Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan (5 page)

"Just tell me what happened."

His gaze stutters toward the strigoi, still standing 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,
coffee-colored eyes narrowed. I smile and keep binding Dinah's wounds. Right
now, he's really the least of my problems. "How long ago?"

"It was in '89. I didn't work here yet. Tom--he owns the place, only works
days now, since he doesn't have to do overnights if he doesn't want to--he 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 was a blurred image
he could somehow make come clear. If he's been working here long enough, that
concept isn't too far off the truth. 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, fingers moving smoothly as I tape gauze over Dinah's
gunshot wound, feeling the cool-clay of her flesh. She's lost a lot of blood.
She may not see the morning, no matter how things go from here. "What happened?"

"This guy and his girlfriend showed up--tried to hold up the place, take the
contents of the register. The guy who was working the kitchen, he freaked out,
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 to get the information I
needed--he's falling faster than the rest of them. Damn.

"You finish this up," I say, and pass him the rest of the gauze, college
boy's coffee-colored eyes still fixed on me 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 this.

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

I let my attention drift back to the strigoi, lost ghost on a road he doesn't
recognize, and answer, "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 don't see what I am,
spirit eaters can't consume me. Those who walk the twilight know me as one of
them, but not exactly what that entails. 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 sign. 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, 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,
grabs my chin and twists my face a little to the side, studying 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 for a moment, almost losing hold
of me, before he tightens up and barks, "What?"

"My name. It's 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 to 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 out of 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 was trying to ring a bell for
service. "You just want to get me distracted. 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 to indicate 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. 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 nods, slowly, 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, 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...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, seeming to really see it for the first
time. "Where the fuck is Trina?"

The hostages exchange anxious glances, 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 coming, and I can't see
this road clearly enough to know if that'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,
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, the burning taste of propane--I mistook it for diesel fuel, I didn't know
any better, and I died on impact, I didn't burn--filling my mouth as 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 that, 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 Kyle gave me. It hurts like nothing's hurt since
the day I died.

"You asshole," I say wonderingly, and I touch the wound, 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 I really died, the night my car went
off the curve at the top of Sparrow Hill Road.

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

This time, the sound of the gun going off isn't even enough to make me
flinch. 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 on the
five, the little hand on the three. 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, survey the
hostages, try 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, 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, voice tight and 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 program, 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. "P-Paul," he stammers. Catching himself, he
brings the gun up, pointing it at the center of my chest--the spot where he shot
me once before. Some people just never learn. "Don't come any closer!"

"Or what? You'll shoot me like you shot me before? Like 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 step closer to him, ignoring the
gun, focusing on his eyes. "You're dead, Paul. 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 coming 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, and his words drop
into the silence like stones into a lake, sinking fast, ripples spreading.
"You're lying."

"It's one or the other, Paul." Another step forward, another set of ripples.
"You died here. You shot the propane tank, and it blew sky high, and you died
here."

"Shut up."

"The fire ate up 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, everyone except the people who
had to watch you burn, and you
died
here."