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“Fine.” She sighs as if she’s simply resigned to her fate. “Being an adult is hard.”
Cullen laughs, and I just stare at her. “You’ve been an adult for averylong time.”
“Watch it with thevery,” she says, shaking her finger at me. “Besides, that doesn’t make it any easier, you know.”
While Grandma starts making calls, Cullen and I load everything into our trucks, and then he helps me make the bed and get the rest of the room cleaned up. I vacuum, and he dusts.
It goes so much faster with help.
“This is good to go,” Cullen says as we take stock of our work. “I’ll go with you to unload everything at the chapel.”
“Thanks.” I sigh as Grandma walks into the room. “What did they say?”
“They’ll be here first thing in the morning. Those critters have been up there for a while, so they won’t do any more damage in one night.”
“Ew.” I wrinkle my nose, silently deciding that I’m staying with Apollo tonight despite it being Lauren’s first night home. “Cullen and I are taking the stuff to the chapel. Oh! Speaking of the chapel. Grandma, did you know that there’s a mausoleum in the basement? There are cremated people down there.”
She blinks and nods slowly, thinking it over. “Yes, now that you mention it, I did know that. Sometime back in the 1920s, the church had the mausoleum added to the basement because they didn’t want to take up valuable burial space in the graveyard for the cremated remains. I’m quite sure they stopped interring people down there about twenty-five or thirty years ago, though, but we have some relatives there.”
“Well, I don’t want them down there. I called the city, but they said they’ll have to look into if they can relocate them.”
“That’s pretty creepy,” Cullen says. “Let’s go over there so I can see it.”
I laugh and follow him out to the trucks. “I’ll see you later, Grandma. Call me if you need anything.”
“Thanks, dear. See you in a while.”
She waves us off, and when we get to the chapel, Cullen and I make quick work of unloading the boxes and totes. I decide to store it all in the old office so it’ll be mostly out of my way while I work.
“You’ve done a ton of work in here,” Cullen says after we set down the last of the boxes. “It looks really great.”
“Thanks. You don’t really want to see the basement, do you?”
“Hell yes, I do. Why? Are you afraid to go down there?”
“I don’t like it,” I admit. “You go, and I’ll wait.”
“You’re going to send me down into the basement, where people areburied, by myself? What kind of big sister are you, anyway?”
“Damn it, Cullen.” I stomp a foot, but he doesn’t back down, so I begrudgingly open the door and start down the stairs, Cullen right behind me. “Are you armed?”
“Who am I going to shoot, June? A ghost?”
“Maybe. We don’t know.”
I make it to the bottom of the stairs and flip on more lights, and then I push Cullen ahead of me and hide behind him.
“The door is over there.”
“I’ve never seen you quite this…unnerved,” he decides.
“Just wait until you see it.” I walk behind him and wait while he opens the door. “There’s a light switch to the right.”
“Got it,” he says, flipping the switch and letting out a low whistle. “There are a lot of people in here.”
“I know!” I hear the despair and fear in my voice. There’s even some whininess in there, and I don’t care.
There are dead people in my fucking house.
