Sparrow Hill Road

by Seanan McGuire

  What feels like only seconds later, I’m running across the parking lot with Emma’s bloody apron in one hand and a half-torn note in the other, shouting, “Gary! Start your engine! We gotta go!”

  The driver’s door is open by the time I reach it, and I fling myself into Gary’s seat, grabbing his wheel in both hands. He slams the door behind me, and I hit the gas, sending us roaring off in a spray of gravel.

  Oh Lord, who art probably not in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Oh Lady, deliver me from darkness, deliver me from evil, and please, please, let us not be too late.

  Please.

  “Emma’s the redhead you met in Minnesota,” I say tightly, as Gary roars down the ghostroad, letting me guide us toward the distant taste of ashes. It’s getting stronger; we’re going the right way. “She’s a beán sidhe. Not quite living, not quite dead. I mean, to be entirely honest, I’ve never been sure what she was. Not really.”

  My laughter sounds almost hysterical in the confines of the car. Gary’s radio flicks on, playing the Doors—“People Are Strange.”

  I manage to stop laughing, and reply to the implicit question, saying, “We’re all strange here, and it never really mattered, you know? She was my friend. Is. She is my friend. I just . . . this is bad, Gary. Emma runs the Last Dance. She’s supposed to be off-limits.”

  The radio dial spins, and Jim Morrison is replaced by an old folk song asking me if I know the way to where I’m going.

  “Yeah, I do. A really bad man’s got Emma, and that means we’re in serious trouble.” I take a breath. I don’t want to do this; I don’t want to explain, because if Gary’s the only man I’ve ever loved, then Bobby Cross is the only man who’s ever made me feel like this, cold as clay and burning up all at the same time. I always feel like a dead girl. Bobby Cross makes me feel like I’m damned. “I need to tell you how I really died, Gary. It’s going to be hard. So just listen, okay?”

  The radio dial spins again, and the music clicks off. Gary’s silence is all the answer I need. I force the words out one by one as I begin, “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 . . .”

  Gary holds his silence until I stop speaking. Then the radio clicks on, spinning once through the stations in question. I nod.

  “We’re going to get her, and bring her back.” I brace my hands against the wheel, trying to ignore the burning, letting go of the thin threads that hold me to the daylight levels high above. “He left directions. Come on, honey. Let’s hit the midnight.”

  I don’t know anything about Heaven or Hell. I usually figure that they wait beyond those final exits that the drivers I guide sometimes take, but I’ve never seen them, or talked to anyone who’s been there and back again. I do know the ghostroads. There are a thousand highways cutting through the afterlife, ranging from the daylight all the way down to the midnight. My natural habitat is the twilight, where the living are close enough to be remembered and distant enough to be safely ignored. Most road ghosts seem to live there, remembering life, celebrating death. When I can’t stay in the twilight, I usually ascend to the daylight, where I can catch a ride, bum a meal, and earn enough credit in the eyes of the gods of the dead to pay the fare for descending.

  What I don’t do is descend past the lowest, murkiest levels of the twilight, the places where the dead have been dead so long that I might as well be the living to them. The places where life is a lie, and no one ever reaches the last exit on the ghostroads. I’m not comfortable going even that low; I avoid it if I possibly can. Which is why it feels so wrong to be guiding Gary deeper with every turn we take, the layers of reality ripping away around us. We’re going all the way down.

  The radio dial spins, and some modern folk singer offers to let me sleep while she drives. I shake my head once, sharply. “It’s not safe,” I say. “You haven’t been dead long enough to drive these roads alone.” The things some of the creatures in the midnight can do to an innocent ghost are enough to give me nightmares. And I don’t technically sleep.

  He doesn’t have an answer for that. I take a breath, hold it, and shift down one more time.

  The transition between layers of twilight is usually seamless, like walking down a gentle slope. Going from the twilight into the midnight is nothing of the kind. Gary’s wheels actually lose contact with the road, and we drop about five feet before hitting the pavement with a bone-rattling thud. My teeth snap shut on my tongue, and phantom blood fills my mouth for a moment before my body remembers that it’s already dead, it can’t bleed anymore. My tattoo is on fire, a burning brand pressed against the small of my back. That’s almost certainly not a good sign.

