Sparrow Hill Road

by Seanan McGuire

  “No.” He can’t give me a coat, but he can give me coffee. The list of the dead has stopped running. I know something he doesn’t. I know what he is. He doesn’t know. How is it that he doesn’t know? How do you not notice something like that? He’s looking at me sidelong, suspicion in his eyes. I take a sip of coffee flavored with cream, sugar, and paradise. That confirms my suspicions. Only a fully incarnate spirit can give me food that tastes like anything but ashes. “No problem.”

  “Good.” He runs his eyes over my breasts again, trying to make me uncomfortable. It isn’t working. All I have left for him is pity, poor little ghost who doesn’t even realize that he’s dead and gone. “So you’ve got your cup of coffee. Are you ready for your cup of cock?”

  The other hostages are staring at us with silent trepidation, mice caught in a cat’s cage and watching the one mouse too stupid to stay out of reach of the cat’s claws. As long as I’m making myself a target, he’s not focusing on them. Two of them are dead already, and one is wounded. I’m the last one to the party. As far as they’re concerned, I’m the expendable one.

  I’d be offended if it weren’t for the fact that they’re right.

  “Sure,” I say, and watch his eyes widen. That wasn’t the answer he was expecting. “But can I ask you for a favor first?”

  He blinks, surprise hardening almost instantly into irritation. “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  “Let them patch her up.” I take another sip of coffee before nodding toward Dinah of the serious bullet wound. “Dead bodies are depressing, and she’s bleeding bad enough to gross me out. I’ll do whatever you want if you let them give her a little first aid. Deal?”

  Suspicion sits at the front of his expression as he considers my proposal from every angle, searching for the double cross. He doesn’t find it, because it isn’t there. “Sure,” he says, finally. “Whatever.”

  Strigoi. Some people say that they’re a kind of vampire, and maybe they are in some places, on some layers. Up in the daylight, maybe, where people fight monsters instead of turning into them. Here on the ghostroads, the strigoi are just one more breed of the unquiet dead: angry spirits tethered to the world of the living by something they didn’t get to finish doing before they passed into the twilight. They’re normally intangible, as trapped on the ghostroads as most of the dead, but once in a while . . . once in a while . . .

  Once in a while they can fight their way back into the daylight levels, dragging the twilight in their wake. Only on special occasions, nights like Halloween, Epiphany—and the anniversary of their deaths. I look over Dinah’s shoulder as I help the fry cook and the college boy clean out her wound, assessing the cut of the strigoi’s clothes, the style of his jeans. Now that I’m looking, I can see how far out of fashion he is. Not as far as I would be, if I dressed myself in the green silk gown I died in, but far enough. He’s a traveler from another country, a country called “yesterday,” and I don’t think he knows it.

  Poor little ghost. He’s in over his head.

  I pitch my voice low, ask the fry cook the question I most need to have answered: “How long ago was the accident?”

  There’s a momentary confusion in his face, like I just asked him when water became wet, or when the first “r” in “February” turned silent. Then the confusion clears, and he gives the answer I was hoping for, the one that comes as a question: “How do you know about—?”

  “Just tell me what happened.”

  His gaze stutters toward the strigoi, who still stands guard at the diner’s locked front door. “It doesn’t have anything to do with . . . with anything.”

  “Humor me.” The college boy casts a sharp look in my direction, narrowing his coffee-colored eyes. I smile and keep binding Dinah’s wounds. Right now, a suspicious bystander is the least of my problems. “How long ago?”

  “It was back in ’89. I didn’t work here yet. Tom—he owns the place. He only works days now, since he doesn’t have to do overnights if he doesn’t want to—Tom told me about it.” The fry cook worries his lip between his teeth, abandoning his watch over the strigoi in favor of squinting at me, like I’m a blurred image he can somehow make come clear. If he’s been working here long enough, that idea isn’t too far off. All diners touch on the twilight. People who work in them tend to stumble into shadows whether they mean to or not. “It was pretty bad.”

