"That and a buck-fifty will get me half a cup of coffee," I snap. "How do I stop Bobby Cross?"
"The eternal life is his, to do with as he chooses, but the eternal youth is centered somewhere closer to the road." This time, the card she turns shows an odometer, the mileage set at zero. "As long as his car is fed and tended, he stays young and strong—strong enough to keep racing, keep running, and keep his part of the bargain."
My skin is living-warm, and the Queen's trailer is well-heated, but I shiver all the same. I can't help it. I've been chasing Bobby for years, and running from him for even longer, and I know all about the bastard's car. I know what he feeds the damned thing.
Bobby Cross's car runs on souls.
"He doesn't need to run them off the road—not exactly—but he does need to harvest them from a very specific class of people. Ghosts are common. Specific types of ghost are rare. There are so many of you out there, dying so many kinds of death, that sometimes catching the ghost you want can border on impossible. Bobby's car needs ghosts of the road to keep running, and to keep him young."
"And death on the road is the best way to get us," I say, very softly.
"Unless you're a routewitch, yes," she replies. "Routewitch ghosts are always road ghosts. It's the last gift the road can give to us. So he picks his victims carefully, and runs them off the road when they seem most likely to leave a shade behind. After that—"
I hold up my hand. "I know what happens after that." I'm not always fast enough, that's what happens after that. I don't always see the accident coming in time, I'm not always in the right place, they don't always believe me. Bobby's still out there, because I'm not always good enough to save them, even after they're dead. "How do I stop him?"
"Take his car away from him." The Queen of the Routewitches looks at me calmly. "Separate the two of them, and age will catch up with him. He'll live, but he won't be able to stalk the ghostroads any longer. Not without his car to carry him."
"Is that all?"
"It's harder than it sounds."
"I'll believe that, no problem." I rub my arms, trying to warm myself back up. "Just take his car away, huh?"
"Yes. As for the how, well..." She smiles again. "I think we can help you with that."
***
Tattoos and piercings are the only things I can't fake when I change my clothes and shift my hair around to suit the places that my travels take me. I can do clip-on jewelry, magnetic nose studs, fake belly button rings, but nothing that actually changes the body that I died with. That sort of thing was a lot less common when I was still among the living. My mother told me once that she'd die before she saw any daughter of hers scribbled on like a carnival hootchie dancer.
Good thing she's been dead for a long time. The room the Queen leads me to has been turned into a makeshift tattoo parlor, white sheets on the walls, a pillow on the narrow wooden table. One of the younger routewitches--a boy who looks no more than ten--stands next to it with a tattoo artist's full kit spread out on a folding TV tray next to him.
"This is Rose, Mikey," she says. "She's the one we were talking about."
He nods earnestly. "Evening, ma'am," he says, and his accent is midwestern, and out of date by at least thirty years. No one here is what they seem to be. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
"Same here, Mikey," I say. I look to the Queen, unsure what the etiquette is here.
She smiles. "Get up on the table, Rose, and let Mikey work. He knows what you need to have done. The Ocean Lady's agreed to let you carry your protection with you when you leave here." She must see the hesitation in my face, because she puts her hands against my cheeks and says, firmly, "Trust me. We want Bobby stopped as much as you do."
So I get onto the table and stretch out on my stomach, eyes turned steadfastly toward the wall. The boy Mikey pulls up my dress, begins wiping something cool across my back. This is not what I expected when I set out to walk the Atlantic Highway.
The Queen of the Routewitches circles the table, crouches down next to me, and says softly, "The one who comes to claim the favor will tell you that I sent her, and give you my name."
"What is it?"
"Apple," she says, and I know where the shadows in her eyes came from--a town whose name means "Apple Orchard," a place where the whole damn country fed ghosts into the darkness--and then the needle bites my skin, and like Sleeping Beauty with the spindle, I don't know anything anymore.
***
The Atlantic Highway ran from Calais, Maine to Key West, Florida, and it's in Key West that I wake up, sprawled in a truck stop parking lot, back in the jeans and tank top that I wore when I started walking the Ocean Lady in the first place. I'm chilled to the bone, back among the dead, but the small of my back aches like it hasn't caught on to that fact just yet.