  Then again, neither is the fact that when Gary rolls to a stunned stop, we’re on the road outside of Buckley. Not the road of today, with its bright new signs and its expensive billboards; the road of 1952, the way it looked on that last long, hot summer, when we spent the longest nights racing like we thought we had a chance of beating the Devil.

  There are cars parked in the distance, their lights burning like candles through this impossibly black, long-ended night. I glance up through the window. There are no stars.

  “Looks like this is where we’re going,” I murmur, patting the dashboard once, as much for my comfort as for Gary’s. “Let’s roll.”

  His headlights flick on, slicing the dark like knives, and we roll forward, moving toward the circle of light cast by those unfamiliar headlights. We’re halfway there when the taste of ashes and wormwood fills my mouth. I shudder. Bobby Cross. Some devils never die.

  The man himself is standing just inside the circle of headlights, his feet spread in a classic Hollywood tough-guy stance, one hand in the back pocket of his jeans, the other holding a cigarette. He looks like a still frame from the movies of my childhood, a fallen angel who hit the bottom and kept on falling.

  “Hello, Rosie girl,” he says, in a voice as sweet as poisoned candy. He’s speaking softly. His words still carry through Gary’s closed windows, past the sound of his rumbling engine. “Why don’t you get out of that dead boy, and come have a little chat with me?”

  Gary’s engine snarls. I lay a hand gently on the wheel.

  “Trust me, baby,” I say. “I have to go.”

  There’s a long moment where I’m afraid Gary won’t unlock the door, that he’ll just turn and roar away down the road, rather than risking me with Bobby. Then his engine settles, turning off with what sounds like a sigh, and his door swings slowly open.

  “Thank you,” I say, and slide out of the seat, going to meet the man who killed me.

  It doesn’t really surprise me when my feet hit the pavement wearing green silk flats, the skirt of the matching dress tangling around my ankles. If I’d known I’d be wearing this prom dress for the rest of eternity, I might have been a little more careful to make sure it was something I could run in. Still, at least I’m used to it; I’ve learned to work with it, over the years. I square my shoulders, lift my chin, and walk calmly toward Bobby, trying not to grimace at the increasing burn from my tattoo.

  “I always knew you hitchers were kinky, but dating a car, Rosie girl?” Bobby clucks his tongue, shaking his head in mock disapproval. “If I’d known you were that hard up, I might have offered to take you for a ride or two. You know. Before I took what was mine.”

  “I’m pretty sure no woman in the history of the world has ever been that hard up, Bobby,” I say.

  He smiles maliciously. “I don’t know about that. Your little niece seemed to think I was a good enough way to kill an evening.”

  “And look how well that turned out for her. It’s a nice offer, Bobby, but no thank you.” I stop just outside the circle of light, folding my arms across my chest. This close, I can see that only one of the cars is real; the rest are smoke and mirrors, special effects from his Hollywood days. “You have a friend of mine. I’d like her back, if you don’t mind.”


  “Why, Rose. I have no idea what it is you mean.”

  I grit my teeth. “Emma. The beán sidhe who runs the Last Dance.”

  “Oh!” Bobby snaps his fingers. “Well, shoot, she just slipped my mind. Probably because she’s been so quiet since I went ahead and gagged her. Never let a beán sidhe speak her mind if you can help it. Those bitches have tongues that can leave a man bleeding, if you let them run.”

  “Give her back.”

  “Wasn’t aware that she was yours in the first place.”

  He’s toying with me; he’d never have taken her if he didn’t know I’d come after him. He’s been toying with me since Bethany, and maybe before that. I force myself not to lunge for him, and say, as calmly as I can, “She’s my friend. I want her returned, safely. Now.”

  Bobby smiles. It’s that same sweet, seductive expression that once won him a million hearts and dampened almost as many pairs of panties, but there’s something sour underneath it, something that taints and twists whatever appeal he might once have had. This apple’s rotten, through and through. “It doesn’t work that way. You know it doesn’t work that way.”

  “What do you want, Bobby?”