  I look at him calmly, my fingers busy taping gauze over Dinah’s gunshot wound. Her skin has gone clay-cold, and feels like ashes. With the amount of blood she’s lost, she may not see the morning, no matter how things go from here. “What happened?”

  “This guy and his girlfriend came busting in and tried to hold up the place. They wanted the contents of the register. It could have gone peaceful, if the guy who was working the kitchen hadn’t freaked out the way he did. He started screaming about demons or something, and they started shooting. One of the bullets hit the propane tank.” The fry cook shudders, eyes closing momentarily, as if against a bright flash of light. “Tom said it took two years and all the insurance money to clean the place up enough to open again. He doesn’t like to talk about it. The folks who’ve been here longer than I have say that’s when he stopped working nights.”

  Twenty-one years ago. I don’t need to ask for the exact date of the accident; I can see the awareness stirring in the fry cook’s eyes, slowly waking and making itself known. He’ll be lucky to pull free of the twilight after this. He’s falling deeper with every second that passes. They all are, but thanks to the push I gave him—the one I had to give him in order to get the information I needed—he’s falling faster than the rest of them. Damn.

  “Finish patching her up,” I say, and pass the rest of the gauze to the fry cook. The college boy’s eyes are still fixed on me, filled with suspicion and with fear. Out of everyone here, he’s the one who least belongs, the one most likely to break loose when everything is over. Lucky bastard. I’ve hated men for less.

  The cook takes the gauze with something like gratitude, Dinah still a dumb doll sitting placid between us. “What are you going to do?”

  My attention drifts to the strigoi, lost ghost on a road he doesn’t recognize. He’s just like my drivers. He just needs someone to make sure he gets home. The answer comes easy. This particular answer always does.

  “I’m going to keep my word.”

  No matter what form your soul takes when it hits the ghostroads, it has rules it has to follow. I can borrow flesh and blood from the living for the span of a night by putting on the coats and sweaters that they put aside, stealing breath and skin and all the trappings of mortality. Ghost hunters can’t see what I am, and spirit eaters can’t consume me. Those who walk the twilight will know me as one of them, but not exactly what that entails—only a routewitch can recognize a hitcher when she’s wearing human skin, because only a routewitch can see all the roads that we’ve walked stretching out behind us, like ripples on water. When I’m physical, I’m generally protected from the twilight.

  Generally. The trouble is, when I’m playing dress-up dolly in a living girl’s skin, I’m stuck with the same rules as everyone else. Drop the coat and I’m no more substantial than a sigh. Until then, I can bleed, and I can break, and I can walk across a diner feeling my pulse hammer in my veins like an overcharged engine.

  The strigoi who doesn’t know he’s a strigoi watches my approach with hooded eyes, taking in the blood caked on my fingers and the coffee stains on the wrists of my oversized sweatshirt. “She gonna live?” he asks, curt and unconcerned.

  I nod, trying to look timid—trying to look anything but angry. He’s the one with the gun. I’m the one whose bag of tricks consists almost entirely of taking off her clothes and disappearing. “I . . . I think so. It’d be better if we could get her to a hospital—” His snort answers the question I wasn’t planning to ask. “But I guess we can worry about all that later.”

  “You guess.”

  “Yeah.” I shrug, doe-eyed and frightened
. “I mean . . . you want something, right? That’s why you’re here? Because you want something.”

  “Everybody wants something.” He reaches out with one hard-fingered hand and takes hold of my chin, twisting my face a little to the side as he studies me. His skin is rough and smells like motor oil. I’d never know he wasn’t among the living if it weren’t for that coat of his. “Do you remember what I want, bitch?”

  “Rose.”

  That seems to startle him. His grip falters, almost losing hold of me, before he tightens up and barks, “What?”

  “My name is Rose.” I search his face for a flicker of recognition, for anything that says he knows who—or what—I am. There’s nothing. Just that anger, anger like a wound, anger deep enough to raise the dead. “Um. R-Rose Marshall. What’s yours?”

  “You think I’m an idiot, Rose? You think I’m going to leave you with a name you can give the cops when they show up tomorrow?” He taps the muzzle of his gun against my temple, the hand that holds my chin in place not letting up. “Nice try.”

