This Side of the Grave

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.

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.

“Hi, guys,” I said, giving both of them a hug to make up for my initial, selfish wish that they weren’t staying.

“I’m so sorry about your uncle,” Kira whispered, patting me when I let her go. “If there’s anything we can do . . .”

“Thanks,” I said, forcing a smile. “The flowers you sent were beautiful.” All the arrangements had been, but I’d had them sent to a local hospital after the memorial. None of the burly team members were keen on the idea of taking them home, and I didn’t have room for the dozens of floral sprays, bouquets, and wreaths.

“It was the least we could do,” Mencheres replied with his usual reserved courtesy. “I regret to impose on you at this time of sorrow. However—”

“It’s fine,” I interrupted with another mechanical smile. “I know the bad guys don’t call a time-out just because someone dies. I appreciate you handling things for the past few days, but it’s time for Bones and me to get back in the mix.”

I gestured for them to sit down, doing the polite hostess thing by asking if I could get them anything to drink. As Bones predicted, neither of them asked for an authentic version of a Bloody Mary, but just took water instead. That, at least, I had plenty of.

Mencheres waited until I was seated to dive into why they’d come. “I have found out what happened to Nadia Bissel,” he stated.

I just stared at him blankly. “Who?”

Bones also cocked his head in puzzlement. Glad I wasn’t the only one who felt lost.

“The human female you were seeking,” Mencheres amended. At my continued confused look, he sighed. “The one who worked with the reporter you are friends with and who disappeared while investigating rumors of vampires?”

“Oh!” I said, the light bulb finally going off in my memory. I’d forgotten all about sending Nadia’s picture and information to Mencheres so he could circulate it among his allies, looking for a clue as to what happened to her.

“She’s dead?” I asked in resignation. Poor Timmie. He’d held out such hope that she was okay.

“No,” Mencheres said, surprising me. “On the contrary, she’s quite well, according to what I discovered.”

“So why do you have that uh-oh tone to your voice?” I asked warily.

His lips curled. “My uh-oh tone is because you indicated your friend had more than a platonic interest in Nadia, and she is now the lover of a powerful vampire who has no intention of sharing her.”

“Oh,” I repeated, more thoughtfully this time. Then, “His willing lover?” Some vampires weren’t up on the whole “no means no” concept.

“Her willing lover,” Mencheres corrected.

Well. Timmie’s chances with Nadia just went from slim to never gonna happen. I was glad she was alive and not being held against her will. Considering I’d thought Mencheres had come to bear more grim news about Apollyon, this was almost cause for popping the champagne, if I’d had any. Timmie’s heart might be bruised, but there were far worse things that could have befallen Nadia. She’d gone looking for vampires and apparently found a whole lot more than just proof of their existence.

“Your sources are good? There’s no doubt Nadia’s with this vampire of her own free will and not just tranced into staying?”

“I know the vampire Nadia is with,” Mencheres stated. “It would be very unlike Debra to force a human into staying with her, even one who’d discovered our race. Debra could have easily sent Nadia away with no memory of her discovery.”

“Unless Nadia is like me,” Kira said, with a slight smile. “Erasing my memory didn’t work out so well for you when we met.”

Mencheres let out a growl so edged with passion that I had an urge to glance away. “It worked out extraordinarily well in the end,” he murmured to Kira.

Her soft laugh was also filled with things that were best left behind closed doors. Technically, they weren’t doing anything but sitting on the couch together, but with the newly charged air around them, I felt almost like a voyeur in my own home. I looked away to study my fingernails, as if struck by an urgent need to get a manicure.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Bones’s slight grin. He knew how this would affect me, but the sudden heat coming off the two of them did nothing to discomfit him, of course. Mencheres and Kira could start boinking like rabbits right in front of Bones, and he’d probably just warn them that the sectional they were on tended to flip over during such activity.

If Mencheres and Kira wanted to take this upstairs to a guest room, they were welcome to, but if they were staying down here, I was defusing the mood.

“Not nice for Nadia to disappear without telling her friends she was okay, though,” I said, clearing my throat.

Mencheres rescinded the energy he’d been emitting until the room felt back to a PG–13 level, instead of R heading into NC–17. “Debra is what you would refer to as old school,” he replied, pulling his gaze away from Kira to look at me. “She would not want Nadia contacting people from her former life, especially those who had an interest in exposing our race.”

Her former life. I almost let out a snort. That was the damn truth, because once a person became involved in the vampire world, nothing about their life would ever be the same again.

Then I glanced at Bones’s profile, noting his curly hair, richly defined cheekbones, dark brows, and lips that were firm enough to be masculine and full enough to be sinful. Nothing about my life had ever been the same once I plunged into the vampire world, too, but looking at him, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I hoped Nadia found half as much happiness in her undead relationship as I’d found in mine.

“I’ll call Timmie, give him the news,” I said, rising.

“Poor bloke can’t catch a break when it comes to women,” Bones noted.

I met his dark brown gaze with my first real smile in the past several days. “He just hasn’t met the right one yet, but once he does, he’ll forget everyone else.”

His smile became full of promise even as his power seemed to encompass me like a slow, sensual fog. “Indeed,” he agreed, his tone now deep and silky. “The right woman is well worth waiting for.”

Now it was Kira who cleared her throat at the decided shift in the atmosphere. I went upstairs to my room, still smiling in a lingering way, to call Timmie and give him the news that was both good and bad.