This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress, #5)(80)

Very lightly, he tugged on the urn, making it easy for me not to let him pull it from my grip, if I didn’t want to. I looked down at the small brass container and the pale hands—mine and Bones’s—that encircled it.

It. Not Don. I knew that logically, but the part of me that was having the hardest time saying goodbye to my uncle didn’t want to acknowledge that what I held was nothing more than ash surrounded by metal. It had been four days since his death, yet I still felt like I was moving around in a dream. Even attending his memorial service and giving the eulogy felt more surreal than rooted in reality, because Don couldn’t really be gone. Hell, I could swear I’d glimpsed him a few times in my peripheral vision, looking as mildly exasperated with me as ever.

Bones tugged again and I let the urn slip from my hands into his, blinking back the tears from the relinquishment that was more symbolic than the transferring of an item. He leaned down, brushing his lips across my forehead, and then disappeared up the stairs. Maybe it was a good thing that Bones was putting Don’s remains away instead of me. With my current emotional state, I’d probably think the only safe place for his ashes was tucked inside my clothes next to the garlic and weed.

I rubbed my hands together, bleakly noting how empty they felt without the surrogate for my uncle that I’d clutched the past several hours. Then I rolled up the sleeves of my memorial-appropriate black blouse. I might not have control over much else in my life, but I could get the goddamn dust off the furniture, for starters.

My ferocious scrubbing of the house in an effort to distract myself from grieving over Don turned out to be beneficial in more ways than one. Mencheres called, saying he was on his way over because he had important information to relay. From the way Bones said he sounded, it wasn’t wonderful important information, like Apollyon being found dead with a “Happy early birthday, Cat!” note pinned to his corpse. Frankly I didn’t think I was up for any more bad news, but since life had no pause button that I knew of, I was about to be dealing with Mencheres’s news, up for it or not.

At least the house was sparkling and the musty scent was gone from the air. Of course, that could also be from the new plants Bones went out to procure while I was doing my imitation of Martha Stewart. Now I was the dubious owner of several fragrant garlic bulbs and a few fluffy pot plants. I didn’t even want to ask where Bones had gotten the latter from. Sniffed it out and dug it up from a local illegal field? Or bought it from a friendly neighborhood drug dealer?

God, I couldn’t wait until the effect from Marie’s blood was out of my system. If I never smelled garlic or weed again, it would be too soon. The only upside of our new decor was that it meant I could take the packets off, and not having dozens of little porous baggies under my clothes was a welcome relief.

“They’re here, Kitten,” Bones called out from downstairs.

I didn’t hear anything yet, but I knew his connection to Mencheres was unusually acute because of their shared power, so I took him at his word. I wouldn’t have time to put on makeup, but I didn’t think anyone would notice. Or care. I was showered, in clean clothes, and my home was neat. Those were the three most important things when having visitors over.

Unless those visitors were hungry, of course.

“We don’t have any blood,” I said to Bones as I came down the stairs.

His gaze swept over me, pausing at certain points with appreciation. My dress was hardly sexy, being a plain black cotton number that hung to my feet and had three-quarter sleeves, but either it hugged the right places or Bones was showing the effects of a week of celibacy. To say I hadn’t been in the mood since Don died was to put it mildly.

“I rather doubt they’d expect us to,” he replied. “They know we just arrived.”

Right. Plus, this wasn’t a social call. “He’s probably coming over to tell me we need to put Plan Dave into action,” I muttered. “We were supposed to think up another way to swipe a few of Apollyon’s higher-ups without having Dave reveal that he was a plant, but that got pushed by the wayside.”

Bones raised a brow in a way that said, Perhaps. He’d heard about that. Dave told Bones shortly after Don died, fueled by grief into wanting even more to strike a blow against Apollyon, but Bones talked him out of it. Still, I knew he thought the idea had merit.

I was even more opposed to it now than before, though. I’d just lost my uncle. I didn’t want to lose a good friend next, and Dave was reeling from Don’s death like the rest of us, which made him sloppier. That was the cold hard truth. I wondered if my uncle had any idea the profound effect he’d had on the people around him. Knowing Don, I doubted it. He wasn’t much for grandstanding.

A car came up the winding driveway in the next few minutes, the sound almost loud compared to the relative quietness of the woods around us. The seclusion of having a cabin on fifteen acres of mountaintop property was what had drawn us to this place to begin with. Now that I could read minds, I appreciated the lack of close neighbors even more.

“Grandsire, Kira, welcome,” Bones said once they were at the door.

I noted the elegant leather satchel Mencheres carried with a mental sigh. Of course they’d spend the night. He was coming all the way out here to deliver information; it would be beyond rude for us to hear him out, and then send them on their way. Plus, he probably wanted to strategize, and I couldn’t blame him for that, either. No matter what upheaval might be going on in my personal life, there was still a war we had to prevent.