Song for the Dead: An Ada Palomino Novel

by Karina Halle

  And at that I wash my hair four times and condition it five with the shitty hotel toiletries to make sure all the dust is gone. The last thing I want is for my hair to fall out. Losing my favorite PJs is one thing, but I swear to god if my hair is ruined, I’m going straight back home.

  Eventually, when I think I’ve rubbed my skin raw, I step out and towel off, then wrap it around me and step out into the hotel room.

  Max is standing there, leaning back against the dresser, ankles crossed, beer dangling from his fingertips, wearing a white t-shirt and green plaid pajama pants. He’s staring at my bed which is completely covered in ash and black goo.

  He pulls his eyes away from the scene and looks at me, expression grim. “That was lucky,” he says, his voice low.

  I nod quickly. “Can I tell you how much I approve of that sword?” I walk over to him, keeping my towel on tightly while I swipe the beer from his hand, knocking back a sip. “What happened? And where did this beer come from?”

  “Got your priorities straight, don’t you?” He moves, bending over to open the mini bar, taking out another beer, plus two tiny bottles of vodka. He tosses a vodka to me which I catch with one hand.

  He cracks the one he has open and shoots it back, and I put down my beer and do the same, feeling the burn down my throat. If there was ever a reason to get drunk…

  He wipes the back of his mouth and nods at the door.

  “She came in through the door.”

  “The demon? How? You let her in?”

  His eyes fall closed for a moment. “No. I was asleep.”

  “Then how did you know?”

  “The door was open when I woke up and she was over your bed. I had to think fast.”

  Holy fuck.

  That scares the shit out of me.

  My heart lurches thinking of how close I just came to dying. And from the pained look on Max’s face, he’s thinking the same thing.

  If I die, he dies.

  “Thank god for you,” I say after a moment.

  He looks at me, his expression anguished. “I should have known. I mean, I felt it. I was trying not to fall asleep because I thought maybe a demon would try something. Because of what I felt earlier. I just thought…I thought they would come in through a portal. That I would wake up in time, have some fair warning. But it was almost too late.”

  I don’t like seeing him like this. I go over to him and place my hand on his forearm. “Max. You did good. I’m here. The only thing ruined are my pajamas. Speaking of which, my top is totally dissolved. Why didn’t that happen with the ashes from the other night?”

  “You mean last night?”

  “Yeah. Jesus, we’re only two nights into this trip.”

  His mouth twists. “I know.” Then he takes a sip of beer. “I think the closer you are to them, um, turning to demon dust on you, the more damage it does. It’s like hot ash fresh from the fire versus one that’s been floating for a while. I don’t think it’s good to have that substance around, at any rate.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing that I brought a lot of clothes,” I joke, though neither of us are finding the humor in it at the moment. “Don’t think I’ll be sleeping in my bed tonight.”

  He sighs, straightening up. “I’ll see if I can get us another room.”

  I tighten my grip on his arm. “They said they’re sold out tonight.”

  “Then I’ll get some bedding to sleep on the floor.”

  “Max,” I say testily. “Come on. Get in bed and make room for me. I doubt either of us will be able to sleep, but we can at least try.”

  I gesture to the bed again and then I grab my other pair of sleep clothes, which is booty shorts and a white camisole, and I’m really regretting not bringing something that covers more skin. Then again, he just saw me almost naked so fuck it.

  I get changed in the bathroom and when I come back out the lights are off, the room faintly illuminated by the streetlights sneaking in past the drawn curtains. I see the hulking shape of him in bed, facing the wall and the sword against it.

  I go around to my side and get in under the covers, turning on my side, my back to him. I can’t help but stare at my bed, at the ash and turned over covers and think about how close I just came to dying.

  It makes me feel sick and shaky, like I’m starting to come undone all over again.

  “Max,” I whisper into the dark of the room.

  “Yes?” he says softly, voice muffled behind me.

  “Can you do me a favor?”

  “What?”

  “Can you spoon me?”

  A pause. “What?”

  “You know. Spoon me. Like you’re the big spoon and I’m the little spoon.”

  I feel him turn over, the bed moving from his weight. “I know how it works, Ada. I’m just…finding this a rather interesting request.”

  I let out a shaky breath. “I know. I’m just a little scared at the moment and—”

  “Say no more,” he says, and then he moves across the bed until his arms wrap around me, pulling me to him until my back is against his chest, his chin resting on top of my head. “How is this?”

  Oh god.

  “Good,” I manage to say, trying to control my breath.

  Because it is.

  Too good.

  I can’t remember the last time I was held.

  Honestly, it makes me crumble a little, like he’s the only thing holding me together. I can feel his heart beating against my back, feel the strength in his arms as if he’s promising that nothing will ever happen to me. And I know he’s beating himself up because he fell asleep tonight, but the fact is he was there when it counted.

  He saved me.

  I close my eyes and sink into his embrace, enjoying it because I don’t know how long I’ll have it. Such a simple thing, human touch, and yet I’m now realizing how starved for it I’ve been.

  “You okay?” he whispers, his lips moving against my head.

  I nod lightly. “Yeah. This is nice.”

