Chapter 10
The Briars’ box house in the daytime was somehow more foreboding than at night.
A neat driveway snaked through jade-green gardens that were so pristine, it felt as though each blade of grass had its specific position.
The Briars had to have an army of garden maintenance people to keep the gardens looking so neat and tidy, but nobody was around when I pulled my car to a stop outside their house.
All the large rectangular windows were tinted and reflected the sky back while hiding any signs of life.
Home wasn’t a word I’d use for the house.
The Witherborne Mansion was a sprawling, intimidating castle, but at least it had warmth.
When the housekeeper let me into the Briar place, and I stood in the entranceway with its marble floors and white walls, I’d never been anywhere as cold and unwelcoming and I’d spent two years in jail.
Austere-looking pictures of family members hung on the wall, mixed in with what was probably expensive art. Someone with more class than me would know what they were looking at, and might have been impressed. But I stood in the foyer, feeling small and alien.
“Ah, yes,” Jeremy said, hand on the stair rail as he made his way down the curved staircase. “Owen Marsh, isn’t it?”
“Yes. That’s me, sir.”
“Interesting surname. Very earthbound with a little of the wetlands intertwined.”
“Uh, yes?” He didn’t need to know I’d changed my name to Marsh at eighteen.
He wore slacks and a polo sweater, his chestnut hair pushed back and styled in a way that made him look younger than when we’d first met, when he’d been barefoot in a bathrobe.
He looked more sophisticated now, less weird neighbor.
Although, we had first met right after he’d been staring at a dead guy in his pool, so the weird wasn’t going away anytime soon.
Jay’s ghost was in the room with us, between every sentence. Not literally. But I couldn’t untie the image of this Jeremy to the man I’d seen calmly staring at Jay’s body.
I offered my hand, and this time he shook it.
“I did try to call you,” he said.
“Oh, yeah . . . Sorry about that. I’ve been crazy busy these past few days, sir.”
He nodded, but I couldn’t decide if he believed me or was just humoring me. With a smile, he waved me to follow along behind him.
We passed through a room that seemed to exist to display trinkets and things in glass cabinets, then into a lounging area.
Maybe a living room, maybe a room just for these white, pristine couches.
A small staircase rose at the back. It seemed as though the house had a lot of rooms, all stacked on each other at angles, as though none of them actually fit or flowed in any normal rhythm.
“Sit.”
“Oh, uhm . . . thank you.” I perched on the edge of a white couch cushion.
“So, are there any other family members around?” I asked, hoping it sounded like typical small talk.
I’d never been very good at social cues, and small talk for me consisted of telling everyone about the chemical makeup of chlorine.
“Not for the moment, although I do hope that will change soon.” He smiled as though amused.
“Right.”
“So, Owen, you’re here about the pool maintenance position?”
“Yes. You said you had an opening, so here I am.” I spread my hands, then clasped them together in my lap again.
“That’s right. Your timing was fortuitous, as I mentioned that morning.”
So, we weren’t going to mention that the body floating in his pool had been his previous pool guy?
“When can you start?” he asked.
“Don’t you want to know my qualification?”
“You’ll do just fine.”
His smile was back, filled with too many perfect white teeth all in two perfect rows. Perfect like the pool, like the lawns, like the house. It was all so perfect that my senses were itching to break something or nudge a cushion out of place.
“I can start tomorrow. I may visit next door in the morning, so is the afternoon alright?”
His golden-brown eyebrows rose. “Next door?”
“Yeah, I work there too. That’s why I was there . . . when we met.”
“The Witherbornes.” He sneered it, like a general comment. “We don’t get along.”
I smiled and tried to look unfazed. “I don’t get involved in the private lives of my clients.” Haha, I definitely did not have beers with their handsome sons and trespass on their neighbors’ grounds in the middle of the night.
Jeremy crossed his legs and carefully placed his hands on top of his knees. “You do know they’re vampires?”
“I had noticed.”
“How do they seem to you?”
“How . . . in what way, sir?”
“Are they in distress?”
That was a weird question. “Not that I’ve seen, but as I said, I don’t get involved—”
“And the heir, how is he, generally? In good health? Not sick?”
“As far as I know . . .” Physical health, fine. More than fine. Physically, Theo was a ten. Mental health? Not doing so good. But I didn’t think Jeremy was asking out of kindness. Was he on the list of people who wanted Theo out of the way? Why did he care?
