Sparrow Hill Road

by Seanan McGuire

  Everything about this strikes me as off, from the lighting in the gym to the poster that greeted me when I stepped off of the ghostroads. The trouble is figuring out exactly where the problem lies. Maybe it’s just Bethany’s doom-saying, but I’m starting to feel like she’s right, and something dangerous is coming. I just have no idea what “something” may turn out to be.

  “No problem,” I say, and turn, skirts swishing around my ankles as I start my circuit of the gym. Counterclockwise, of course—the natural direction of the dead—and moving slow, trying not to miss anything.

  No one could step into this gym and guess anything other than “senior prom.” The decorations are perfect, that magical combination of cheese and class that somehow tears down social barriers, turning a fractured student body into one entity, at least until the last song ends. Crepe paper roses hang from the ceiling, the Buckley Buccaneer leering out of a hundred unexpected corners like some sort of comic pagan god. There’s something wrong with some of the banners. At first, I assume it’s just the differing levels of skill in the high school art classes coming through. Then I turn a corner, and find myself looking straight into the eyes of a life-sized, painted pirate. There isn’t time to smother the shout of surprise that pushes past my lips.

  The clothes are right, the silly hat and sillier parrot of the Buckley High mascot painted in loving detail. But the hat is in his hand, rather than being forced down over his perfect duck’s-ass hair, and the look in his painted eyes is flat, judgmental, like the eyes of a snake somehow granted human form. Bobby Cross. I’m looking at a painting of Bobby Cross . . . and that’s when I realize something I should have realized from the start:

  I never made it to the prom on the night that I died. There were no pictures of me in my prom dress, because I never made it to the prom.

  “Shit,” I mutter, and take a step backward.

  “That took you way longer than I thought it was going to,” says Bethany from behind me. I turn toward the sound of her voice, mouth already starting to shape my first demands for information. Whatever question I was going to ask is forgotten at the sight of the tin cash box swinging toward my temple. Then it hits, sending jolts of pain all the way down into my toes, and the world goes black.

  I don’t even feel it when I hit the floor.

  Sometimes, being alive really sucks.

  Hitchers are a weird little offshoot of the ghost world: we mess up the rules, just by being what we are. We’re dead and buried. Our bodies are rot and wormfood, if we have bodies at all, if we’re not just ashes on the wind. We don’t age, we don’t sleep, we don’t need to eat or drink when we’re on the ghostroads, and we have the option—even if very few of us ever choose to take it—of moving on to whatever destination waits beyond the last freeway off-ramp. At the same time, give one of us a coat, and we’re alive again, all the way through. A lot of ghosts turn solid on the anniversaries of their deaths, but only hitchers transition all the way back to the lands of the living. Combine that with a coat, and well . . .

  There’s a reason I’m not happy when I open my eyes to find myself tied to a chair, and it’s not just because she didn’t buy me dinner first.

  Just on the off chance that it’s past midnight, I try letting go of the strings tying me to the wrap Bethany so “charitably” provided. Nothing happens. It’s still prom night in Buckley, and that means I’m anchored here, whether or not I want to be. “Fuck,” I mutter.

  “Language,” says Bethany sweetly, stepping around the corner, into view. She’s still wearing the T-shirt and jeans she had on when she picked me up. Why didn’t that strike me as strange? Decorating committee or not, she should have at least had her foundation makeup on, should have done something with her hair. “This is a place of learning, Auntie Rose. Mind your tongue, or you’ll wind up getting detention.”

  “When I was a student here, we knew enough to mind our elders,” I snap. “Untie me right now and I might be able to write this off as a funny, funny prank.”

  “You’re not my elder tonight, Aunt Rose. You were sixteen when you died, and I’m seventeen now. I’m an upperclassman.” Her smile isn’t nearly as chilling as the six girls who come walking up behind her, each of them carrying a candle in one hand and a silver carving knife in the other. “I’m disappointed in you. I really thought you’d be more of a challenge than this.”

  “Did someone contact all the crazy bitches of the world and say I was in the market for a good fucking-over?” I demand. “First Laura, now you—God! Can’t you people leave me the hell alone?”

