Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(13)

"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."

"SHUT UP!"

The bullet passes cleanly through the center of my chest. There's a yelp of pain from behind me. I keep walking forward, toward Paul. "There may have been a funeral, if they could find your next of kin, if there was enough of you left to identify. Maybe they just cremated you, stuck your ashes in a box in the police station for somebody to come claim, someday. Either way, you died here, and you have no right--"

"Please," he moans. There's no gunshot this time. Just the pleading, just the prayer that maybe I'll stop.

"--no, Paul, no, because you have no right to take these people's lives away from them." I'm in front of him now, and so I reach out and take the gun. I reach out with my ghost fingers that shouldn't be able to touch or take anything, but they wrap around the metal all the same, and when I tug, he lets go. Poor little strigoi. More gently now, I say, "You're dead, Paul. I'm sorry."

His eyes fill with tears as he looks at me, and past me, to the huddled hostages clinging to each other in the shadows of this suddenly-haunted diner. Two ghosts for the price of one. Welcome to the ghostroads.

"How long?" he whispers.

"Twenty-one years."

That takes all the strength out of him, and he hits his knees as the smell of ashes and lilies fades from the air, replaced by the normal array of diner scents, apple pie and bubblegum and scrambled eggs and coffee. I put the gun on the nearest table, where it wafts away into nothing before any of the hostages can make a grab for it.

"No no no no," he moans, rocking back and forth.

"Yes." I crouch, grab his wrists, pull him halfway back to upright. "Yes. It was a long time ago, and yes."

"We were--we were pulling into the driveway, and there was this flash, and the sun was going down and Trina and the bike were gone." He lifts his head, studying my face like he thinks he'll finds the answers there, somehow. Best of luck to him. I've been looking for the answers for fifty years, and I haven't found them yet. "I still...I had the gun, and I came in here, and it was all wrong, it was just so damn wrong, and it made me so damn mad..."

I want to be angry with him. I want to be furious. He shot me. He killed people.

He died here. Poor little strigoi, who didn't know what he was doing when he woke up; who didn't even know that he'd left the daylight twenty years behind. He died in fire. Maybe that's punishment enough for what he's done tonight. Maybe not. Either way, it's not my place to judge. I tug him to his feet, keeping hold of his wrists, not letting him go.

"You're coming with me," I tell him quietly. "But first, you're going to wait here."

A flash of arrogance in those eyes. "And what if I don't?"

All I have to do is smile and the arrogance crumbles, replaced by confusion, fear...and relief. No one wants to haunt the living forever. At least I'm offering him another way. "You will," I say, and let him go, turning my back.