There's always someone eager to tell the living what the worst thing about being dead will be. Those speeches usually start with the lakes of fire and the eternal damnation, and get nasty from there. I used to believe them, when I cared enough to listen, which wasn't often. Then I died, and I learned that the worst thing about being dead has nothing whatsoever to do with fire.
The worst thing about being dead is the cold. The way it creeps in through every remembered cell of your phantom body, wraps itself around you, and refuses to ever, ever let you go. The worst thing about being dead is the fog, the one that clings to everything, blocking out the taste of coffee, the smell of flowers, the joy in laughter and the terror in a scream. On the living levels, ghosts are shadows wrapped in cotton, held apart from everything around them. Hitchers like me are lucky, because we have a way to claw ourselves back out of the grave, filling the world with substance and with joy. We're also unlucky as hell, because it means we never forget how bright and vivid life is for the living. We don't get to move on. Not until we let someone drive us to the exit past the Last Chance Diner; not until we move on completely.
All hitchers are addicts, and our drugs of choice are diner coffee, cheeseburgers, and the feeling of hands against our skin, the feeling of lips crushing down on ours and making us forget, even for a moment, that we've already paid the ferryman. The taste of the cheeseburger fried for me in the kitchen of the Ocean Lady's stronghold is all those things and more; it's life in a bun, and I could easily forget everything I came here for. All I'd have to do is keep on eating, keep on tasting life.
I swallow that first bite, and I choke, and I shove the plate aside, sending it shattering to the floor.
The room has gone silent. I look up, still gasping a little, the taste of life still harsh and heavy on my tongue. The Queen of the Routewitches is watching me, the fountain-fall of her hair covering one eye, the other filled with quiet thoughtfulness.
"So you're not that easy to tempt," she says. "I like that. Devi, Matthew, you have the floor. Let anyone who arrives know that I'm in consultation, and not to be disturbed." She stands, leaving me behind as she starts across the floor toward a door at the back of the bar.
I'm still trying to catch my breath when she stops, turns, looks back toward me. Looking at her, I realize that we have at least one thing in common: we're both of a great deal older than we seem. "Well?" she asks.
Just that, and nothing more. That's all she needs. I stand, forbidding myself to look at the bloodstain-splash of ketchup on the floor, and I follow the Queen of the Routewitches out of the main room, into the shadows of the unfamiliar.
***
The door at the back of the bar opens onto a hallway, which opens, in turn, onto the back parking lot. The Queen doesn't look back once as she walks toward a double-wide trailer parked near the side of the building. No matter how fast I walk, she stays an easy six feet ahead, her steps eating ground with quiet, unflagging speed.
She stops when she reaches the trailer, resting her hand on the latch as she says, "Once we're inside, Rose Marshall, daughter of Michigan, daughter of the road, once we're inside, then Court is called to order. Are you sure? Are you truly sure that this is the route the roads intend for you?"
"Fuck, no," I say, before my brain can catch up with my tongue. "But I don't have a better map, so I guess it's gonna be you."
"Good answer." I can hear the smile in her voice as she opens the latch. The trailer door swings open, and she says, with the calm cadence of ritual, "Now we begin the descent. Enter freely, Rose Marshall, daughter of Michigan."
"Aren't you supposed to add 'and be not afraid' or something to that?" I ask, moving to enter the trailer.
The Queen of the Routewitches gives me a small, faintly amused smile, and asks, "Why would I do something like that? I'm here to answer your questions. I'm not here to lie to you."
Somehow, that fails to reassure me in the slightest. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound, as my grandmother always used to say, and I've come too far to turn back now. I shrug, green silk sleeves moving against my shoulders. "Okay, then. Let's rock."
***
The trailer of the Queen of the Routewitches is decorated in Early Vagabond, with a few exciting traces of Thrift Store Chic. Not the sort of thing I'd expect to see from royalty, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Routewitches don't like to buy anything new when they have a choice in the matter. Things get stronger the further they've traveled, and the more hearts they've had calling them "mine." As the Queen, she had to have her choice of the best the country's flea markets and antique shops had to offer, and if that meant things never quite matched, well, I didn't think that was necessarily going to be a factor.