Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

“So that means if the myth is true,” Perry surmises, “you made a deal with the Devil for fame and fortune and when you turned twenty-seven, he decided it was time to collect. That’s why your tour went awry, why people started getting hurt and dying.”

Sage gives her a quiet smile. “Sounds like a load of bullshit doesn’t it?”

She shakes her head. “Not at all. I believe it completely. It’s just something tells me you don’t tell this story to just anyone.”

He shrugs. “You’re right. And if I get too drunk or high and do, I can usually pass it off as ramblings of a tired old man, still living in the past. But I knew you guys would understand.” He fixes his green eyes on me now. “Even you.”

Especially you.

I can almost feel that radiating off of him. I think my paranoia amp has been cranked up to eleven lately.

He looks to Dex. “You play an instrument, Dex?”

It’s music to his fucking ears, no pun intended.

“I’ll play anything you give me,” Dex says, wide-eyed. “Just let me smell your guitar and I’ll be happy.”

“Dex don’t be weird,” Perry admonishes him under her breath.

I know Sage doesn’t want to discuss the past anymore and I know that Dex is a gifted musician in his own right, able to play any instrument he wants, let alone sing like a motherfucker, so the question easily swings the conversation back into neutral territory.

We head downstairs into the basement, which is in fact a funky jam room crammed with guitars, instruments, and band memorabilia (AKA not a dungeon). While Perry and I stare at framed platinum records on the walls and photo albums full of Sage and Dawn with Jimmy Page and Roger Waters, Sage and Dex start jamming together. It’s actually kind of an epic sight and I even record a few minutes of it on my phone just in case. Not that my blog followers would care, but you never know.

Finally Perry suggests it’s time to leave. I know Dex wanted to keep rocking out with a legend and I wanted Dawn to come home, maybe even with Jacob in tow, to get more answers but we can feel when our time is up.

We leave and I tell Sage he and Dawn are welcome over any time for dinner (my dad will sure as hell be surprised) and he heartily accepts. But while it was nice to get to know Sage and see his house and get to know a bit about him, I know I’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to our new neighbors.

And I’m not really sure what I’ll find next.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Ada.”

A breath of a voice floats past, barely audible, like it’s more of a memory than anything.

I groan, my eyes too heavy to open and try and take stock of where I am, how I got here. My memory jogs and then stutters and I come up with nothing except the here and now: my cheek pressed against cold, hard ground, with dampness seeping in my clothes, going straight into my bones.

“Ada, come find me.”

The voice again. My mother’s. Here but not here.

Somehow I open my eyes and am faced with a grey world. I’m face down on frosted grass, sprawled against unyielding earth. Slowly I raise my head.

And I see her.

She’s standing a few yards away, her back to me. We’re on the island again, this place that only seems to exist in my dreams, only now it’s not an open space overlooking the sea, we’re in frozen woods of birch and hemlock. On the other side of my mother is a large, dark pond, a layer of thin ice stretched across like a spider web. I have this unsettling feeling that the pond keeps going and going and going underneath and there is no bottom.

It’s a door.

To someplace beneath Hell. A darker place where there’s no air, no life, no escape.

The thoughts rattle me and I’m afraid. I’m suddenly afraid that the door is real, that this is real, and that my mother might actually be in front of me and she’ll be lost to me forever.

“Come find me.”

She starts to walk.

“Stop!” I cry out.

She does.

I try to move, to get up, but every part of my body is heavy, swollen, and by the time I get to my feet, I’m sweating, my face red hot with strain.

She’s still standing there, dressed in jeans and a peasant top, the clothes she was wearing when she was last seen alive.

When she threw herself onto the train tracks of the New York Subway, before my very eyes.

She knew that if she killed herself, the demon that was possessing her, the demon that was intent on destroying us, destroying our world, would die along with her.

The memories hit me like a sledgehammer and I feel myself cracking into pieces.