Chapter 14
I had a few other clients to service during the next few days, which gave me something else to think about other than how I’d ruined the best night I’d had out in years, and maybe a chance at a real friendship too.
Davis’s henchman didn’t show up again either.
So, for a little while, life was mostly normal.
Until I was scheduled to visit the Witherbornes for a quick check-in to see how the pool was behaving.
I’d hoped a visit later in the day would mean I’d avoid the family. I’d been wrong. Theo’s mother stood on the patio, under the sunshade. She wore a tightly fitted skirt suit, and scowled as though she was about to ruin someone’s day or life.
“Morning, Mrs. Witherborne.” I nodded a brief acknowledgement and continued to the back of the pool house to collect my equipment. The TV was on inside, so I figured Fleur was in there. I’d check in on her soon.
Hopefully, when I returned, Mrs. Witherborne would have gone inside?
But no. There she was, standing by the loungers, arms folded, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders in firm waves, not a strand out of place.
It was unnerving, being watched by someone who’d been around when the settlers had formed America.
Someone who’d killed their own son and decided not to bring him back.
Okay, that son had been Bentley, so I could empathize with her somewhat, but still. A son was a son, right?
“How is my pool?” she asked after I had the filter pit cover off and was elbows deep, running the first batch of initial tests.
“It’s behaving, for now.” I squinted across the glistening water, keeping bright daylight between us.
“And how is the pool next door?”
“I’m due back there tomorrow,” I replied, staying vague.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I’d known that but I also didn’t want to give too much away about what I was doing, working both pools. “Well, I don’t talk about other people’s pools, ma’am.”
“Annoyingly nice, aren’t you.”
“I call it being professional.”
“Sassy too.”
“I’m not trying to be, ma’am. Just sounds like that sometimes.”
“Hm . . .” She fell quiet for a few moments, then said, “I hope you’re not spilling our family secrets to the neighbors?”
“Like I said, I’m a professional.”
“I see why he likes you.”
I assumed she wasn’t talking about Bentley.
“Easy on the eye, outdoor skin.” She tilted her head and roamed her gaze over me. “I suppose you’re deliciously warm to touch too.”
And that was why I kept her over there and me over here, with an expanse of water between us. I smiled and continued working in the filter pit. Being visually devoured by an ancient vampire had not been in the job description.
“Are you afraid of me?” she asked.
“I’m aware of you, ma’am.”
She huffed at that. “You know, pool boy, I’m the least of all the beings in this world you should be scared of. If you knew the things I know, you’d never get a good night’s sleep again.”
“Yeah?” I picked up the net and began to scoop out the bits of floating debris. “Beings like your neighbors?” I asked, trying to sound casual. If she felt like talking, then maybe now would be a good time to find out if she knew anything about Jay’s death.
“Exactly like them.” She huffed a tinkling laugh again. “People are so afraid of vampires. They forget, we’re the ones who came out. We’re the least dangerous. It’s everything they don’t know that should terrify them.”
“You could tell us?”
She stared without blinking. “Boy, it’s been ten years since we came out and I still get holy water thrown at me on the sidewalk.
If humans cannot handle us, they certainly can’t handle the others.
There’d be a war, people would die, and I have far too much time and effort invested in my political position for it all to be washed down the drain because your tribal, mammalian brains can’t handle change. ”
Wow, just so long as her career was safe, never mind the human race might not be the top of the food chain.
So, I knew the Briars weren’t human, and they weren’t vampires. They were something other. Something that clearly threatened vampires. I scooped the net into the water, toward a leaf, and watched it swirl on the surface. “Are the Briars connected to water in some way?”
“As far as I have deduced, the Briars are beings of the earth. There are multiple things they could be, Tylwyth Teg, Huldufólk, perhaps some old strain of Spriggan, but none quite fit. They are frustratingly private and clearly have a reason to hide what they are.”
I had no idea what any of those words meant, but the way Geraldine had pronounced them hinted at ancient and otherworldly things. “Have you always been neighbors?”
“The Witherborne Mansion has been on this site for two hundred years, in some form or another. Their hideous box house was built three years ago and is a blot of ink on Coconut Grove’s pristine canvas.
It should never have been allowed. I petitioned against it.
They must have had some sway over the city, though, because my petition was dismissed out of hand.
