Page 79 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

Maybe I’d hit my head, or I was in shock, but damn they looked fine—dark and light, two sides of a Witherborne coin, both deadly, both about to throw down, but not with each other. When it mattered, they could fight side by side, and it was glorious.

I still had my piano leg, and used it to prop myself up, onto my feet.

The vampires attacked in a blur, too fast for me to track. They worked like a pack, charging in, slicing with their clawlike nails, backing off, circling, lunging again, opening cuts each time. If the blood bothered Theo, he wasn’t showing it, not yet.

Maybe I really could sit this out? My body ached, cuts stung.

They didn’t need a human getting in the way.

I could probably leave them to it . . .

Jeremy’s blood had dribbled into the pool. A few drops, not much. Drip, drip, over the rolled edge. The water turned black. Instantly. A blink, and it had gone from a calm, inviting blue, to a bottomless nightmare pit.

“That . . .” I gulped and leaned over the edge, to see if there was a bottom. “Cannot be good.”

In the oily waters, my reflection leered back at me. I blinked and it blinked. But something was off about the mirror me. Its smile was too broad, and too many teeth brimmed in its mouth. That reflection definitely was not me.

The dark mirror me reached an inky black hand out of the water and placed it on the side of the pool. Then the next hand came. Then the head, wearing my face, but twisted. Eyes like pools of oil. Mouth filled with jagged teeth.

I knew it, recognized it. I’d seen it before sometimes, in the mirror. Heard its voice in my head.

It was all the bad parts of me made real.

“Uh, guys?”

CHAPTER 18

“Guys!”

The vampires had their own problems, diving into Jeremy, slicing and retreating, taking cuts out of him, piece by piece.

But while they focused on Jeremy, the mirror me was almost all the way out of the water now. It wore my clothes, but was soaked and dripping with black water. The pool it climbed from was black too, as though it had birthed this version of me.

What in the heck was I supposed to do?

“I could really do with some help over here,” I called.

Nobody was listening. As usual.

Mirror me’s smile was all wrong, too big for his face, and the eyes? Those were inky, glistening holes. But weirdly, I wasn’t afraid . . . He was a part of me. The part Bentley said I should embrace. The wrongness, the darkness, the part of me I craved in the loneliest hours. The chaos, the hunger.

“Oh-kay.” I brandished my piano leg. “You don’t belong here.”

“Oh, but you invited me.” The voice was mine too, but . . . wetter.

Had I lost my mind? Was I talking to myself?

Mirror me was fully on his feet now. Face to face. Eye to eye. He ran a hand through his hair. Sexy bastard.

I swung the bat. It sliced right through him, as though he was smoke.

Great.

My sanity had officially left the chat.

It was going to happen eventually, I supposed. Happened to my mom, got me booted out of my home, and now here it was, having caught up with me.

Mirror me laughed. “You think you can get rid of me that easily? I’m the stronger, better you.”