  “To be fair, I got the idea when I heard what Miss Moorhead had managed to do. I mean, catching a hitcher? That’s not easy, not even when you know the things that call them. Things like the story of their death . . . and the fact that they almost always have a thing for haunting family.” Bethany reaches up and tugs one of the ribbons free of her hair. “You were so set on chasing the things that bind you that you didn’t even notice that this wasn’t a real dance.”

  “Like anybody decorates the gym anymore?” asks one of the other students, wrinkling her nose. “Ew. That’s what the community center is for.”

  “Vicky?” says Bethany, in a voice like honey.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t talk.” Bethany keeps her eyes on me. “There’s a bounty on your head, Auntie Rose, and the man who wants you—you have no idea how much he’s willing to pay. I won’t ever have to worry about anything again. Not me, not my mother, not even Grandpa. We’ll all be set for life.”

  “And all you have to do is kill me,” I say, bitterly. Maybe I didn’t see that the prom was a decoy, but I was distracted, and I’ve never encountered anything like this before. “So what do the rest of them get out of the deal? Cash on the barrel? Bragging rights? What?”

  “Don’t be stupid. I can’t kill you. You’ve been dead since before my father was born. All I’m doing is handing you over to someone who has a purpose for you. As for what my friends get . . . there’s not much for any of us in this podunk little town. We’re getting out.”

  “By making deals with Bobby Cross?” There it is: there’s the name, hanging out in air between us like road kill, like something dead and rotten and stinking. “You should know better. Arthur should have taught you better.”

  “How? He never knew what happened to you. No one ever knew, not until the night the asphalt up on Sparrow Hill started talking to me, started telling me all about it. I think I was supposed to sympathize with you, when all you did was go and get yourself killed over a boy. But Bobby . . .” Her eyes go distant, star-struck. “He knew what he wanted, and he found a way to get it. I respect that in a man.”

  I stare at her, disgusted and aghast. “Please tell me you’re not hot for Bobby Cross.” When she doesn’t answer, I gag, only exaggerating a little. “He’s a monster! He sold his soul!”

  “But he got what he wanted, didn’t he?” She smiles again, brightly. There’s an edge of pure hammered crazy there that I probably should have seen earlier. Hindsight’s a bitch. “And so will I. Bobby’s on his way here now. He’s coming to collect his payment, and then he’ll take us all to the crossroads, and show us how to make his bargain.”

  “You can’t just go to the crossroads. You need a guide. You need . . .” Apple said the King of the Routewitches went with Bobby to make his first bargain. If I’m what they stuff into the gas tank, and Bethany is in the car—blood of my blood, a powerful charm on the ghostroads—they might just make it all the way. “Bethany, you can’t do this. Your Queen gave me Persephone’s blessing.”

  “I heard about that.” She reaches into her pocket, produces a Swiss army knife. It looks very sharp when she clicks it open. “Funny thing: Persephone’s blessing can only protect you against people who are sworn to the dead. Living routewitches and high school students who haven’t had a chance to make their bargains yet? We don’t count.”

  She takes a step forward, raising the knife in her hand. The other stu
dents move to follow her. I’m sure they expect me to scream, to beg them to spare my pitiful imitation of a life. It’s almost a shame to disappoint them. I can barely hold back the laughter as I say, “No, you don’t count. And you can’t count, either.”

  “What are you talking about?” she demands. She leans down to grab my shoulder, probably intending some small, ritual cut to begin the bloodletting. Her hand goes cleanly through what should have been solid flesh. She’s still staring at me, surprise written large across her face, when I cast a glance toward the silk wrap—now lying on the floor, having fallen right through me—and offer her a smile.

  “You needed to keep track of time, Bethany. It’s midnight. That means you can’t hold me here. Oh, and by the way, your Queen? Is going to be pissed when I tell her about this.”

  And, still smiling, I vanish.

