The Girl in the Green Silk Gown

by Seanan McGuire

  “I really am sorry,” she says. “This time with you . . . it hasn’t been like I thought it would be. I expected you to be colder, crueler. More selfish. You killed Tommy, and you never even looked back.”

  “I didn’t kill Tommy,” I whisper.

  “I know.” Her head sags forward, until her chin must be brushing against her chest, until her eyes must be fixed on the pavement beneath her feet. “I loved him, God how I loved him, but when he got an idea in his head, all the angels in the sky couldn’t get it out again. He wanted to race. He wanted to win us a future, and instead, he lost everything. I couldn’t stop him. You couldn’t stop him. I just needed someone I could blame.”

  “Then why—”

  “You weren’t the first person to call me.”

  My heart stops in my chest. Literally stops, like it’s being clenched by an unseen hand. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. She can’t mean . . .

  “I never made any secret of how much I hated you. How could I? You were my life’s work. Finding a way to unmake you was all I’d been working toward for so long. And then my phone rang, and the man on the other end offered to give me everything I’d ever wanted. He offered to make you pay.”

  I find enough air to whisper, “What did you do?”

  “What do you think I did?” Her laugh is thin and bitter. “I told Mr. Cross I’d be delighted to help him. I even told him the shape of the ritual that would block Persephone’s blessing from you. I said . . . I said it would take a lot of power to enact it. He said he’d take care of that part. I swear, Rose, he didn’t tell me he was going to kill anyone. He just said he’d handle things. All I had to do was give you a ride if you called me. All I had to do was get you here.”

  “Killing me, though,” I say. “That was always the idea.”

  “Yes.”

  At least she isn’t trying to deny it. I’m not sure I could stand it if she lied to me again. “Turn around, Laura.”

  “I’m sorry, Rose. I can’t. I told Bobby I’d deliver you to him, and I keep my word.”

  “You told me that you would help me get home. What about your word to me? Doesn’t it count for anything?”

  “You’re dead. Promises to you don’t count anymore.”

  “I was alive when you told me you’d help,” I counter sharply. “I’m alive now. I’m more alive than Bobby Cross.”

  “I’m sorry.” Laura takes a step forward. I’m jerked along in her wake. The light is on the toes of my shoes now. I’m so close to the land of the living, I’m so close—

  “Wait!” It’s a scream, it’s a howl, it’s everything I have, and it’s enough. Laura stops again. I slump forward, hands on my knees, panting.

  “He’ll be here soon,” she says softly. “Shouldn’t we get this over with?”

  “What did he promise you?” I demand. “He said he’d help you destroy me, but what else? Did he say he could bring Tommy to life the same way?”

  Silence. He did.

  “It barely worked with me, Laura, and it’s not going to work with Tommy. He has no blessing to bind. If he did go to the fields on Halloween, it wouldn’t be with the Barrowman family, because Apple isn’t going to support them anymore. Bobby stole their daughter, you know. Their innocent, oblivious, living teenager. He stole her and he threatened to kill her if they didn’t help him resurrect me. What he did should have been impossible. This took him years to put together. Even if it hadn’t, even if it was easy, what makes you think Tommy would come back to you after you’d killed one of his only friends?”

  “He loves me,” she whispers.

  “And? He’s a teenage boy. You’re a grown woman. There’s nothing for the two of you in the land of the living. I can take you back to him once you’re dead. I can give you another chance to be together. All Bobby can do is make empty promises and break your heart.”

  That, and shove me into the gas tank of his cursed car, breaking me down and burning me away, so that there’s nothing left but the rumor of an urban legend. I shudder, trying to stay focused on Laura.

  “Please,” I say. “I thought we were friends. Please.”

  “God, Rose, I’m—”

  She starts to turn.

  The bumper of Bobby’s car slams into her, knocking her out of sight. I scream. That’s all I have time for before my connection to her jerks me hard to the side, slamming me into the wall. Something snaps inside me, bright pain shooting through me in a wave, and I collapse to the ground, choking on my own blood.