  He doesn’t say anything to that. I have to wonder how he’s taking it. Is it a chore to him, something he’s putting up with? Is he enjoying the contact? Is he holding himself back? Something tells me if I move my ass backward into him I can figure that out for myself really fast.

  But I’m not bold enough for that.

  “Max?”

  “Yes?”

  “How many women have you spooned before?”

  He bursts out laughing, lowering his face until it’s in my hair, the whole bed shaking from his laughter. “I’ve spooned quite a few,” he says when he catches his breath. “Why?”

  “No reason. You’re just really good at it.”

  “Glad to be good at something.”

  Liar. The man is good at everything.

  Silence fills the room for a bit until all I hear is his deep and steady breath into my hair. Every time he breathes out, I get a little shiver down my spine. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to sleep.

  And so my mind starts to wander, thinking too much about everything.

  “Max…do you like me?” I don’t know why I have no filter tonight but I guess that’s what happens when you almost die.

  He stirs and lifts his head out of my hair.

  “What?” he says sleepily. “Do I like you? Darlin’, what are you talking about?”

  I roll over enough so that my head is nestled back in the pillow and I’m staring at his face, his eyes on mine, sleepy and intense all at once.

  “I mean, do you like me. Like, as a person?”

  He frowns, licking his lips, which are dangerously close to mine. A thread of tension between us seems to twist and tighten, his breathing becoming sharper.

  “Of course I do. Why would you even ask that?”

  I swallow and shrug, rolling back over. His arms are holding me tighter now. “Because…” I say, trying to calm my trembling nerves, “everyone always leaves me. Jay, Jacob, Perry, my mother. I’m always left behind.”

&
nbsp; He exhales hard, his breath moving my hair.

  “I have to admit, you’re breaking my heart here, Ada,” he says after a moment. “I’m not going to leave you.”

  “Because you can’t.”

  “I wouldn’t even if I could.”

  I sigh, wanting to believe him of all people. I grab hold of his forearms, holding tight, as if he can save me from all the ugly things I fear. I have so much shit rolling around in my head that I’m afraid to admit the truth, afraid to let it out. But maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe I need to let it out more.

  And so I take a deep breath and open myself to the man who needs me more than anyone else ever will.

  “I’m worried…that there’s something fundamentally wrong with me that makes people leave, or die, or forget me. Maybe I’m not meant to have people in my life. I seem to screw up my relationship with Perry and my dad. I can’t keep any friendships because I’m so fucking weird, so different that no one understands me. And I can’t keep love…I had someone that I thought understood me, understood what I have to live with, this affliction, and they didn’t love me enough to stick around.”

  “Ada,” he says softly, pressing his lips to the back of my head, a gesture that pulls a string somewhere inside me, cracking something that was once hard. “There is nothing wrong with you. This life isn’t easy, but you’re handling it better than most would. One day all of this will make sense.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I know a lot of things,” he says, his voice low, tickling something inside me. “And I have faith in a lot of things too. Get some sleep. Things will look better in the morning. They always do.”

  “Unless you’re a vampire.”

  He laughs faintly. It’s enough to make me smile.

  “Max?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Are vampires real?”

  He sighs heavily. A moment of silence falls after.

  “Yes.”

  Great.

  Eleven

  “I believe I know you, yet I don’t truly know myself. I pray you won’t feel as alone as I have felt.”

  – Fortress

  The next morning we wake up early, knowing the drive down highway 1 takes way longer than you’d think, and there’s a lot of stuff I want to see and do in San Francisco.

  Surprisingly, I slept well for the rest of the night. So well, that when I woke up and rolled over to find myself face to face with Maximus, I had a bit of a shock. He didn’t seem all that surprised though, just gave me a lazy smile and wished me good morning before he got out of bed and made us coffee.

  So there was that.

  And then the rest of the memories came flooding through. The ash on the bedspread, my ruined pajamas, the sword, my close brush with death. Part of me felt a little silly too, wanting to have Max fucking spoon me all night long. I mean, that was something I’ve never asked for, never wanted to ask for. And yet I did, putting all pride and feelings foolishness aside.

  But if Max thought any of it was lame or weird, he didn’t show it. Things felt normal between us, even though I felt closer to him than I had before, and we were on our way in the Super B heading south.

  “Hey, so I was wondering,” I say, after I just made him pull over on the side of the road for the hundredth time so I could take a picture of the cliffs and the ocean. “Could you teach me to wield the sword?”

  Max glances at me, bringing his eyes back to the road just in time to take a tight curve, the waves crashing hundreds of meters below. “Do you know how heavy that thing is?”

  “No. I haven’t tried to hold it. You make it look easy.”

  “I have experience, darlin’.”

  “Well, okay, but how about passing some of that experience my way? You’re my teacher after all. Shouldn’t be you be teaching me to slice the heads off people?”

  “Demons. We slice the heads off of demons.”

  “Whatever,” I tell him, putting my feet up on the dash because I know it pisses him off. “I should still know.”

  “Feet off the dash.”

  I roll my eyes and put them back down.

  “I just think I should be prepared.”

