I step back, ceding the point. "Good. Now get out of here." That doesn't seem like enough, not with the exits so close, and so I add, "Thanks again. You got me out of a bad spot."
"It wasn't anything," says Tommy, and shrugs, awkwardly. "She shouldn't have done that to you, and I'm sorry. Goodnight, Rose."
"Goodnight, Tommy," I say, and then he's gone, roaring down the road at the sort of speed that's only safe on the ghostroads, and even here, only barely. He'll be back on his own stretch before morning, wheels gripping familiar asphalt, phantom racer riding hard where he belongs.
I have another road ahead of me. Tucking my hands into my pockets to show that I'm not looking for a ride, I turn and start walking toward the border, and the beginning of the old Atlantic Highway. I'm a long way from home. I'll go a lot further before this night is done.
***
The first routewitch I ever met was named Eloise. She had sun-chapped skin the color of old pennies, curly brown hair, and the sharpest eyes I've ever seen. I was hitching my way toward Michigan when she picked me up; she drove a rattling old pick-up truck in those days, the bed fenced in with wooden slats and piled high with potatoes. "Get in," she said. That was all. None of the pleasantries, none of the pretenses. "Get in," and that was all.
Once I was in the truck, even before I could start my usual routine, she handed me a heavy wool sweater and a paper bag. "I made the sandwiches myself," she said. "The cookies are crap, and the coffee in the thermos ain't much better, but I figure it'll do you well enough, considering your circumstances. What's your name, girl?"
"Rose," I said, shrugging into the sweater. The wool settled across my shoulders, and my heart began to beat, steady internal drumbeat keeping me anchored to the world that I was once more a part of. I took a breath, and saw that she was watching me, a small smile on her lips.
"Rose, huh? White Rose, out of Tennessee, or Rose Marshall out of Michigan?"
I almost stripped the sweater off and ran. But the way she was looking at me didn't seem hostile, just curious, and so I stayed where I was, and we started talking. I'd heard of routewitches before—everyone hears about the routewitches, if they stay in the twilight long enough—but I'd never seen one. She wasn't what I'd been expecting, more Dorothy than Glinda, and when I told her that, she laughed so hard she nearly ran us off the road.
"Now you listen to me, Rose Marshall out of Michigan, and you listen close, because there's not much in this world going to help you more than what I've got to say. The routewitches, and the trainspotters—hell, even the ambulomancers, 'though you don't ever want to tell one of them I said this—we're just folks, just like anybody else. It's only that we listen different than most people do. The road talks to us, and we know how to talk back. Thing is, the road knows a secret or two. Like how to spot a hitcher when it comes strolling along, looking for a life to share."
Eloise died years ago; her ghost rides the California coast in a battered old pick-up truck a decade younger than the one she was driving on the night she picked me up. I see her, from time to time—I've even ridden with her. She's a good person. Most routewitches are, even the dead ones.
She's also the one who taught me about the Atlantic Highway. "The daylight was afraid of the power in that road, so they banished Her to the deeper levels as soon as they could. Route 1 claimed to be the old Atlantic, but they folded it further inland than the Ocean Lady, pulled it away from Her places of power. Even that wasn't enough for them. They broke the back of Route 1, carved it into a dozen tributaries and threw it away. Guess no one ever told them that you can't kill something that's written that deeply into the land. You ever need to see the Queen, Rose Marshall out of Michigan, you follow the Ocean Lady. She'll take you where you need to go."
The Atlantic Highway isn't a safe place for the dead. There are too many ghosts packed onto its slow-spooling miles, and once you start, it can be all but impossible to stop. The Ocean Lady runs from Calais, Maine to Key West down in Florida, and somewhere in her asphalt embrace, the Queen of the Routewitches keeps her court. That's where I need to go. If anyone can tell me what to do from here—what I have to do, what I've been putting off for too damn long—it's her.
I take a breath that I don't need, close my eyes, and step from the ghostroads onto the old Atlantic Highway. The Ocean Lady stretches out beneath my feet, and there's nothing to do from here but walk on, and pray.
***
I don't know how long I've been walking. Long enough, that's for sure. My feet ache, which strikes me as singularly unfair. I'm not among the living here, walking the spine of the Ocean Lady from Maine to God-knows-where; I'm freezing through, which is my normal state of being, and I'd kill for a cheeseburger. All the normal trials and tribulations of my death are weighing on me, and normally, the one good thing about being dead is knowing that I can walk forever without getting tired.