  “No! No. I don’t think you’re an idiot. I just thought . . .” I shrug helplessly, fighting the urge to rip myself from his grasp. “I said . . . I said I’d do whatever you wanted if you’d just let us take care of her. I thought it might be nice to know your name. That’s all.”

  Confusion overwhelms the anger for a moment, longer this time than it did before. He really doesn’t know what he’s doing here. Poor little strigoi, just as lost as his captives, without half as much reason. Expression hardening, he taps my temple with the gun again, like he’s trying to ring a bell for service. “You just want me to get distracted so you can give the rest of these assholes a chance to get away.”

  I don’t know who my laughter startles more, me or him. He lets go of my chin, taking a half step backward, and stares at me like a man who’s just seen a ghost.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “Like I’d do anything for them?” I wave a hand, indicating the rest of the people in the diner. “I mean, sure, I said I’d do you if it meant we could bandage up the girl you shot before I got here, but that’s because I don’t want to be stuck in this hole with a dead body. That’s unsanitary.”

  He keeps staring at me. “Are you crazy?”

  “I’ve been called worse.” I shrug. “Look, I don’t want to die in here. You don’t really want to kill me, or you would’ve already put a bullet in my head, and somebody would be mopping my brain off the wall. I don’t know why you’ve decided you want a diner of your very own, and frankly, I don’t care. If sex is going to keep you calm enough to not shoot me, I’ll do you right here, right now.”

  Now he slowly nods, some private question answered by my reply. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re crazy.”

  “You’re the one who took a whole stupid diner hostage.” I plant my hands on my hips, looking down my nose at him and trying to look like I don’t give a damn what he does. Several of the other hostages are muttering, sending a nervous ringing through the diner walls. At least they’re buying my cocky idiot act. “What do you want it for, anyway? Convenience stores have more money.”

  “I’m not here for the money.” He rubs his forehead with his free hand, confusion flashing in his eyes like a neon sign. Poor little strigoi. “I’m here because . . . I’m here . . .”

  Careful, now; don’t push too hard, or it’s back to square one, if not worse. I still don’t want to know what happens if he decides to shoot me. “I mean, at least a Denny’s would have those really greasy four-dollar breakfast plates with the stupid names.”

  “Trina wanted to stop here.” He frowns, confusion flickering into anger and back again as he looks around the diner. It seems like he’s really seeing it for the first time. “Where the fuck is Trina?”

  The hostages exchange anxious glances and draw closer together, confirming with their silence what I suspected all along: Trina, whoever she was, didn’t rise with her boyfriend. Maybe she survived the original accident. Maybe she’s living somewhere miles away from here, scarred and sorry, but still breathing. Maybe she just found peace after she died, while he missed it by a country mile. Whatever her story is, it’s not the same as his anymore, if it ever was.

  “Trina isn’t here,” I say quietly. Ashes and lilies. The air smells like ashes and lilies, and the smell of rosemary and sweet grandmotherly perfume is almost gone. I’m not holding back the accident that’s heading our way, and I can’t see this road clearly enough to know if it’s even possible. I drop my hands, look the strigoi in the eye, and continue, just as quietly, “I don’t think Trina’s going to come tonight. I don’t think you understand what you’re really doing here.”

  “I’m doing whatever I fucking well want to do,” he snarls. Familiar ground, a beaten dog that wants to bite.

  “You’re holding a room full of strangers hostage like it’s going to change anything!” I step toward him, the weight of lilies and ashes crashing down on me. My mouth is filled with the burning taste of propane—I mistook it for diesel fuel, I didn’t know any better, and I died on impact, I was dead before I could burn. I jab my finger at his chest. “You can’t change anything. Don’t you get that? Don’t you get that yet? Trina isn’t here because she isn’t coming. She left you. After the explosion, she left you, and you’re too busy being wrapped up in the drama of your own death to let yourself see it. You—”

  The gun goes off with a bark like one of those big blast firecrackers my brothers used to let off down by the train tracks. The pain comes half a second later, and I look down to see the blood spreading out from the center of my chest, staining the sweatshirt Josh gave me. It hurts like nothing’s hurt since the day I died.

