Song for the Dead: An Ada Palomino Novel

by Karina Halle

  “Yes. I’ve heard of Coachella. I wasn’t born under a rock. I’ve been to Coachella. Have you?”

  “No. And you probably went before it was cool, which isn’t fair.”

  “Life’s not fair.”

  “Right. So, there’s this rave party in the desert tonight.”

  He gives me an uneasy look. “Uh huh…”

  “And I thought it would be fun to go. It’s in Joshua Tree and I’ve always wanted to go there. We could go for a bit and then, like, stay in a yurt or something.”

  He laughs. “You? In a yurt?”

  “Okay but how about you, at a rave. That’s funny too.”

  “Do they even have raves anymore?”

  I shrug, looking at the event on my phone. “They are calling it an all-encompassing EDM experience under the desert sky.”

  “You were just in the hospital, Ada,” he warns.

  “Was I? Because if I call them, they’ll have no record of me.”

  “You’re still recovering.”

  “I’m fine! I’m healed. And you know it. You told me these injuries aren’t the same as real world shit. And the Vicodin helps.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Come on,” I tell him. “You afraid to get high?”

  He shakes his head, biting back a smile. “I’m not getting high, darlin’. Give me some beer and I’ll be happy.”

  “Fine. But let’s go. I’ll find us a place to stay in Yucca Valley. It’ll be fun.”

  He sighs, palming the steering wheel as we speed south. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

  “Please. You owe me.”

  His eyes snap to mine. “How do I owe you?”

  I just stare at him. Do I need to gesture to all of this?

  “Right,” he says, exhaling. “Fine. We’ll go.” He pauses for a moment. “You know you won’t believe this, but I went to rave once. In college. With Dex.”

  I laugh. “How the fuck did you get him to a rave?”

  “Drugs, baby. How do you think everyone else gets to a rave?”

  “Touché.”

  Even though the I-5 between San Francisco and LA is ugly as fuck, just one big barren dustbowl, it’s quick and easy, and especially when Max is driving. I’m able to just sit back in the car and cruise and let my mind wander, keeping it corralled whenever it wants to dwell on anything unsafe (like my neglected schoolwork, like the abyss inside Max, like the demon lady, like that I almost died in an alley, like I went to the hospital, like that I’m high on Vicodin right now, like my feelings toward the man next to me are growing more complicated by the hour).

  Though the drive is still long, we take the highway toward Bakersfield and Tehachapi and Victorville before barrelling down the I-10 toward Palm Springs. We hit up the high desert at sunset, driving past spiky Joshua Trees and boulders, cruising through blacktop and following the vague directions from the rave’s website. The Airbnb I managed to snag (not a yurt, unfortunately) is just past the rave, so I figured we might as well come here first and then go check-in when we’re bombed out of our minds.

  Also, I say that because Max has told me one million and one times that he’s not getting high or drunk, so he’s the designated driver for the night. One of us should probably have their wits about them at all times as a precaution.

  The rave is located just off the highway, in a small valley of sorts, surrounded by low, jagged mountains turned silhouettes by the moon.

  In the distance are the stage and the lights and the crowd, which we can’t quite see but we can feel, all those lives, so happy to party, so very high.

  We find parking right away, even though it’s a long way to the event down a dark dirt road.

  “No drop-off service,” I comment, as he parks the car next to another car. We’re the last ones, until another car pulls in and parks beside us.

  “Sorry darlin’,” he says to me, turning off the engine. “Maybe next time.”

  “What if I said I was too sore to walk?”

  He looks me over, frowning. “That true?”

  “I’m just joking. I am high though.”

  “You’ve been high for a while, Ada.”

  “You’ll piggyback me if I get too tired, right?”

  “You know this rave was your idea?” I just stare at him until he relents. “Yes. Fine. Of course.”

  I get a warm feeling in my stomach, happy and content. Then again, it could be the Vicodin.

