from the pool, back across the yard toward the Witherborne Mansion. It was the quickest way of getting out of there. Once on Witherborne land, Jeremy’s influence shrank to just the pool.

“What did you do to him?” Theo asked, as we passed the pump house.

“Threw salt on him. I figured salt the earth kinda thing. I saw the salt when you shoved me in the shed last week.”

“You threw salt at him?”

I beamed. “Like slugs, right?”

“Slugs?”

“It worked.”

He grinned. Really grinned. It lit up his pale, wet face. “You might be brilliant. You know that?”

I shrugged. “I just did what anyone would do.”

“No, not really, Owen. And you saved me. Really saved me. I was by the pool, and then . . . then . . . you were there.” He stopped suddenly, dug his heels into the ground, and pulled his hand from mine. “Oh, shit.” He looked at his hands. “I’m a vampire.”

“Yeah, we established that. C’mon⁠—”

“No, I mean, I died and you brought me back. Holy shit, I transitioned. I’m a real vampire now.”

Vampires needed to die and come back for the transition to take, to pass over into full vampire adulthood. He’d drowned, and I’d brought him back to the Bee Gees.

This was going to be huge for him.

He’d be stuck at this age, looking like he did now, forever. Not the wet, stressed, bedraggled look. The twenty-something Theo with the sassy smiles and heartbreak eyes.

“Congrats. But we need to keep moving.”

His face fell. “Oh, god.” He was looking at me. Into me. Through me.

“Theo?”

Oh right, the whole “he could see my soul now” thing that Bentley had talked about. Theo could see my soul, and whatever he saw had stopped him in his tracks. Surprise! The pool boy is a bad guy. Damn.

“Hey, Theo.” I stepped closer, standing inside his personal space like he did to me all the time. “Focus on getting out. The rest we can work through later.”