Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(10)

"Good." He runs his eyes over my breasts again, trying to make me uncomfortable. It isn't working. All I have left to feel for him is pity, poor little ghost who doesn't even realize that he's dead and gone. "So you've got your cup of coffee. Ready for your cup of cock?"

The other hostages are watching us with silent trepidation, mice caught in a cat's cage, watching the one mouse too stupid to stay out of reach of the cat's claws. As long as I'm making myself a target, he's not focusing on them. Two dead already. One wounded. I'm the last one to the party. As far as they're concerned, I'm the expendable one.

"Sure." His eyes widen. That wasn't the answer he expected. "I want to ask for a favor first."

He blinks, surprise hardening quickly into irritation. "What's that?"

"Let them patch her up." I nod toward the waitress, take another sip of coffee, and say, "Dead bodies are depressing, and she's bleeding pretty bad. I'll do whatever if you let them give her a little first aid. Deal?"

Suspicion sits at the front of his expression as he considers my proposal, looking for the double-cross. He doesn't find it. It isn't there. "Sure," he says, finally. "Whatever."

***

Strigoi. Some people say they're a kind of vampire. Maybe they are, in some places, on some layers. Here on the ghostroads, they're one more breed of the unquiet dead, angry spirits tethered to the world of the living by something they didn't finish doing before they passed into the twilight. They're normally intangible, as trapped in the twilight as most of the dead, but once in a while...once in a while...

Once in a while they can fight their way back into the daylight levels, dragging the twilight with them. Only on special occasions, nights like Halloween, Epiphany--and the anniversary of their deaths. I look over Dinah's shoulder as I help the fry cook and the college boy clean out her wound, assessing the cut of his clothes, the style of his jeans. Now that I'm looking, I can see how far out of fashion he is. Not as far as I would be, if I dressed myself the way the ghostroads sometimes tell me to, but far enough. He's a traveler from another country, a country called "yesterday," and I don't think he knows it. Poor little lost ghost, in under his head.

I pitch my voice low, ask the fry cook the question I most need answered: "How long ago was the accident?"

There's a momentary confusion in his expression, like I'd just asked him when water became wet, or when the second "r" in "February" fell silent. The confusion clears, and he gives the answer I'd been hoping for, the one that comes as a question: "How do you know about--?"

"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.