Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan Read online

  She motions me to a seat at a battered card table with a slightly-stained lace tablecloth spread across it. "I'll be right with you," she says.

  I sit.

  When she returns, she has a red glass wine bottle in one hand, and a deck of cards in the other. "Now, what is it that I can do for you tonight?"

  "Bobby Cross," I answer.

  "I thought as much. I asked myself, 'what could bring the Phantom Prom Date to walk the Ocean Lady, even knowing how dangerous it is for someone like her,' and the only answer I could come up with was 'revenge.'" She places the bottle between us as she sits, waking me with faint amusement. "People are pretty simple, really."

  "It's not about revenge," I protest, but I'm lying. It's been about revenge for decades. It's been about revenge since the day I understood just what was really going on. "It's about stopping him. He needs to be stopped."

  "I didn't say he didn't. I only said that this was about revenge—and it is. Lie to me, if you like, but take care not to lie to yourself. That won't make things better when the cards are down, and you've done what you feel needed doing." The Queen begins to shuffle the cards, sliding them through her hands with quick, practiced ease. "Sin applies even after death, Rose Marshall, and if he's what's held you here all this time, disposing of him could very easily send you to your eternal rest. Were you in a state of grace when you died? Do you think you're in a state of grace now?"

  "I don't know." There's something about the cards that pulls my eyes to them, making it difficult to look away. "I don't think it matters, really. He has to stop. It's gone on too long now."

  "Bobby Cross. Some men don't need introductions, do they?" She stops shuffling, sets the cards between us, and looks at me. "Ask your question, Rose Marshall, and we'll see what we can see."

  I swallow, hard, and ask, "How do I stop Bobby Cross?"

  "Ah." The first card is flipped, sleek black muscle car with red headlights racing along a midnight road. I can't tell the make or model, and I don't need to; I know what this represents. "The Chariot," she says, voice sweet as cherry wine. "Robert Cross loved to drive. He loved the speed, and the thrill of the chase, even when all he chased was the wind. He chased that wind all the way to Hollywood, all the way to the silver screen. They called him Diamond Bobby. Some people say James Dean died the way he did because he was chasing the ghost of Bobby Cross, trying to catch up with a legend." Her eyes dart up toward me, gaze piercing and cold. "You know the truth in that, don't you?"

  I don't speak. I don't need to. The Queen quirks the smallest of smiles and flips a second card, little girl with hair the color of late-summer wheat standing in front of an old-fashioned movie theater. "The roles came fast and the lines came easy, and still he kept racing to catch up with the next big thing, the next thing that could prove to be worth chasing. They said he'd be one of the greats. But he was getting older, and he was afraid."

  "Everybody gets older," I say. Everybody who lives to have the chance. I've watched my family grow old and die, leaving me alone in the world, and I'm still sixteen, and I'm still here, and all because of Bobby Cross.

  "Age may come for us all, but there are...ways...to beg indulgence." She turns a third card, and there's the truck stop on the Ocean Lady, neon bright and seeming to glow even when it's only ink on paper. Her fingers caress the image, ever so lightly, like they might caress a lover. "He came to the King of the Routewitches in the summer of 1941, a living, breathing man whose need and desire burned bright enough to set him on the path of the Atlantic Highway. He was no routewitch, no ambulomancer or trainspotter. He was just a man. That's why, when he walked this far and begged for audience, his request was granted."

  My stomach lurches with the sudden need to lose what little I'd managed to eat in the bar. "Bobby Cross made his bargain with the routewitches?"

  "No." Her answer is sharp, silk circling steel, and she raises her head to glare at me. "Not only ghosts are allowed to come to us for answers, and the road answers the questions it decides deserve response. Bobby Cross asked the King how he could live forever, and the King sent him to the crossroads, where bargains can be made, if you're willing to pay them. He made his own choice, and he made his own deal, and when next the time for the passing of the crown came due, our King removed himself from the throne, and I was chosen. Place no blame without the knowledge to support it."