  “What do I ever want?”

  “Didn’t we just do this? It won’t work. Persephone’s blessing says hands off to creepy boys who bargain with the crossroads and want to hurt me.”

  “Maybe so, but Hades outranks her.” Bobby reaches inside his shirt, pulling out a chain. The charm dangling from its end makes my stomach twist itself into a knot and makes my tattoo burn hotter than ever. “You put this on of your own free will and the Lady of the Dead won’t give one good goddamn what I do to that pretty little soul of yours.”

  Gary’s engine snarls in the darkness behind me. I want to turn and run to him, throw myself into the driver’s seat and get the hell out of here, but I can’t. Emma needs me. I was a soft touch when I was alive, and Persephone help me, I may be a softer touch now that I’m dead. “So you expect me to just give myself up? I don’t think so.”

  “And neither do I.” Neither of us expected to hear Bethany’s voice. That’s clear from the way Bobby’s head whips around, expression a mask of pure fury. I turn more slowly, somehow resigned to the sight of my recently dead niece walking toward us through the midnight. The darkness doesn’t quite touch her; it skates off her skin like water off a duck’s back. She may be dead, but she’s not the sort of dead girl who belongs to the ghostroads. They can’t touch her. “There are rules for engagements of this kind, Bobby. You know that.”

  “What kind of tricky shit is this?” he demands, in the voice of a petulant child. “You can’t be here, you dumb bitch. You’re too used up to dig your way this deep.”

  “That was a different time, and the past is another country,” says Bethany, and her voice is the rustle of crows in the corn, the sound of the wind blowing down empty highways. “You’re trying to break the rules, Bobby. You’ve interfered with people who never touched the crossroads, nor made any bargains there. That can’t be allowed, I’m afraid.”

  He stabs his finger in my direction, snapping, “She isn’t protected. Not from me. Not from this.”

  “That’s true; she has no protections against you that haven’t been given to her on her journeys. You killed her, and that grants you a claim over her soul. But the beán sidhe wasn’t yours to touch. You never killed her, and she never made a deal.” Bethany’s smile is sweet, and no kinder than a rattlesnake’s. “You can make a wager. You can issue a challenge. But you can’t make an exchange.”

  “What the fuck are you trying to say?”

  “She’s saying you can make me fight you for Emma, but you can’t just trade one for one,” I say, finally getting the gist of what Bethany’s trying to tell us. “I guess you don’t have that kind of authority.”

  “Who’s to say she does?” Bobby looks truly angry now, fury distorting that eternally youthful face in ways that aren’t attractive in the slightest. “Why does that dumb little bitch get to tell me what I can or can’t do?”

  “Because that ‘dumb little bitch’ is speaking for the crossroads.” I glance toward Bethany, seeing the miles stretching out to forever in her eyes. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Got it in one, Aunt Rose,” says Bethany. She smiles, and for a moment—just a moment—she’s a normal teenage girl, unchanged, innocent. The girl she might have been, if she’d never fallen prey to Bobby Cross. The moment passes, and the eyes she turns on Bobby are filled with shadows too deep and too dark to have ever been human. “I am here because you are ours, and your actions here endanger more than you have the right to damage. Because we were . . . acquainted . . . while I lived, I get to be the one to judge whatever you decide is fair.”

  “I killed her, I should get to eat her,” snarls Bobby. “That’s what’s fair.”

  “But she got away from you. She walked the Ocean Lady and won Persephone’s favor. She found the crossroads, more than once, and was tempted, but made no deals. She’s passed outside your ownership, and if you want her, you have to win her.” Bethany folds her arms, smiling sweetly. “You have to pay if you want to play. So find a fee that suits you.”

  Emma is here, somewhere. Bobby’s not going to let me walk away without a fight, and I won’t go without Emma. “A race,” I say abruptly, taking a step forward. “Him and me, there and back. Winner takes all.”

  “Done and done,” says Bethany, before Bobby can object. “You each have something you can wager.”

  “I won’t cede my claim to her,” says Bobby.

