Page 92 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

“Don’t ask stupid questions.”

She turned, and with a whip of her hair, stalked back the way she’d come.

I grabbed Theo’s shirt before he could fully escape. “We’ll come back to this.”

His lips twitched. “I love it when you get bossy. We will definitely come back to more of this.”

His gaze promised all sorts of possibilities between the sheets, or against a wall, or in the pool, if it was behaving. I wanted all of that, one after another, but it wasn’t going to be tonight.

This is what accepting who you are looks like, my dark little voice said. Isn’t it fun?

“You coming?” he asked, backing up toward the path to rejoin the celebrations.

“Isn’t this a family thing?”

“Freckles, you mean more to me than everyone else here, including the psychopaths who are my beloved family.”

“Oh.” Be still my wrecked, hopeless heart. “You met me two weeks ago.”

“That should tell you how little I care about them,” he joked, and pulled me after him. Then he looped an arm over my shoulders, so effortlessly casual with his touching that it swept me up and took my mind right back to the bed with him. Maybe, after the party, we could go back between his sheets?

Him and me, and hours until either of us had to be anywhere.

We moved through the little groups of people, back into the lights and noise, laughter and chinking glasses. It all washed over me, numbing my senses. These last two weeks had been dreamlike, but Theo beside me was very real.

We arrived at the front door and headed outside onto the front steps. Theo’s arm fell from my shoulders. He stepped ahead of me, which meant I had a front row view of his back straightening and his shoulders going rigid. The change was obvious. He’d put on his Witherborne mask, the one he hated to wear but couldn’t run from.

I hung back and loitered by the door like a doorman.

A sleek black car waited at the foot of the steps. One of those European things that were small but villainesque.

Geraldine was there, talking to a woman shorter than her. The older woman’s foundation had cracked and caked at the corners of her lips, where her wooden smile tucked into her cheeks. She held out her hand, and Geraldine swept into her long-fingered handshake as though they were old friends.

“Tabitha,” Geraldine greeted, her voice going high. “How long has it been?”

Tabitha . . . Tabitha . . . Where had I heard that name recently?

“Oh, several hundred years, my dear.”

Oh, okay. Supernatural, then. Of course.

“This is my son, Theo.” Geraldine gestured toward Theo. “Theo, meet Tabitha Briar. Our new neighbor.”

Briar?! And we were greeting them now, like old friends?

Theo hesitated. At least he looked as surprised as I felt. The last Briar we’d known had tried to skewer him with living roots and bleed his insides into a pool in the hopes of opening a gateway to a world that would apparently see more Briars arrive. Well, here was another one doing the friendly neighbor act.

Tabitha Briar offered Theo her hand, leaving him no choice but to shake.

“Welcome, ma’am,” he said. They shook quickly, and Theo discreetly wiped his hand behind his back.

Geraldine gestured at Bentley on her opposite side. “My other son, the spare . . . Bentley.”

Bentley stepped forward, took the new Briar’s hand, and raised it to his lips, like they do on one of those chivalrous movies.

Tabitha giggled. “Well, aren’t you dashing.”

“They’re a work in progress,” Geraldine sneered. “I’d have preferred a female, they are far more ruthless, frankly, but here we are.”