  "But Bobby—"

  "Routewitches are born in the daylight and live in the twilight. We die in the midnight, and the ghostroads are the closest thing we have to a true home. Without them, the Ocean Lady will not open her arms or her heart to us, and we wither and die. Who has once worn the crown and sets it aside is no longer welcome on the ghostroads." The Queen's gaze remains coldly challenging. "When our King realized what he'd allowed by answering Bobby's question, he exiled himself by passing the crown along. He died in the daylight. He has been more than punished for his sins."

  I want to argue with her. I want to list off the names of Bobby's victims, starting with my own. I don't say a word.

  The Queen gives a small, sharp nod and turns another card, two roads crossing in the desert night. "When you go to the crossroads, you take your chances with the bargain you'll be offered. There's no backing out once you begin. Bobby Cross requested eternal life, time to race every road he could, and something came up out of the deepest levels of the midnight and granted him his heart's desire."

  Bobby Cross rode out into the desert one night, following another successful movie premiere in a string that seemed like it would go on forever, and he was never seen again. There was no body, no wreck, nothing but some skidmarks cutting across the pavement, and the disappearance of the greatest star of an age. Had he managed to drive into the twilight, where the cameras couldn't find him, after making his bargain?

  I was starting to believe that he had. I swallow, and ask, "So what was the catch? Nothing's free. Not when it comes from the midnight."

  "Clever little ghost." She turns another card, and my stomach lurches again, dinner demanding the right to make a return appearance. The likeness is so exact that it could have been painted from a photograph, sixteen-year-old girl with her wheat-colored hair lightened by lemon juice, wearing a green silk gown that was risque, once, and now seems almost hopelessly old-fashioned. Sixteen-year-old girl with wide, trusting brown eyes, and all her life ahead of her.

  If only I'd stayed home that night. If only I'd waited for Gary to call, to tell me why he was so late. If I could take it back I would, all of it, every second of that night and all the nights since, all the time that slipped away since the night that I looked in the mirror and saw the girl on the painted card.

  "Eternal life was an easy thing to grant. All it takes is convincing the ghostroads that a person is already dead, while leaving them among the living. I could do it, if I had time enough, and reason, and wanted to anger the Ocean Lady. But eternal youth...now that's a harder race to run." She turns another card, broken mirror this time, blood clinging to the shards at the center. "If Bobby wants to stay young enough to enjoy his side of the bargain, he has to...do things. Things that might not seem so pleasant."

  "You mean he has to kill people."

  The Queen of the Routewitches smiles as she takes her hands away from the cards and opens the bottle of wine. The sharp, overly-sweet smell of cheap port fills the trailer. "I mean that it's time we discussed the topic of payment."

  Well, crap.

  ***

  Nothing's free in the twilight; everything's an exchange. Sweet-talking someone out of their jacket for a few hours of stolen-back life. Preventing one accident at the cost of causing another. I don't know why I thought for half a heartbeat that dealing with the Queen would be different. "I think I left my wallet in my other coffin," I say, as dryly as I can.

  "We don't deal in money here." The Queen offers the wine bottle across the table, eyes fixed unwaveringly on mine. "A favor, Rose Marshall. That's all I'll charge you for your answers. One day, one o
f mine will come to you, and ask you to do something. Refuse, and the hands of my people will be set against you until such time as you run these roads no longer. Agree, and your debt is paid."

  "I can't agree to every single thing I'm asked to do just because the person asking might be 'one of yours,'" I protest.

  "The one who comes to claim the favor will bring a password to prove that it's for me," she replies, smooth and calm. "All you have to do is what you're asked."

  "I won't kill anyone."

  "Pretty little ideals for a ghost with nowhere else to turn. Do your scruples extend to Bobby, or has he forfeited his right to live?" The Queen smirks, utterly amused, utterly patient. She knows she has the upper hand here. God help me, so do I. "Agreed. You won't be asked to kill anyone, or deliver anyone to any fate they have not earned. If these requests are made of you, our bargain is done, and you owe me nothing."