  We get out of the car. The desert air has a bite to it, so we keep our leather jackets on, and even though I was once worried we’d look like a team of dorks, I think we look pretty cool.

  I look Max up and down as he walks around the hood to me. Black leather jacket, white Henley underneath, dark grey jeans, Vans, red-hair pushed back off his face, the Elvis-like snarl to lips. Yeah. He looks hot as fuck.

  That’s the pills talking too, by the way.

  We start walking down the dirt road, past the parked cars, toward the event, the music slowly getting louder and louder as the minutes tick on, even though we don’t seem to be getting any closer. There are other groups of people walking ahead of us, but their voices are faint. Just other people on the way to dance.

  But that fast EDM beat, when it does get through, makes me tap my toes. As we walk I start dancing around Max, not giving a shit.

  He’s laughing, unable to keep a straight face while I’m giving it my all while maintaining very serious eye contact with him.

  “Hey big boy,” I croon at him, waving my hands around as I shimmy backward. “You seem to have some rhythm. Wanna dance?”

  Max shakes his head. “I’d much rather watch you.”

  “But you can dance,” I say, demonstrating how badly I can’t dance.

  Even in the dark of night, his face only faintly illuminated by the faraway lights, his expression gives it away. Of course he can dance.

  “Let me guess,” I shout at him, “you went to Studio 54!”

  “I told you, I was touring with rock bands at that time,” he says. “That wasn’t my scene, baby.”

  I keep dancing, my moves morphing into nineties Madonna somehow. “Have you ever tried to write a book? Maybe it would be helpful to keep track of everything you’ve done.”

  “Would be a big fucking book.”

  “I’d read it.”

  He opens his mouth to say something, when he suddenly stops dead in his tracks, his mouth snapping shut.

  I stop too, trying to orient myself.

  “What?” I ask him quietly, waiting.

  Then his eyes begin to flame.

  Oh fuck.

  I look down the lane at the other ravers, but the group keeps moving toward the concert. Then I look up the way we came and see two figures approaching in the dark.

  Max is far from his sword.

  And I don’t know if I have it in me to try and fight right now.

  I look at Max, hoping he can read my mind, and fast, before they do.

  Max doesn’t even look behind him.

  He just walks right over to me, his eyes brimming with a mix of determination and panic, and puts one hand back in my hair, making a fist, the other reaching down underneath my ass and lifting me up.

  I don’t have time to react before he’s moving me backward until I’m placed right on someone’s hood.

  He gives me another look, the look that tells me that I’m in for something and I have to prepare myself and before I even can…

  He kisses me.

  Not a neat and tidy kiss.

  A kiss that buries me.

  Swallows me.

  Devours me.

  His lips against mine for the first time, the energy, the sparks going haywire as his mouth moves, hard, powerful, and I’m just this helpless clawing thing in the dark, trying to hold on, trying to ground myself, to make sense of this.

  But I can’t.

  There’s nothing but this.

  His mouth matches mine as it moves, stirring up som
ething from the depths of me, and I’m alive now. I’m alive and I’m hungry and I’m wondering where a kiss like this has been all my life because right now, this is my life.

  And then his fist in my hair tightens and a gasp escapes my lips against his and his mouth moves beside mine, to my chin, to my jaw, the place where my jaw meets my neck, sinking into the softness there, and I’m gasping for air, breathing for him, for more.

  My hands move up into his hair, taking hold, and I give myself to him, like I’ve been wanting to before I was even conscious of it. There’s grinding music inside me, heavy bass, and it builds and builds as my hands move to his shoulders holding him there against me.

  Holy shit.

  I mean, holy shit.

  What the fuck is happening?

  His lips find mine again, pressing against my mouth with strength and lust and desperation, his tongue tangled with mine, stroking me in a decadent rhythm until I’m one combustible fireball ready to explode. My fingers dig into his jacket, my other hand goes to his lower back, wanting him up against me, wanting to feel him, all of him.