“That’s good.” He tapped his chin. “Hm, good. Yes, very good.”
Wait, it was good that Theo was alright? So, he didn’t want him out of the way?
This was all very confusing.
This was why I was here, to find out what the heck was going on with these people, and what Jay had gotten involved in that had killed him. And now, why Jeremy was so interested in Theo’s health.
“So, uh, what happened to your last pool guy?” I tried to ask it all innocently, but from the way his eyes narrowed, the innocent act had landed flat.
Jeremy cocked his head, birdlike. “We both know what happened to the previous pool boy.”
“Oh, right, yeah.” The elephant had arrived in the room. “The pool incident.”
“Would you like to see it?” Jeremy asked brightly. He slapped his thighs and stood, suddenly energetic. “I think you’ll be impressed. Your predecessor was.”
“See uh . . . See what exactly?” Where he’d killed Jay? His murder dungeon?
“The pool, of course.” Jeremy chuckled.
Oh, the pool. That was a relief. “Sure.”
He walked me through the house, passing several silent housekeepers who didn’t look up.
They were so expressionless I’d mistaken them for mannequins at first glance.
I spotted a music room through one of the oddly placed doors.
A large piano sat in the corner. Everyone with money had to have a piano.
Perhaps it was in the rich people rules?
The box house held an eerie, sterile quiet.
Like the gardens outside, everything inside had its place.
Every rug had been lined up perfectly with the walls, every chair angled parallel with the tables.
My pattern-loving brain noticed all of it.
Every picture at perfect right angles with the walls and floor, every ornament at an equal distance to its neighbor, not a cushion out of place.
Real houses didn’t look like this. Real houses were lived in, like the Witherborne mansion, with its wonky doors and tired rugs.
This one looked and felt like an AI image of a modern house, but the AI had forgotten to make it imperfectly human.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I let it ring out on silent.
Jeremy walked me out a back hallway, onto a vast, shaded patio area with a long, covered walkway that ended at the pool. It was all very James Bond villain lair.
“Here’s the pool, obviously. The pump house is over there, if you’d like to take a look. You’ll find everything in order. Mr. Green was very thorough before he regrettably stopped being thorough. Stopped being most things, in fact. Especially helpful.”
I made a mental note to always be helpful, then headed down the little slope to the pump shed and made a show of opening the door, as though I hadn’t been shoved inside it last night.
In daylight, the pump system was even more impressive.
“That’s an Elite XS system,” I said, failing to hide the awe in my voice.
“They’re well known for excellent efficiency, but can be temperamental. ”
“Mm, yes. It does have its quirks.”
I turned back and caught Jeremy’s face doing complicated things in an effort to make him look innocent.
At least with vampires, they were mostly predictable.
Make them angry, get the fangs. I had no idea what Jeremy was thinking, what he truly wanted from me, or the lengths he’d go to get it.
The only thing I was certain of was that I wasn’t here just to look after his pool.
There was more to Jeremy’s employment offer, and Jay had died for whatever that more had been.
Something caught Jeremy’s eye over my shoulder. His expression hardened. “No, that will not do!” He strode around the pool and clicked his fingers at a gardener trimming a hedge. “You there, come with me. I’ve said to you before, this is quite unacceptable. The flowers must not escape their beds.”
On my own by the pool, I took a minute to take in my surroundings in daylight, now I had official permission to be there.
Everything appeared to be normal. It was a nice pool, as pools went.
Deep, real deep. I hadn’t noticed its depth before.
So deep, in fact, that the water darkened considerably at the end in front of me.
I crouched and dangled my fingers in the warm water, sending out ripples.
For a pool that hadn’t had a maintenance guy for over a week, it was remarkably clean.
Not a speck of dust or stray leaf. No bugs floating upside down. Nothing ruined the sparkling surface.
My fingers tingled, and a brief thought told me to whip them out of the water. Unfortunately, I ignored that thought.
Something grabbed my fingers and pulled my hand under the surface, almost yanking me in.
Alarm lurched through me. I dug my heels in and tugged back, but my hand stayed stuck below the surface.
Something had hold of me, but there wasn’t anything down there. Just transparent rippling pool water.
I grabbed my wrist and heaved. The soles of my shoes slipped on the slabs, and for a second, the only way for this to end was with me in that pool alongside whatever had a hold of me.
No!