  When I lift my head, Bobby is standing just outside the cave.

  “Hello, Rosie girl,” he purrs. “Naughty, naughty. Mustn’t try to convince my helpers to desert me. Now why don’t you come on out of there and let me teach you how a bad girl is punished?”

  Breathing hurts. I spit at him. It comes out bright with blood, red and white as a peppermint stick. The sight of it makes my stomach churn. Whatever that wall broke inside of me, it was important. I need help, or I need Laura to come and look at me, to release me from this prison, which I can feel dying all around me.

  “Come get me, you bastard,” I hiss.

  “Now you know I can’t do that. This isn’t the way in to the Underworld, it’s the way out. So come on out and let me finish this. You’ve lost, Rosie. There’s no need in stretching it any further than it needs to go.”

  I spit again, more weakly this time. I can’t go back. Laura is somewhere out of sight, and I still can’t move any farther away from her than I already am.

  He can’t come in. I don’t dare come out.

  Painfully, I start to laugh. Bobby scowls.

  “What’s so funny? You stop that. Don’t you laugh at me.”

  “You can’t come in,” I wheeze. The pain in my side is getting worse. “I’m going to die in here, Bobby. I’m going to die in the Underworld, and you can’t come in. That means I win. You can’t touch me.”

  His eyes widen in alarm. “You don’t want that. An eternity in there, in the dark? You don’t want that.”

  “Sure.” I wince and spit again, bright blood on the floor. “Persephone likes me. Maybe she’ll let me walk the dog. It’s a good dog. More dogs should come with extra heads.”

  Bobby is clearly becoming frantic. He starts to pace outside the cave. “No. No! This isn’t how it ends, this isn’t—you wait right there, you little bitch. I’ll show you who wins. I’ll show you who the star is.”

  He darts out of sight. I slump, hand pressed to my side, and struggle to breathe.

  It wasn’t like this the first time I died. That was fast, fast enough to be virtually painless, for all that it hurt like hell. That isn’t as much of a contradiction as it may seem. When something happens fast enough, it doesn’t always make as much of an impression. This time I’m dying by inches. It’s getting harder to breathe. That’s my lungs filling up with blood. That’s my broken rib—or ribs, it’s hard to tell—digging deeper every time I inhale.

  Then Bobby lunges back into view, dragging Laura by the arm. Her head is down. She looks unconscious.

  “Where she goes, you follow!” he crows triumphantly, and twists as if to hurl her away.

  He doesn’t see her fingers twitch. He doesn’t see her start to raise her head. But I do, and when she finally manages to raise her eyes, she looks right at me. Her lip is split. Blood runs down from both nostrils, caking the lower half of her face. She looks like a nightmare. She looks like my salvation.

  “Oops,” she breathes. “Guess I’m early.”

  Bobby howls fury and frustration. I barely hear him.

  I’m too busy dying.

  Chapter 22

  Down Among the Dead Men

  I STAND, AND MY BODY DROPS AWAY, dissolving back into the corn husks and wheat chaff that formed it so many days ago, so recently, in the dust of the Barrowman Family Farm. I stand, and the heavy sk
irt of my green silk gown swirls around my ankles, fabric brushing skin like a promise almost forgotten, always intended to be kept.

  Persephone’s blessing burns on my back, and the phantom outlines of handprints burn on my shoulders, and when I lift my hand to brush my hair out of my eyes, a corsage of asphodel and rosebuds is clasped tight around my wrist, a reminder of who helped me, a reminder that I’ve been claimed for good. I may not have asked for the psychopomp’s role in this ghost story, but it’s mine, and the last chance I had to let it go died when I accepted the aid of the Lord of the Dead.

  The world is wrapped in gray mist, scents dulled, flavors deadened. But the neon is bright, and the wind blowing into the Underworld is freezing cold, and I have never been happier to be home.

  “You’re not allowed to touch me, Bobby,” I say, stepping out of the cave, stepping back into the land of the living. “Persephone says so.”