  I’m fucking aching for it, lost to this kiss, to him, to everything I’d been holding back from and everything I’m drowning in and, and, and…

  He pulls back abruptly, resting his forehead against mine, breathing hard, and my heart feels like it’s about to punch right through my ribcage. I can only stare at him, breathless, speechless, the knot of tension inside me at a breaking point.

  “Do you think that worked?” he asks, his voice low and thick, his eyes lingering on my lips, my lips that feel bruised.

  “What?” I manage to say, my voice barely audible. Why are we even talking? Why aren’t we kissing again? Why haven’t we always been doing that?

  “Yeah, it worked,” he answers, even though I haven’t said anything. Then he straightens up and looks down the road toward the concert. He clears his throat and then reaches down and lifts me off the hood of some stranger’s car, placing me on the ground.

  I shake my head, trying to get my brain cells back in place because I am fucking lost.

  “What…”

  “The demons,” he says, nodding his head down the road to where the two dark figures are, walking away. “If they were reading minds, I figured I’d empty ours.”

  Empty my mind? Well, he did a bang-up fucking job.

  “I never knew you could kiss like that,” I tell him, still breathless.

  He winks at me, pleased as fuck. “You never asked, darlin’.” He grabs my hand and pulls me toward him. “Now come on. We can’t leave now.”

  He tugs me down the road after the demons, and it takes everything in me to try and get my head on straight but, honestly, I’m having a hard time.

  Because, holy shit.

  I wanna do that again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Every single cell in my body is turned on and I can’t shake it.

  Fuck those demons.

  That kiss was the big development here.

  I’m not sure I’m going to recover.

  “Ada,” Max says from beside me, squeezing my hand. “The sword is back at the car. I can’t use it here with this many people. We have to handle this ourselves.”

  “Uh huh.”

  He glances down at me. “Focus, sweetheart.”

  I lick my lips, still tasting his lips on mine. God, they taste good.

  “Sorry, you just…”

  “Just what?”

  Blew my fucking mind.

  “Distracted me.”

  “Yeah, well, you and me both.” He pauses. “It worked.”

  A little too well. Because I want us to stop walking. I want to take him into a dark corner against another car, want him to lift me up, to wrap my legs around him, feel his mouth against mine, feel the rest of him beneath my palm, discover what those feelings for me really are.

  But he seems more than happy to keep that a few yards back. He’s walking toward the oonce oonce music with determination on his face and I guess it’s about time that I put my raging horniness to the side and focus on the matter at hand.

  He hasn’t made it easy, though.

  I doubt he even realizes what he just did to me.

  We keep walking to the event and eventually we go through the ticket taker (no tickets, but with Max it doesn’t matter), then through a metal detector which doesn’t make me feel any better (but does make the point that a sword wouldn’t be appreciated).

  Then we’re in the rave.

  I immediately wish I was higher. Like, higher-than-Vicodin kind of high. The music is loud and everyone is dancing with the happiest, most intense expressions on their faces. It makes me jealous of their drugs. Then again, if I had a moment alone with Max again... Fuck, we don’t even have to be alone. I’ll fucking maul him right here, in front of everyone.

  Hey girl, calm your tits.

  But though the voice inside my head means well, it’s a little too quiet.

  Max squeezes my hand, keeping me close to him, as we make our way through the crowd. I don’t know how on earth we’re supposed to find the two demons in here. I mean, everyone’s eyes are so dilated that they look demonic anyway, and all the vibes are going in all directions. Plus, we never even got a look at them. I guess the only thing we have to go by is Max’s eyes, if they ever get flames in them. And I think if I have to stare into his eyes all night, waiting for that, I’m going to end up making out with him again.

  “Now what?” I say to him when we come to stop by the bar, giving us a broader view of the crowd. Since everyone here is high as fuck and therefore not drinking, there’s not much of a crowd in this area.

