Jeaniene Frost - This Side of the Grave

Then he looked over to Don, whose eyes had closed during this exchange even though I could hear from his thoughts that he wasn’t asleep. His chest hurt too much for him to sleep, and he had a new pain radiating down his arm that he recognized from a few hours ago. Still, I knew what his answer would be even before Tate asked, “You up for this?”

My uncle didn’t know I could hear his thoughts. Didn’t know that I picked up on every word of his thinking this was a far better way to die than before, when he’d been alone, hearing only the steady flat line of the EKG machine before everything had gone black, then awoke to Tate screaming at my mother for what she’d done. I heard all of this, and though my throat burned from stuffing back the tears that relentlessly came, I said nothing. Did nothing even though the very blood running through my veins could possibly prevent the next heart attack that I knew was coming.

This was his choice. I hated it—oh, so much!—because it was taking from me the only real father I’d ever known, but Tate was right. I had to respect it.

“Let’s do this,” Don replied. His voice was raspy with pain, but the smile he flashed me was genuine despite that.

Tate picked up the phone by Don’s bed, telling whoever was on the other line to “get Crawfield, now, and bring her up here.”

To distract myself from falling all to pieces as I heard Don’s heartbeat become more erratic and listened to his mind try to shelter him from the increased squeezing in his chest, I began to explain the intricacies of a vampire marriage ceremony.

“So, if a vampire couple wants to get married—which they’d better be damn sure about, because with vampires, it’s till death do you part or nothing —it’s kinda like those old handfasting ceremonies. One of them, usually the guy first, gets a knife, slices it across his palm, and then says . . .”

By the time my mother arrived, I’d repeated all the words and described my prior wedding to Bones, leaving out the more grisly details. She looked at the four of us with slight confusion, but Tate didn’t give her a chance to say anything. He grasped her arm and took her into the hall, telling her in a voice too low for Don to overhear what was about to happen.

I was glad Don’s eyes were closed again, because that meant I didn’t have to fight the tears that burst out of me. Tate liked the idea of witnessing my rededication of vows to Bones even less than my mother would. Yet here he was, sternly telling her to act pleasant, dammit, and not ruin this for Don because he didn’t have much time left.

That was excruciatingly evident. My uncle’s breathing was increasingly labored and he was thinking that it felt like he had a car pressed on his chest, but he was fierce in his will to last long enough to do this one final thing. The EKG machine began to make warning noises, as if I couldn’t tell from his thoughts and his skipped heartbeats what was happening. More tears coursed down my cheeks in a steady stream that wet my top and stained the floor an ever darkening pink where they fell.

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 .

Bones held open the door and I steppedinside 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.”