  I don’t go far, just from the little room where they had me tied to the chair—we were in the old weight room, I realize now, the equipment put away, out of sight—to the hallway outside. I want to know what they’ll do, how many of her companions will panic at the first sign of something that’s truly unexplained. Talking about ghosts and selling souls is all well and good, but what do you do when the Devil actually comes to collect his dues?

  Voices drift down the hall, some raised in panic, some in simple confusion. “—was right here, so where did she—” “—oh, God, you mean she was really a ghost? We really caught a ghost? I thought—” “—was the Phantom Prom Date, Bethany, I mean, that was the real thing. What if she comes back for us? What if—”

  Bethany’s voice cuts across the others, cold as ice and filled with commanding anger: “All of you, shut the fuck up. I can’t hear myself think. She won’t have gone far. Tracy, Minda, you get the salt and seal the edges of the gym. Keep her locked in here. Everybody else, stay alert. She’s probably pissed.”

  “At least she’s smart enough to figure that part out,” I mutter, and vanish, moving through the space between me and the gym door faster than my niece’s minions can hope to travel. Salt can bind a ghost, that’s true, but it takes a special kind to catch a hitcher, and I doubt that Bethany’s cronies have the skill to do it.

  The night air is cool, and tastes like minutes wasted in a doctor’s waiting rooms, precious seconds that you’ll never get back again. One more prom night, come and gone. It doesn’t really matter that I spent it at a decoy prom, tied to a chair by my grandniece. A prom night is a prom night, and this one is slipping into memory. The ghostroads will open soon, and then I can get the hell out of here.

  I almost have to respect her, in a way. Sure, she’s probably insane, but I understand what it is to want out of Buckley so badly that you ache with it, so badly that you’re willing to do just about anything if that’s what gets you an exit.

  “Leaving so soon, Auntie Rose?” asks Bethany, from right behind me. I turn toward the sound of her voice, reflex as much as anything, and flinch back as the dried flower corsage she throws at me bounces off the center of my chest, long-dead flowers filling the air with sour-sweet perfume. Bethany’s expression is triumphant. That worries me. Not as much as it worries me that the flowers actually made contact.

  “Prom night’s over, Bethany,” I say, trying to keep the shock from showing on my face. How did she get out here so fast, and how in the hell did she hit me with that thing? I’m not wearing a coat. I don’t have a body to be hit. “Give it up.”

  “Prom night’s never over for you, Auntie Rose. That’s why they call you the ‘phantom prom date,’ isn’t it?” She smiles, pointing to the corsage that lies between us like a road-killed squirrel. “Gary Daniels bought this for you on what should have been the night of your senior prom. ’Course, you were long dead before he could give it to you, and they’d barely stopped blaming him for being the one who killed you when you were buried, so you never got it. It’s yours. And that means you’re not going anywhere.”

  My breath catches in my throat; until that moment, I hadn’t really realized that I was breathing. I’ve heard of things like this, ghost-catchers, tokens that the living have held onto for too long, imbued with too many memories, but I’ve never seen one. It just figures that if there was going to be a ghost-catcher tuned to me, it would be in the hands of my crazy grandniece with the Bobby Cross fixation. I put my hands up, palms turned toward her.

  “Come on, Bethany. Let’s think about this, all right? You don’t want to make a deal with Bobby Cross. He’s . . .” A bastard, a madman, a murderer. “. . . he’s not a very nice man, and he’s not going to play fair just because you hold up your end of the bargain. I’m family. Doesn’t that mean something?”

  “Family didn’t mean anything to you when you decided to go off and get yourself turned into road kill. Grandpa’s been mourning you as long as I’ve been alive. He even wanted to name me ‘Rose.’ Don’t you think it’s time to rest?” Bethany starts toward me, the bug-zappers that spark and flash around the edges of the school roof sending glints of blue light off the knife in her left hand. “It doesn’t have to be this hard. You’ve had so many years, and I’m sorry, Auntie Rose, but I have to do what I have to do. You, of all people, should understand. You remember what it’s like to be trapped here.”

