Song for the Dead: An Ada Palomino Novel by Karina Halle

Author:Karina Halle [Halle, Karina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-24T18:30:00+00:00

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.

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