  “I don’t know,” he says, scanning the crowd. “I reckon it’s pretty much impossible to pin them down.”

  “But didn’t you say they’d find us eventually? You’ve got a tracker on you or something.”

  He glances at me. “So then, we wait here and see if they show up?”

  “I don’t see you coming up with any ideas.”

  He gives me a crooked grin. “Alright. We’ll do that.”

  “Okay, good, because I’m having a drink,” I tell him, turning around to face the bartender whose been watching us this whole time. “Hi. Beer, please.” I look at Max, even though he’s scanning the crowd. “Better make it two. If he doesn’t have it, I will.”

  The bartender gives me two beers and I slap down a twenty that barely covers them. Max looks back at me, shakes his head. “Those both for you?”

  “Actually, one is for you.” I hold it out for him, but he doesn’t bite.

  “You have it,” he says, and goes back to looking around.

  Okay, so I know I’m still kind of high and about to be drunk, but I don’t really understand how he could just kiss me like that and pretend it never happened. I mean, it did happen. This is going to stick with me for a long time. Kisses like that happen once in a lifetime, he can’t possibly pretend it was just for show, just a distraction.

  Then he looks back at me. “You okay? I’m just going to go check on something.”

  “Don’t you dare go far,” I warn.

  “I won’t.”

  He walks off into the crowd. He’s by far the tallest person here, so at least he’s easy to spot as he cuts through the crowd.

  I keep my eyes glued to his head, peeling off one label and finishing the beer before I do the same to the other. Eventually I drift away from the bar until I lose sight of Max.

  Fuck. Just my luck I’m going to end up cornered by those demons and with my brain just open for them to look at, they’re going to know it’s me.

  “Hey sugar.”

  I jump, startled, and see some skeezy looking guy in a sweat-soaked white tank top, man bun, and grizzly beard in need of some conditioner.

  “Sugar?” I repeat.

  He moves closer to me, making me back up against a fence post.

  Holy shit.

  Demon.

  Right?
<
br />   I narrow my eyes at him. “Do I know you?”

  “You’re going to,” he says, a malicious glint running through his overly dilated eyes. “You’re here all alone. I’ve been watching you.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Think you need a man to show you the ropes.”

  “The ropes of what, exactly?”

  He moves closer to me, the movement making me realize I can’t escape easily. “Nowhere to go, sugar. You’re trapped with me.”

  He grins at me and while his teeth aren’t shark’s teeth, they are sharp and misshapen.

  “Are you a demon?” I ask him.

  He jerks his head back and frowns. “Demon?”

  “I take that as a no,” I say. Then I wind up and clock him right in the face, my fist connecting with his jaw, and that extra boost of energy from me is just the chef’s kiss. He goes stumbling back a few feet until he’s on the ground.

  He cries out in pathetic pain, holding his jaw. Some people around us gasp or laugh and then go back to dancing.

  I turn around and see Max standing right behind me, brows raised, looking impressed.

  “You were just going to stand there?” I say to him.

  “I knew you could handle yourself,” he says, adding a smile.

  I cross my arms. “Not the jealous type, then.”

  He shrugs with one shoulder. “If you had been into him, it would be a different story.” He nods toward the exit. “Honestly, I think we should leave. The chances of finding them here isn’t great, and the chances of you punching some other dick in the face is.”

  I nod and follow him out of the concert, grabbing the back of his shirt as he leads me out of the crowd and the music and the drugs and back onto the dirt road leading back to the car.

  The further away we get from it, the more the music fades, the more it seems like a crazy idea in the first place.

  “Sorry I dragged you to a rave,” I tell him.

  “Would you believe me if I said I had fun?” he asks.

  I bite my lip. “Oh yeah? Which part?”

  He stares at my mouth for a moment, long enough for me to know which part.

  “So, what do we do about the demons?” I ask him as we walk. “They’re in the crowd there, probably high on E.”

  “We just have to let them go. There’s gonna be a lot of that.”