  “You asshole,” I say wonderingly, and I touch the wound with one shaking hand, and I fall to the floor. My eyes are closed before I hit the ground, and for a little while, the rest is silence.

  Ghosts can die. That may sound like a paradox, but it’s not. Everything that’s conscious and aware is alive in its own way, and anything that’s alive can die. Only it turns out that ghosts can’t die from being shot in the chest by other ghosts, which is pretty nice to know.

  My eyes snap open after what feels like only a few minutes, and I sit up, half-relieved, half-furious. My fury grows as I see my hands, the nails buffed and polished just so, the bracelet of jade beads around one wrist. I’m back in my stupid prom dress, again, back in the clothes I was wearing the night my car went off the curve at the top of Sparrow Hill Road. There is no such thing as fashionable forgetfulness among the hitchhiking dead.

  I climb to my feet and look down, ignoring the gasps and muffled shrieks behind me. There, peeping out from under the hem of my green silk gown, is the sleeve of the sweatshirt I got from Josh. I step back. The bloodstain is gone. The bullet hole isn’t.

  The sound of the gun going off isn’t even enough to make me flinch this time. Without a coat, without a borrowed skin to tear away, there’s nothing a strigoi can do to me. As long as he’s shooting, I don’t even have to look to know where he’s standing. So I look to the clock instead. The big hand is on the five, and the little hand is on the three. It’s been hours. I was on the ground for hours before my borrowed body figured out that it had to let me go.

  I wonder how many others he’s shot since then. So I ignore the third gunshot as I turn and survey the hostages, trying to count. At least two of them are missing, Dinah with her bandaged arm, the college boy with his coffee-colored eyes. The rest are still ciphers to me, frightened shadows whose only role in this little drama is to watch, and live, or die. I should feel bad about reducing them this way. I can’t. I’ve been shot, which isn’t exactly an experience I was hoping to have, and I’m in a pretty shitty mood.

  “I killed you!” shouts the strigoi, sounding strangled. At least the hostages aren’t the only ones frightened now. That’s something, anyway. “You can’t be walking around, you stupid bitch. I killed you!”

  “God, get with the progra
m, will you?” I spin to face him, angry avenging spirit in green silk and second-hand dancing shoes. He takes a step backward, fear written big and bright across his face. “You can’t kill me, you asshole. I’ve been dead for years. Now what is your name?”

  He’s too startled to lie to me. “D-Dmitri,” he stammers. Catching himself, he brings the gun up, pointing it at the center of my chest—the spot where he shot me the first time. Some people just never learn. “Don’t come any closer!”

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me again? The same way you shot poor Dinah? Like you shot the propane tank?” I don’t have any bullets of my own. He still winces like he’s the one who just got shot. I take a step toward him, ignoring the gun, focusing on his eyes. “You’re dead, Dmitri. Trina’s gone. Maybe she’s dead and maybe she’s not, but she’s gone. She’s not coming back for you. You can hold this place hostage a thousand times, a million times, and she’s still not going to come back. You’re in the twilight now. You’re too far away for her to reach.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he whispers. His words drop into the silence like stones into a lake, sinking fast, ripples spreading. “You’re lying.”

  “It’s one or the other, Dmitri.” Another step forward, another set of ripples. “You died here. You shot the propane tank, and it blew sky high, and you died.”

  “Shut up.”

  “The fire ripped down the walls and melted the skin off your body and ate the flesh off your bones, and you died here. The insurance money paid for new paint and a new kitchen and everyone forgot your name, even the people who had to watch you burn, and you died here.”

  “SHUT UP!”

  The bullet passes through the center of my chest without finding any resistance. There’s a yelp of pain from behind me. I don’t look back. I just keep walking toward Dmitri. “Maybe there was a funeral. That’s assuming they could find your next of kin, and that there was enough left of you to identify. Maybe they just cremated you and stuck your ashes in a box in the police station for somebody to come claim, someday. Either way, you died here, and you have no right—”