  The corsage smells like lilies and ashes, or maybe the smell of lilies and ashes is rising from the parking lot around us, routewitch facing off with road ghost fifteen minutes after midnight on prom night. This is the sort of thing that’s rare enough to have power all its own, and in the far distance, I can hear the sound of an engine, screaming.

  Bobby Cross is coming to collect what he’s been promised.

  I’m running out of time.

  Bethany’s friends—minions, whatever they are to her—are still inside the high school, probably sealing the exits with salt and watching through the windows, smart enough not to get involved now that the odds aren’t in their favor. The ash-and-lily smell is getting choking, Bobby burning road between him and Buckley.

  “Come on, Bethany,” I urge. “The doors are closed. You haven’t taken anything from him, you don’t owe him anything. Go inside, and don’t look back. This doesn’t have to happen.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Auntie Rose. I took the corsage when he offered it to me, and this always has to happen.” Bethany takes another step forward. She’s taller than I am, more solidly built. She’s probably on the track team, a sport where she doesn’t have to count on anyone else to support her. Routewitches like things that let them cover distance. She looks utterly confident as she closes on me, and she should look confident, because I’m a slip of a girl in a confining silk dress, doe-eyed and breakable.

  It’s too bad she isn’t really thinking this through. I’m a slip of a girl who’s spent the last fifty years in and out of truck stops, riding with bikers and arguing with fry cooks on exactly how much they get to slap me around before I start slapping back. And I don’t have to worry about getting hurt for keeps. She goes for my ribs, sharp stabbing motion, all her momentum behind it.

  I go for her eyes, nails hooked into claws, and the fight is on.

  There’s nothing sexy about two girls really throwing down, especially not when they’re in a parking lot in the middle of a summer night. Bethany shrieks when I scratch her and starts swinging wildly; the knife misses, but her elbow doesn’t, and sends me rocking back a few feet. The gravel underfoot makes it hard to keep my balance. I scramble to get upright and charge forward, burying my shoulder in the pit of her stomach. The air goes out of her in a hard gust, and she lands on the pavement on her ass, gasping.

  “Stay down,” I snap, already half-winded. Bethany snarls, sounding more animal than human, and scrabbles to her feet, lunging for me again. I’m not prepared. Her hand catches my hair, and then she’s whipping me around, sending me flying away from her. I land hard on the pavement, skidding to a stop at least six feet away.

  I’m barely back to my feet when I hear the sound of two hands, clapping slowly. F
or the first time, I realize that I’m tasting wormwood, and I turn toward the sound, already sure of what I’ll see.

  Bobby Cross meets my eyes, and smirks. “Nothing like a good chick fight to start a night off the right way, is there, Rosie girl?” he drawls. Bethany is struggling to get her breath back, raking fingers through her hair, making herself presentable. The irony of Bobby Cross being her dream date hasn’t escaped me. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Or maybe just a sight to make eyes sore. Tired of playing hard to get?”

  “Come get me, and find out,” I suggest. I’m not breathing hard. I’m not breathing at all. I look down and see the shredded petals littering the pavement around me, like the leavings of a flower girl at a funeral. It would have bound me here, kept me flesh and blood, but Bethany left it on the ground when we started fighting. One or both of us must have stepped on it, shredding it and destroying its power over me. Amateur mistake by an amateur routewitch.

  It’s the last one she’s going to make. Bobby takes a step forward, one hand half-raised in my direction. Then he stops, face contorting in a snarl. “You were supposed to cut it off her,” he says, turning toward Bethany. “I came here because you promised she’d be meat when I arrived. You swore you’d cut that warding off her body. You trying to welsh on me, girl?”

  “No!” protests Bethany, eyes widening. For the first time, she seems to know that she’s in danger . . . and it’s too late for me to do a thing about it. “She fought back. I didn’t realize that she’d be able to fight back.”

  “Fifty years on the road, you didn’t think she’d have a trick or two?” His boot heels click as he closes the distance between them, fast, so fast it’s like he barely moved at all. Bethany screams when he grabs her wrist, and screams again when he jerks her against him. “You’re going to learn, girly. You can’t break a deal with me.”