Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(11)

"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."