  “No one can make you. But if she beats you here, today, she takes the beán sidhe and leaves unhindered. If you win . . .” Bethany glances my way, looking almost regretful. I brace myself for what comes next. “You get her pink slip. The boy’s soul is yours.”

  “What?” The word bursts forth unbidden. “Gary isn’t part of this!”

  “He is now,” says Bethany. “What you do after losing is up to you. Do you accept my terms, Bobby Cross, Rose Marshall?”

  I want to refuse them. Bobby must see that in my face, because he smiles, slow and poisonous, and says, “I do.”

  “Rose?”

  I close my eyes, unable to shake the feeling that this, all of this, is nothing more than wrong. “I do,” I whisper, and silence falls.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I whisper for what feels like the thousandth time, resting my cheek against the warm leather of Gary’s steering wheel. “I didn’t know what else to do. I’m so, so sorry.”

  The radio spins, flicking through half a dozen songs from our brief earthly time together before stopping on a song I don’t recognize, one that entreats me to “gamble everything for love.” The volume stays low, soothing, not blaring in my ear.

  I sigh, closing my eyes. “I’m still sorry. This isn’t what you signed up for.”

  The music goes briefly silent before clicking over to a modern station, where the song informs me that losing me is like living in a world with no air.

  “Okay.” I have to laugh at that, just a little, and laughing even a little makes me feel enough better that I can sit up, wiping the phantom tears from my cheeks. “Maybe this is what you signed up for after all. Come on, baby. Let’s go kick a dead guy’s ass.”

  The engine turns over, and then we’re rolling through the midnight, heading for the night’s designated drag strip . . . heading for the future. Whatever that future is going to be.

  I set the challenge, so Bobby chose the raceway. It shouldn’t be a surprise when we follow the markers to the makeshift starting line and find ourselves idling at the base of Sparrow Hill, where the road winds its way into the even deeper dark beneath the trees. Bobby is already there, standing next to his car. So is Bethany, standing off to one side with a checkered starter flag in her hand. We’re really going to do this.

  It’s hard to strut confidently in a green silk prom dress, but I’ve had years to practice, and I almost manage it as I get out of the ca
r and cross the dusty pavement to where Bobby stands. “Emma,” I say. “Where is she?”

  “You’ll get her if you win,” replies Bobby. “You won’t win.”

  “My hostage is present,” I say, indicating Gary with a wave of my hand. “Now show me yours, or this doesn’t happen.”

  “The terms are fair,” says Bethany.

  Bobby scowls like a storm rolling in, and stalks around to the back of his car, where he unlocks the trunk and hauls a rumpled, bound, and gagged Emma into the questionable light. Her eyes are closed and her head is lolling forward, but she’s breathing. I don’t know how hard it is to kill a beán sidhe. Hopefully, tonight is not the night when I find out. “Happy now?” he demands.

  “Not by a long shot,” I say. “Leave her here.”

  “Why would I do a silly thing like that?” He runs a fingertip lecherously down the curve of Emma’s cheek, smirking at me. “Your hostage is going on the race with you. So’s mine.”

  “The terms are fair,” says Bethany again, sadly this time, like she’d rather be saying something else. “But you can’t keep her in the trunk. If your hostage is damaged, the entire contest is invalidated.”

  “Fine,” snaps Bobby. He wrenches open the passenger-side door and all but tosses Emma inside, slamming the door behind her. “Now can we get started?”

  Bethany nods. “You are to cross the hill and return. First one here wins. If you cheat, I’ll know, and you will be penalized. Is everyone in agreement?”

  “Yes,” says Bobby, and “Yes,” I say, and then we’re walking back to our respective cars, Gary’s engine already live and running, Bobby’s own dark machine roaring into bitter wakefulness. I have to wonder if Bobby’s car is self-aware; I have to wonder if it understands what it does, or what its driver is doing.

  There isn’t time for lengthy contemplation. Bethany is standing at our ad hoc starting line, the starter flag in one hand—and there’s no point in wondering where she got it, she’s a crossroads ghost now, and I guess that comes with a few party tricks of its own. She watches with calm, sad eyes as we roll up to either side of her, our idling engines like dragons in the quiet midnight. Then the flag comes down and there’s nothing to do but drive.