This Side of the Grave (#5 Night Huntress)

lurred 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.”
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.