  If there's a catch here, I can't see it. I'm tired, and I really don't know where else to turn. It was a whim that set me on the Ocean Lady...but it was a whim that's been a long damn time coming, and it's time that this was done. "A favor for my answers," I agree. "I'll do it."

  "I thought you might." She keeps holding out the bottle, clearly waiting for me to take it. "Go ahead. Have a drink."

  The wine is sweet enough to be cloying; it burns the back of my throat, setting my head spinning in an instant. The Queen pulls the bottle away, taking a drink of her own before she sets it aside, and says, "So we have bargained and so we are bound, Rose Marshall of Michigan, Shadow of Sparrow Hill Road. May the Ocean Lady keep our bond in safety."

  "That and a buck-fifty will get me half a cup of coffee," I snap. "How do I stop Bobby Cross?"

  "The eternal life is his, to do with as he chooses, but the eternal youth is centered somewhere closer to the road." This time, the card she turns shows an odometer, the mileage set at zero. "As long as his car is fed and tended, he stays young and strong—strong enough to keep racing, keep running, and keep his part of the bargain."

  My skin is living-warm, and the Queen's trailer is well-heated, but I shiver all the same. I can't help it. I've been chasing Bobby for years, and running from him for even longer, and I know all about the bastard's car. I know what he feeds the damned thing.

  Bobby Cross's car runs on souls.

  "He doesn't need to run them off the road—not exactly—but he does need to harvest them from a very specific class of people. Ghosts are common. Specific types of ghost are rare. There are so many of you out there, dying so many kinds of death, that sometimes catching the ghost you want can border on impossible. Bobby's car needs ghosts of the road to keep running, and to keep him young."

  "And death on the road is the best way to get us," I say, very softly.

  "Unless you're a routewitch, yes," she replies. "Routewitch ghosts are always road ghosts. It's the last gift the road can give to us. So he picks his victims carefully, and runs them off the road when they seem most likely to leave a shade behind. After that—"

  I hold up my hand. "I know what happens after that." I'm not always fast enough, that's what happens after that. I don't always see the accident coming in time, I'm not always in the right place, they don't always believe me. Bobby's still out there, because I'm not always good enough to save them, even after they're dead. "How do I stop him?"

  "Take his car away from him." The Queen of the Routewitches looks at me calmly. "Separate the two of them, and age will catch up with him. He'll live, but he won't be able to stalk the ghostroads any longer. Not without his car to carry him."

  "Is that all?"

  "It's harder than it sounds."

  "I'll believe that, no problem." I rub my arms, trying to warm myself back up. "Just take his car away, huh?"

  "Yes. As for the how, well..." She smiles again. "I think we can help you with that."

  ***

  Tattoos and piercings are the only things I can't fake when I change my clothes and shift my hair around to suit the places that my travels take me. I can do clip-on jewelry, magnetic nose studs, fake belly button rings, but nothing that actually changes the body that I died with. That sort of thing was a lot less common when I was still among the living. My mother told me once that she'd die before she saw any daughter of hers scribbled on like a carnival hootchie dancer.

  Good thing she's been dead for a long time. The room the Queen leads me to has been turned into a makeshift tattoo parlor, white sheets on the walls, a pillow on the narrow wooden table. One of the younger routewitches--a boy who looks no more than ten--stands next to it with a tattoo artist's full kit spread out on a folding TV tray next to him.

  "This is Rose, Mikey," she says. "She's the one we were talking about."

  He nods earnestly. "Evening, ma'am," he says, and his accent is midwestern, and out of date by at least thirty years. No one here is what they seem to be. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

  "Same here, Mikey," I say. I look to the Queen, unsure what the etiquette is here.