  He takes a step back. “You little—”

  “I don’t know that I’d use that kind of language if I were you,” I say. “It’s fallen out of favor, just like you’ve fallen out of favor. You can’t touch me. Persephone’s blessing has been restored. Get out of here, Bobby. You’ve lost.” I step forward, closing the distance between us, forcing him back. More importantly, putting me between him and Laura.

  The look he gives me is pure spite. “I’m going to have you one day, little girl. And when I do, you’re going to wish I’d gone as easy on you as a trip to my tank. You’re going to yearn for the mercy of an extinction that will no longer be yours.”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” I say. “Go away, Bobby. You needed help to catch me last time, and you’re not going to do it again. Not today. Not ever. Get gone.”

  He snarls wordlessly before he leaps into his car and peels out, roaring out of the parking lot and off to ruin some other poor soul’s night. I say a silent prayer to anyone who’s listening that he doesn’t find a victim tonight. He will. He always does. I keep fighting because him taking me wouldn’t be the end of it, and I’m going to end him. One day, somehow, I’m going to end him.

  Laura wheezes behind me, and I have more important things to worry about than Bobby Cross. I turn.

  She hasn’t moved. She’s still sprawled, beaten and broken and bleeding, on the cold hard ground. Her face is turned toward the sky, but I’m not sure she can see it anymore; all her focus is on her breathing, which comes in small, hard hitches, like her lungs are giving up.

  He hit her with his car hard enough to drive me into the wall, hard enough to snap my ribs from the impact with the stone. How much more damage must he have done to her? She’s older. Her bones are less flexible than mine, less ready to accommodate that sort of trauma. I was dying before she looked back at me.

  She’s dying now.

  “Laura.” I drop to my knees, my skirt spreading out around us. I don’t have a coat, I don’t have anything, and when I reach for her, my hands pass through her skin. Her eyes widen in understanding, and somehow, she finds the strength to smile.

  “Kept . . . my word,” she wheezes. “Got you . . . home.”

  “You did. You did, Laura, you did. I’m sorry. I can’t call for help. I could leave and see if I could find someone, but—”

  “Take . . . too long,” she says. Her eyes are drooping, trying to close. Frowning petulantly, she says, “Hurts.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  “Stay?”

  “Of course.” I put my phantom hands over her human ones, and I leave them there until she sighs, soft and sad, and her fingers tighten on mine. Holding fast, I stand, and I draw her up, out, away from her body.

  The ghost of Laura Moorhead stares at me, looking surprised, and asks, “Was that it?”

  “You mean, did you die?”

  She nods. So do I. She turns to look behind herself, still holding my hands, and gasps at the sight of her own body, lying bloody and broken on the ground. Her eyes—its eyes, because she isn’t there anymore—are open, staring eternally upward at the sky.

  “Oh, God,” she says. “I’m dead.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Welcome to the party.”

  Laura frowns as she looks back to me. I wonder if she realizes she’s getting younger. Not as young as she was on the night Tommy died, but younger all the same, moving toward the age she’s always believed herself to be, deep down. Ghosts can appear as any age they reached in life. I’ll never look any older than sixteen, but Laura? She has decades available to her.

  I’ll never look any older than sixteen. I’m back where I belong, back in my own insubstantial skin, and the only thing keeping me from screaming my victory to the sky is the dead woman clinging to my hand like it’s a lifeline.

  “You might be a road ghost,” I say carefully. “You did die because Bobby Cross hit you with his car, and a lot of hit-and-runs become road ghosts. But if you are, and I let you go, you’re likely to shift into something unpleasant.”

  Her nose wrinkles. “Like a hitchhiker?”

  “I promise you, we’re one of the nicer things out here.” She could be a homecomer, trying to get back to Boulder, leaving a trail of dead bodies in her wake. But I don’t think so. She’s spent her entire life trying to avenge the boyfriend who never meant to leave her, feeling denied by circumstance, feeling thwarted. It’s too early to know for sure—most ghosts don’t settle into their final forms for days, if not weeks, after death—but if I had to lay money, I’d say Laura was going to become a white lady.

