This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress, #5)(79)

I took my uncle’s hand, hating how much cooler it felt with his rapidly decreasing circulation, and squeezed his fingers gently.

Bones covered my hand with his own, his strength feeling like it overflowed from him to permeate into my flesh. Such a stark contrast to my uncle’s rapidly fading mortality and the approaching chill in Don’s fingers.

“Donald Bartholomew Williams,” Bones said formally. I startled at the “Bartholomew” part. I’d never heard Don’s full name before. Figures Bones knows it, a part of me thought hazily as I tried to suppress my sob over the increased skips in my uncle’s heartbeat. Bones extensively researched Don after finding out he was the man who’d blackmailed me into working for him all those years ago.

“Do you give your niece, Catherine, to be my wife?” Bones went on, brushing his fingers over Don’s.

My uncle’s eyes opened, lingering on me, Bones, and then Tate, who still stood in the doorway. Even though I knew how much pain he was in and the effort that it took was palpable, Don managed to smile.

Then his hand clenched around mine, agony blasting through him that I heard in the sudden scream of his thoughts. His whole body stiffened and his mouth opened in a short, harsh gasp—the last one he’d make. Don’s eyes, the same gray color as mine, rolled back in his head as the EKG machine’s beeps became one horrible, continuous sound.

Tate crossed the room in a blink, gripping the bed rail so hard that it crushed under his hands. That was the last thing I saw before everything blurred into reddish pink as the sobs I’d held back broke free to overwhelm me.

Yet even in the throes of the fatal heart attack, my uncle’s will proved stronger than the frailty of his body. He’d sworn to himself that he would live long enough to give me away, and he would not be denied, even if Bones and I were the only ones who knew it.

Don’s dying thought was one single, protracted word.

Yesssss.





Chapter Thirty--two

Bones held open the door and I stepped inside what was technically our home, even though we hadn’t stayed here much in the past year. My cat didn’t share my lack of enthusiasm at our arrival. As soon as I opened the door to his crate, Helsing sprang from the carrier onto the back of the couch, looking around with an expression that could only be called wide-eyed relief.

To be fair, he’d lived here longer than we had, what with how we’d had to leave him with a house sitter for months last year. Or maybe he was just glad to be out of that cage. I couldn’t blame him. Denise had been stuck in a pet carrier for hours after she’d shapeshifted into a feline, and she didn’t recall the experience with fondness.

I looked around at our living room, thinking I should start taking the furniture coverings off the sofas and reclining chairs. Or get some dusting spray and several cloths, because, wow, I could write my name in the mantel over the fireplace or on any of the end tables. But I did none of those things. I simply stood there, looking around, mentally calculating which place would be the best to put Don.

Not on the end tables or the mantel; my cat occasionally leapt onto all the above and I didn’t want to be sweeping up my uncle’s remains if Helsing accidentally knocked Don over. Not the kitchen table; that would be inappropriate. Not the closet; that was rude. Not upstairs in my bedroom; I didn’t think Don needed a bird’s-eye view of what Bones and I did in there. I wasn’t about to put Don in any of the bathrooms, either. What if the steam from the showers got him all wet?

“None of this will work,” I said to Bones.

Hands closed gently over my shoulders as he turned me around to face him.

“Give it to me, Kitten.”

My grip tightened on the brass urn that I’d held all the way from Don’s memorial service in Tennessee to our home in the Blue Ridge. Leave it to my uncle to insist on being cremated. Guess he didn’t trust that one of us wouldn’t yank him out of the grave if he just allowed himself to be planted in one piece. No chance of that now, with ashes being all that was left of him.

“Not until I find the right place for him,” I insisted. “He’s not a plant that I can just stick on a ledge near the sunshine, Bones!”

He tilted my chin up until I either had to look at him, or grind my jaw against his hand in a show of stubborn refusal. I chose the former even if the latter was more of what I felt like doing.

“You know what you’re holding isn’t Don,” Bones said, his dark gaze compassionate. “You wanted to bring his remains here so that nothing happened to them while we were traveling, but that is no more your uncle than this coat is me, Kitten.”

I looked at the long leather jacket Bones had on, its edges slightly frayed from extended wear. I’d gotten it for Bones for Christmas when we were first dating, but hadn’t given it to him personally. I’d been gone by then.

“No, that jacket isn’t you,” I replied, feeling an all too familiar stinging in my eyes. “But you pulled it out from under a cabinet anyway because at the time, it was all you had left of me. Well, this is all I have left of Don.”

His thumb caressed my jaw while his other hand slid down until it rested over the urn.

“I understand,” he said quietly. “And if you like, we’ll build an entire new room just to have a space exactly as you want it for this. But in the meantime, luv, you need to let it go.”