Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(12)

"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.