  And I can’t let that happen.

  “I told you I’d take you to Tommy when you died,” I say. “I was sort of hoping that would be a long way in the future, but I guess we can’t always get what we want. Would you like me to take you to him?”

  Laura swallows, hard, and nods.

  “Close your eyes,” I say, and when she does, I pull us down, out of the daylight, into the twilight, onto the ghostroads.

  Home.

  * * *

  The sky is purple streaked with pumpkin orange and spangled with frozen, shining stars. The Target is gone, replaced by a rickety old house that must have stood there before it was bulldozed in the name of progress. Someday it will vanish here as well, replaced by the skeleton of the store where someone fell in love, someone had their heart broken, someone died, because that’s the way it works here, in this palimpsest twilight, where America overwrites America in an eternal dance of old becoming new becoming old again.

  Laura looks around, eyes so wide that they rival the absent moon. She looks like she wants to see everything at once, to consume everything at once.

  She looks like she is no more than twenty-five years old.

  The ghostroads are firm beneath my feet, thrumming with all the stories the road has to whisper to the patient and the dead. I close my eyes for a moment and just breathe, still holding tightly to Laura’s hands, still doing my duty as a psychopomp. As long as I don’t let her go, as long as she’s trusting me to get her home, she won’t begin the process of becoming whatever the twilight wants her to be.

  “You can’t let go until I tell you it’s safe,” I say. “Do you understand?”

  Laura nods.

  “Good.” Carefully, I transfer her left hand into mine, so I’m holding both her hands with just one, my fingers straining to contain her. She isn’t trying to pull away. That’s good. I’d lose her if she did, and then I’d have a whole new set of problems.

  Breathing in the scent of cottonwood and lilies, empty rooms and broken windows—the clean, honest scent of the dead—I hold my right hand out and cock my thumb to the sky, a summoning sign so much older than I am that it dizzies the mind to think of it. It’s the best and truest ritual I know, the one sacred gesture that always works, and I feel the road pulse beneath my feet as the signal goes out. Hitchhiker on the road, it says. Hitchhiker in need of a ride.

  I don’t
always feel the road this cleanly. The sensation will fade, of that I have no doubt, as I settle back into my right and real existence. But I was a routewitch, for a little while. I was alive, for a little while. Everything is fresh and raw right now, even the feeling of the road beneath my feet, and I plan to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

  The sound of wheels roaring against the distant pavement reaches us before the flicker of headlights, and there it is: an old dragster racing toward us as fast as the road will allow. The road will allow a lot here in the twilight, especially when it’s a Phantom Rider asking for permission. Tommy takes the curves and corners like they’re nothing, whips around them at a speed that would kill any lesser man—or any man who wasn’t already dead.

  I glance at Laura. She’s watching the car approach, but she doesn’t know yet. She can’t know, or she wouldn’t be standing here so calmly, wouldn’t still be holding onto my hand.

  “Remember,” I say. “You promised me. You can’t let go until I say so.”

  She shoots me a confused look, and then Tommy is pulling up in front of us, tires screeching as he bleeds off speed. She gasps and tries to yank away. I clamp my hand down on her fingers. Laura gives me an utterly betrayed look.

  “Not yet,” I say.

  Tommy kicks his door open and stands, one foot on the road, one foot still in the footwell of his car as he leans on the roof and stares. He looks so damn young. The exit I’ve been seeing in his eyes for the last few years is closer than it’s ever been, and my heart aches with the understanding that this may be the end of him and me: we’ve been good friends, but I have the thing he’s been waiting for, and it’s time he was moving on.

  Time catches up with all of us. It even catches up with the dead.

  “Laura?” he says, in a voice that’s as hopeful as it is confused. He doesn’t believe what he’s seeing. How could he? Then his gaze goes to me, and softens and hardens at the same time, relief and suspicion. “Rose. I heard you’d run into some trouble. But look at you. Dead as a doornail and back in that pretty dress of yours. Guess you must be doing all right for yourself.”