  She smiles. "Get up on the table, Rose, and let Mikey work. He knows what you need to have done. The Ocean Lady's agreed to let you carry your protection with you when you leave here." She must see the hesitation in my face, because she puts her hands against my cheeks and says, firmly, "Trust me. We want Bobby stopped as much as you do."

  So I get onto the table and stretch out on my stomach, eyes turned steadfastly toward the wall. The boy Mikey pulls up my dress, begins wiping something cool across my back. This is not what I expected when I set out to walk the Atlantic Highway.

  The Queen of the Routewitches circles the table, crouches down next to me, and says softly, "The one who comes to claim the favor will tell you that I sent her, and give you my name."

  "What is it?"

  "Apple," she says, and I know where the shadows in her eyes came from--a town whose name means "Apple Orchard," a place where the whole damn country fed ghosts into the darkness--and then the needle bites my skin, and like Sleeping Beauty with the spindle, I don't know anything anymore.

  ***

  The Atlantic Highway ran from Calais, Maine to Key West, Florida, and it's in Key West that I wake up, sprawled in a truck stop parking lot, back in the jeans and tank top that I wore when I started walking the Ocean Lady in the first place. I'm chilled to the bone, back among the dead, but the small of my back aches like it hasn't caught on to that fact just yet.

  I climb to my feet and start for the diner, making small adjustments in my appearance as I go, fitting my looks to my environment. Time to see if I can't talk someone out of a sweater and a plate of bacon, and maybe see if I can't get a fry cook on his way off-shift to strip me down and tell me what the Queen of the Routewitches ordered written on my skin.

  Look out, Bobby Cross. Your diamond days are coming to an end, and I'm coming for you.

  El Viento del Diablo

  A Sparrow Hill Road story

  by

  Seanan McGuire

  Rose knows what she's got

  Rose knows that she's hot

  Rose flashes the fools;

  Rose smiles, watch 'em drool.

  El Viento del Diablo gets Rose tonight.

  No Rose if you lose;

  Take care what you choose...

  -- "El Viento del Diablo," Bruce Holmes.

  The true secret of the palimpsest skin of America is that every place is different, and every place is the same. That's the true secret of the entire world, I'd guess, but I don't have access to the world. All I have is North America, where the coyotes sing the moon down every night, and the rattlesnakes whisper warnings through the canyons. And in North America, the daylight, the twilight, and the midnight are each divided and divided again into thousands upon thousands of realities that never seem to touch--barely even seem to exist in parallel--while secretly, they're like horny teenage lovers who can't keep their hands off of each other. They're stealing kisses at the drive-in, the midnight girls with their daylight boys; they're slipping love notes to
their twilight sweethearts, they're telling lies to keep their friends from ever figuring out. They're ripping holes in the world every day, every hour, every second, and they're doing it because people are just people, no matter what onion-skin level of the world they think of as their home. People are just people, and people don't like being fenced in.

  The true secret of the skin of America is that it's barely covered by the legends and lies that it clothes itself in, sitting otherwise naked and exposed. It's a fragile thing, this country and this world of ours, and the only thing it can do to protect itself from us is lie.

  Things that happen in the daylight echo all the way down to the midnight. It works the other way, too. What happens in the midnight will inevitably make itself known in the daylight, given enough time to echo through the layers, to pass hand to hand down all those chains of secret lovers. What happens in the dark always shines through into the light.

  There are times when I truly wish that people weren't so good at forgetting that everything is connected to everything else. Because those are the times when people get hurt.

  ***

  The itching at the small of my back is a low, constant burn, the sort of thing that hasn't been a problem since that hot June night when a dead man ran me off the road at the top of Sparrow Hill. My car went up in flames, my body went with it, and things like the steady itch of healing flesh ceased to be my problem. Try telling that to my back. It's been itching for three weeks now, ever since the Queen of the North American Routewitches decided that dying young in the 1940s shouldn't deny me the right to have a tramp stamp tattoo of my very own.