I even invited the senior planning officer to tea and offered him a sum that should have made his eyes water, in a plain envelope, like a civilized person.
He declined. Declined, and then had the audacity to report me, as though I were the one behaving badly.
I was sorely tempted to eat him, and not in a way he would have enjoyed, but the police take such a dim view of that sort of thing, more’s the pity.
I settled for reminding him that I had his home address and a great deal of free time.
People are so terribly sensitive these days. ”
I was beginning to see where Bentley got his murderous tendencies from. “What about—”
“I have answered enough of your questions,” she snapped, cutting me off. “Now answer mine. Did you find something belonging to the previous pool boy in that filter?”
I stopped working and looked up. “I did. Yes. A ring.” She’d know if I lied to her face.
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“It’s not your property.”
“It’s not yours either.” She sighed. “Perhaps you should give it to Theo. It might improve his foul mood. He does miss his friend. There is more of Leander in that boy than I’ll ever admit publicly.” She sighed again. “He’s soft and too thoughtful. He should be more like Bentley.”
“Does Bentley even have thoughts?” I muttered.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing, ma’am.”
I hadn’t thought of giving the ring to Theo. I should have. Maybe it would help repair the damage I’d done.
I squinted over the pool at the Witherborne matriarch.
Theo had admitted to being afraid of her more than the brother who routinely tried to kill him.
She looked like a typical suburban businesswoman.
And that was where her danger lay. Vampires were the perfect ambush hunters, camouflaged among us, and Geraldine was the perfect example of a vampire at its peak.
I’d do well to remember she wasn’t as friendly as she was currently behaving.
“How did Jay’s ring get in this filter, Mrs. Witherborne?” I asked.
“Perhaps he merely dropped it in the pool while working? It’s certainly not a stretch, is it?”
“On the morning he was murdered? Do you believe that?”
“Boy . . .” She sighed.
“I’m twenty-three,” I told her. “Not really a boy.”
“You are all children to me.” She sighed again. “As for the ring and Jay Green? I think that coming out made us targets, and once you are out, you cannot go back in, ever again.”
A cryptic answer, and one that saddened her. As though this wasn’t about Jay at all, but about the Witherborne family.
“Do you know what’s going on, ma’am? But you can’t or won’t tell me? Did Jay stumble on something that got him killed? Was that thing next door?”
“That’s what you’re here to find out.” She flashed a sharp smile. “There will be a small gathering here on Friday. Do make sure the pool is at its best for that. There’s a financial bonus in it for you.”
She turned and vanished into the house.
She’d been suspiciously talkative, almost helpful.
I didn’t trust it. Or her. But she had confirmed that the Briars were something else, something of the earth.
Whatever that meant. And I didn’t get the impression that whatever was happening, she was behind it.
She seemed almost . . . tired. All the evidence pointed to Jeremy Briar killing Jay, and it had something to do with the pools being chemically linked, it had to.
Only a pool boy would know how impossible that was.
Perhaps that knowing had gotten Jay killed.
I needed to get back to next door to study their pool some more, and soon.
“Hey, Owen.” Fleur padded barefoot out to the pool next to me. An oversized black T-shirt hung off her, draped over tiny shorts. She sat down cross-legged by the edge of the pool and peered into the filter pit. “Wow. All that water goes through there huh?”
“About eighty gallons a minute. The whole pool cycles every eight hours or so. And the part that does the actual work, that white powder packed inside, that’s diatomaceous earth.
Fossilized shells. Microscopic sea creatures that died millions of years ago, crushed down fine enough to trap a particle smaller than a red blood cell. ” I caught myself. “Sorry.”
Fleur’s eyes got all big and her smile grew. “That is amazing.”
“Is it, or are you just humoring me?”
“No, it really is. Those poor sea creatures, though. Died for rich people.”
“Well, I don’t think rich people pools are the reason they died, or that they care their remains ended up as filter media a million years later.”
“They’re in a better place now.”
“Yeah. The Witherbornes’ filter.”
She laughed and sighed at the water. “I’ve been watching the pool more and more, like maybe it knows how I got here but it can’t speak to tell us.” We both stared at the serene pool for a minute, then she grinned. “I’m trying to remember something, anything, but all I get is salt.”
Theo had mentioned that.
“Salt?”
“Yeah, salt.”