Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood 7)

"Your father has also...passed. So I know it's extra hard."

"Well, yes, he's dead, although I don't miss him at all. She was always the one for me. And with her gone...I feel like I just drove up to my home to find someone's burned it down. I mean, I didn't see her every night or even every week, but I always had the potential of going over and sitting down and smelling her Chanel No. 5. Of hearing her voice and seeing her across a table. That potential...grounded me, and I didn't know it until I lost it. Shit...I'm not making sense."

"No, you totally are. For me it's the same. My mother's gone and my father...he's here but he's not. So I feel homeless, too. Adrift."

This was why people got mated, Rehv suddenly thought. Fuck the sex and the social position. If they were smart, they did it to make a house that had no walls and an invisible roof and a floor that no one could walk on-and yet the structure was a shelter no storm could blow down, no match could torch up, no passage of years could degrade.

That was when it hit him. A mated bond like that helped you through shit nights like this.

Bella had found that shelter with her Zsadist. And maybe her older brother needed to follow his sister's example.

"Well," Ehlena said awkwardly, "I can answer the question about my favorite color if you like. Might keep things from getting too heavy."

Rehv shook himself back into gear. "And what would it be?"

Ehlena cleared her throat a little. "My favorite color is...amethyst."

Rehv smiled until his cheeks hurt. "I think that's a great color for you to like. A perfect color."

Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT

There were fifteen people at Chrissy's funeral who knew her, and one who hadn't-and as Xhex scanned the windswept cemetery, she looked for a seventeenth person hiding among the trees and tombs and larger headstones.

No wonder the f**king graveyard was called Pine Grove. There were fluffy boughs all over the place, providing ample cover for someone who didn't want to be seen. Damn it to hell.

She'd found the cemetery in the Yellow Pages. The first two she'd called hadn't had any space left. The third had had space only in their Wall of Eternity, as the guy called it, for cremated bodies. Finally, she'd found this Pine Grove thing and purchased the rectangle of dirt they were all standing around.

The pink coffin had been about five grand. The plot another three. The priest, father, whatever humans called him, had indicated that a suggested donation of a hundred dollars would be appropriate.

No problem. Chrissy deserved it.

Xhex searched the frickin' pines again, hoping to find the ass**le who'd murdered her. Bobby Grady had to be coming. Most abusers who killed the objects of their obsessions remained connected emotionally. And even though the police were looking for him, and he had to know that, the drive to see her put to rest was going to override logic.

Xhex refocused on the officiant. The human male was dressed in a black coat, his white collar showing at his throat. In his palms, over Chrissy's pretty coffin, he held a Bible that he read from in a low, reverent voice. Satin ribbons were laid among the gold-leafed pages to demarcate whatever sections he used most, the ends trailing out the bottom of the book, waving red and yellow and white in the cold. Xhex wondered what his "favorites" list was like. Marriages. Baptisms-if she got that word right. Funerals.

Did he pray for sinners, she wondered. If she remembered the Christian thing right, she believed he had to-so although he didn't know Chrissy had been a prostitute, even if he had he would still have had to affect that respectful tone and expression.

This gave Xhex comfort, although she couldn't have said why.

From out of the north, a chilly breeze blew, and she resumed surveying the landscape. Chrissy wasn't staying here when they were done. Like so many rituals, this was for show. With the earth frozen, she was going to have to wait until spring, housed in a meat locker at the mortuary. But at least she had her headstone, pink granite, of course, set where she'd be buried. Xhex had kept the words of the inscription simple, just Chrissy's name and her dates, but there was a lot of nice scrollwork done around the edges.

This was the first human death ceremony Xhex had ever been to, and it was utterly foreign, all this entombing, first in the box, then under the earth. The idea of getting stuck beneath the ground was enough to make her tug at the collar of her leather jacket. Nope. Not for her. In this respect, she was solidly symphath.

Funeral pyres were the only way to go.

At the grave, the officiant bent down with a silver shovel and roughed up the ground, then he took a handful of the loose dirt and pronounced over the coffin, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

The man let the granules of earth fly, and as the brisk wind took them, Xhex sighed, this part making sense to her. In the symphath tradition, the dead were raised upon wooden platforms and lit from below, the smoke wafting up and scattering just as this dirt did, at the mercy of the elements. And what remained? Ash that was left where it lay.

Of course, symphaths were burned because no one trusted that they were actually dead when they "died." Sometimes they were. Sometimes they were just playing at it. And it was worth being sure.

But the elegant lie was the same in both traditions, wasn't it. Being swept away, free from the body, gone and yet part of everything.

The priest closed the Bible and bowed his head, and as everyone else followed his example, Xhex glanced around again, praying that f**ker Grady was somewhere.

But as far as she could see or sense, he hadn't shown yet.

Shit, look at all the headstones...planted into rolling hills that were winter-brown. Although the markers were all different-tall and thin, or short and close to the ground, white, gray, black, pink, gold-there was a central plan to it all, the rows of the dead arranged like houses in a development, with asphalt lanes and stretches of trees winding among them.

One headstone kept drawing her eyes. It was a statue of a robed woman who was staring up to the heavens, her face and pose as serene and calm as the overcast sky she was focused on. The granite she was carved out of was pale gray, the same color as what loomed over her, and for a moment it was hard to tell what was the grave marker and what was the horizon.

Shaking herself, Xhex looked over at Trez and, when he met her eyes, he shook his head imperceptibly. Same with iAm. Neither of them had tweaked to Bobby's presence, either.

Meanwhile Detective de la Cruz was staring at her, and she knew it not because she returned the favor to him, but because she could feel his emotions change whenever those eyes of his landed on her. He understood how she felt. He truly did. And there was a part of him that respected her for her vengeance. But he was resolved.

As the priest stepped back and talk sprang up, Xhex realized the graveside service was over, and she watched as Marie-Terese was the first to break ranks, going up to the officiant and shaking his hand. She was spectacular in her funeral garb, her black lace head covering looking positively bridal, the beads and cross in her hands making her seem pious to the point of nun-ish.

Clearly, the priest approved of her dress and her serious, beautiful face and whatever it was she said to him, because he bowed and held on to her hand. With the contact between them, his emotional grid shifted to love, pure, undiluted, chaste love.

That was why the statue stood out, Xhex realized. Marie-Terese looked exactly like the robed female. Weird.

"Nice service, huh."

She turned and looked at Detective de la Cruz. "Seemed fine. I wouldn't really know."

"You're not Catholic, then."

"Nope." Xhex waved at Trez and iAm as the crowd dispersed. The boys were taking everyone out to lunch before they all headed into work, as one more way of honoring Chrissy.

"Grady didn't come," the detective said.

"Nope."

De la Cruz smiled. "You know, you talk like you decorate."

"I like to keep things simple."

"'Just the facts, ma'am'? I thought that was my line." He glanced at the backs of the people walking off toward the three cars parked together in the lane. One by one, Rehv's Bentley, a Honda mini-van, and Marie-Terese's five-year-old Camry pulled out.

"So, where's your boss?" de la Cruz murmured. "I expected to see him here."

"He's a night owl."

"Ah."

"Look, Detective, I'm going to take off."

"Really?" He swept his arm around. "In what? Or do you like walking in this kind of weather."