  “You’ll be prepared. The sword is just for me.”

  “And what happens if you’re not around?”

  “I’m always going to be around, whether you like it or not.”

  He keeps saying that. And yeah, it’s because he’s bound to me. But still, I worry about the moment things right themselves, when he doesn’t need me anymore. What then?

  Anyway, I’m glad that I’m not hungover because he wasn’t kidding about the road being winding as fuck and taking forever. I initially wanted to stop and get oysters in Bodega Bay, since they filmed The Birds there and I’ve been totally in love with Tippi Hendren’s aesthetic in that film, but we decided to push through and just get burgers from In-N-Out in Sausalito.

  “How have you never had an In-N-Out burger?” I ask Max as we pull back onto the 101, heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge, burgers spread across my lap.

  “Haven’t been in California since it became so popular. Been dead.”

  “Well, I guess you haven’t seen and done everything,” I tell him, wolfing the burger down.

  “I certainly haven’t,” he says, munching on a fry distastefully. “These fries are horseshit though.”

  “Should’ve got them animal style.”

  “Animal style? That their way of sexing them up?”

  I laugh, even though the way he says animal style conjures a pretty dirty image of us in my head, the kind of image that brings an immediate flush to my cheeks.

  Fuck, I need to get laid.

  I pivot away and bury my face in the burger until it’s all gone and my hormones have calmed down. I steal a glance at him. “Still want you to teach me how to handle your sword.”

  His brows shoot straight up.

  Whoops. Guess that did sound like innuendo.

  “You know what I mean,” I quickly add.

  He looks me up and down, mouth curving into a slight smile. “Never know with you, sweetheart.”

  Thank god we’re approaching the Golden Gate Bridge, something big enough to distract us from the tension in the car, tension that could all be in my head, but even so.

  And man, what a sight. The sun is shining down on the bay, making the water gleam as sailboats swoop under the bridge, while the city of San Francisco stands at attention, the skyline sparking something like hope inside me.

  “Oh my god,” I say, staring out the window. “There’s so much I want to do. Can we stay a couple of days?”

  He shrugs. “Don’t see why not.”

  I think that over. Max really doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to get to New Orleans. Maybe because he’s afraid of what he’ll find there. A woman that’s moved on without him.

  In a way, and this sounds callous to think, I hope what he does find is closure. A chance to move on himself. I don’t know exactly what went down between him and Rose before he died, but from what I do know, if she was ready to get engaged to someone else, then she doesn’t deserve Max. I know I told Max that maybe she was just trying to protect herself and heal that way, that grief makes people do strange things, but at the same time…the thought of him getting back together with her makes me feel queasy and I don’t know why. I don’t like that feeling, at any rate.

  The hotel I picked is called the Hotel Vertigo, which is where they originally filmed the hotel scenes in Vertigo, another Hitchcock movie whose aesthetic I’m obsessed with. I’m hoping that the hotel and the city itself will jumpstart my creativity. I know I’m supposed to be studying and keeping up with my schoolwork and all that but, honestly, I haven’t even given it much thought since we left Oregon.

  “Hey, do you want to model for me?” I ask Max, as he takes the car into the city, navigating the one-way streets.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “I have to have a model for my year
-end project. I was going to use a woman, design a dress. But I think if I did menswear it would be more challenging for me, therefore fun. And if I could use you as a model…”

  He gives me a faint smile. “I’m flattered. Really. But I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  My heart squeezes with a hit of rejection. I try to push through it. “Why not? I promise I won’t get all handsy with you again,” I say, trying to make it light.

  “That’s not the problem, Ada.”

  I mean, I guess that’s good…

  “Then what’s the problem? It’s just a little fashion show. You can do it. You can do anything. I’m sure you’ve had some modeling experience in your past. Maybe you sat down for some Pre-Raphaelite paintings. You have the face for it. You might be hanging in the Louvre, have you even checked?”

  He presses his lips together for a moment before saying, “I just can’t commit to it. Wouldn’t be fair to you.”

  “You can’t commit to it? It’s in a couple of months. You’ll be around.”

  Won’t you? You said you’re never leaving me.

  “I just think it’s best if you find someone else. It’s not really my forte. You understand.”

  “Are you trying your Jedi shit with me?”

  He smiles. “Do or do not. There is no try.”

  I stare at him expectantly.

  “It’s a joke, darlin’. Now let’s hope the hotel has valet because I don’t want to park this thing on these streets.”

  I decide to drop it, bring it up some other time. Maybe he’s just feeling strangely shy.

  We get to the hotel and it’s just as awesome as I thought it would be, totally done up in the Vertigo theme, including the poster art for the movie and the film playing on TVs all across the lobby. Hitchcock would be proud.

  Our room is nice, albeit small, and when I open the window to the street below I feel just like Kim Novak. Well, without the movie’s unsettling storyline. I’ve got my own unsettling storyline to grapple with.

  Max looks tired, I guess from all the driving, but I want to see Alcatraz before the last ferry leaves, so I drag him outside and we catch an Uber, taking us to Pier 39 where we walk along the embarcadero to the ferry.