Then tried to drown me.
That was it. I was out of there.
I turned and began swimming away from her with everything I had left of my strength. If I could only reach the gleaming chrome ladder I saw a few strokes ahead of me, then pull myself up, I knew I’d be all right.
Of course I was only fooling myself. But I had to believe in something.
I kicked hard for the ladder, beginning to think I was going to make it—though my heart was pounding as if it were about to burst—when an icy cold, sharp-clawed hand clamped down around my ankle and attempted to yank me back into the crystal depths.
No.
Then at almost the exact same moment, a similarly steel-gripped, but also similarly familiar warm hand wrapped around my wrist and began pulling me toward the side of the pool. What was happening? Was someone trying to rescue me?
Oh, dear God, no. Not one of my do-gooding fellow tenants from the Carmel Valley Mountain View Apartment Complex, thinking I’d gotten a muscle cramp. Lucia would pull him into the water, too, and then the pool guy would find both of us facedown at the deep end tomorrow morning.
Could this day get any worse? I couldn’t save myself and a civilian, too. I didn’t have the strength left.
“Stop,” I begged, pulling on my wrist, preferring to be drowned by Lucia than allow her to take out an innocent bystander as well. “I’m fine. Please go away.”
But the grip on my wrist only tightened. I floundered as I tried to stay above the surface, pulled in two different directions by two entirely different but equally determined—and seemingly preternaturally strong—forces.
“You’re not fine, querida,” I heard a deep voice rasp.
My heart began to pound in a different way than before. Jesse.
I saw him kneeling by the side of the pool, his hands grasped tightly around my wrist. His expression was hard to read since his back was to the bright security lights, but I was sure he must be furious. The shirt and tie he was required to wear to work were both soaked.
“And sorry to disappoint you,” he said, “but I’ll never go away.”
diez
I began to think I might actually have a chance of getting out of this thing alive.
The same thought seemed to occur to Lucia, since the cold, tentacle-like fingers wrapped around my ankle loosened. I heard her let out a last, furious hiss, and then, with a final burst of bubbles, as if the entire pool had suddenly turned into a churning cauldron of witch’s brew, she was gone.
Then the crystal blue pool water turned as still as it had been before I’d slid into it. Except for the lapping of the water filter, the sound of the crickets, and my own heavy breathing, it was completely silent in the Carmel Valley Mountain View Apartment Complex pool.
Until Ryan, my neighbor in unit 2-B, called from his balcony, “Hey! You guys okay down there?”
Jesse was still holding me by the wrist, keeping me suspended half in, half out of the water.
“She’s fine,” he shouted up to Ryan. “Just a cramp.”
“Tell her that’s why she’s supposed to wait half an hour after eating before going for a swim,” Ryan said in a teasing voice before turning back to the television show he was watching inside.
Jesse didn’t wait another moment before pulling me out of the water, soaking his shirt and tie even further, then carrying me to the closest chaise longue.
“Susannah, it’s all right,” he said, his expression an adorable mix of anger and anxiety. “She’s gone.”
“I know she’s gone,” I said. My teeth had involuntarily begun to chatter. “Stop being so dramatic. You’re getting your work clothes all wet.”
“Damn my clothes,” he said. It was unusual for him to swear, at least in English. I’m the gutter mouth in our relationship.
He’d grabbed my towel from where I’d lain it on top of my clothes, and was bundling me in it. The chaise longue groaned a bit under our combined weight. The building management hadn’t exactly forked out the big bucks for their poolside decor.
“You’re shaking,” he said. “Did she hurt you?”
“No. She’s just a kid.”
“A kid?” He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “A kid who nearly killed you. We’re going to find out who she is and then we’re going to—” Now he was swearing, fluidly, in Spanish.
“Jesse, stop it. What’s the matter with you? Your specialty’s pediatrics. You’re supposed to suffer the little children.”
“Not this one. This one has no chance of getting into the kingdom of heaven. She’s getting exorcised by me straight back to hell, where she came from.”
“She isn’t from hell. She’s frightened, and in pain.”
“I think you’re getting her confused with yourself, querida.”
“No, I’m not. CeeCee’s aunt Pru said so. She tried to warn me about it tonight outside the café, but I didn’t pay attention.”