Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(68)

There isn't much of a vocabulary to bridge the worlds of the dead and the living. When you're living, you don't need it, and once you're dead, you have better things to worry about. The farmboy who grabbed me seems to understand, which is something of a relief; he nods, once, and says, "Well, Miss Rose, I grabbed you because if we stop this ol' truck, she's not likely to start up again until after the solstice, which seemed a bit long to wait. We're heading to the Rest Stop," I can hear the capital letters, like he's talking about the only rest stop in the world, "and we're traveling by magic, I suppose. Magic, and combustion engine."

"Okay, why are we traveling to 'the Rest Stop' via magic and combustion engine?"

"Now there's a good question." He smiles, and there's a glint in his eye that whispers "routewitch." I would have seen it before, if I hadn't been so annoyed. "We're going to see the Queen."

The tattoo on my back hasn't burned since I left the Last Dance, but with his words, it starts burning again. The Queen of the Routewitches has summoned me, and that means my debt to her is coming due. This is a lot sooner than I thought it was going to be.

I hope like hell that I'm truly prepared to pay, and the truck drives deeper and deeper down into the twilight, away from the lands of the living.

***

The transition between layers of the twilight is silken-smooth, like peeling the nylons from a hooker's legs. The drop from the twilight onto the asphalt shores of the Ocean Lady is something else altogether. The truck jerks and shudders like it's hitting the world's biggest pothole, and the sudden pressure in my chest tells me that I've been slapped back into solidity, back—temporarily—among the living once again. I pick myself up from the bed of the truck, dusting straw off my arms and glaring at the routewitch thugs surrounding me. "You know, I think I've spent more time incarnate in the last year than I have in the last decade."

"Congratulations," says one of the routewitches.

I cast a glare in his direction, wishing I'd lived long enough to reach an age where my glares could be considered more cutting than cute. "That wasn't intended as a happy statement."

Now it's time for the routewitch to glare. He's not cute, exactly, but his L'il Abner haircut and bib overalls render the expression impotent. "You've been invited to the Ocean Lady, Miss Rose. That's an honor most ghosts never get."

"And me without my party dress." The words are out before I realize how true they are: I'm not in my party dress. My coat is discarded in the chaff, but I'm still wearing the clothes I conjured for a day on the Indiana road, blue jeans and an old workman's shirt with Gary's name on the breast pocket. I'm incarnate, back among the living whether I want to be or not, but I'm still in ghost's array. I don't know whether that's a good thing or not, and I don't have time to know, because here comes the Rest Stop on the Ocean Lady, blossoming in front of us like the last neon oasis in the desert of the dead.

If the Last Dance Diner is every diner that's ever been or ever will be, the Rest Stop is something more, something bigger and more profound. It's every roadside dive, every truck stop, every place where a weary traveler has ever had cause to stop and lay their head. I didn't see it clearly the last time I was here; the Ocean Lady didn't know me yet, and didn't yet speak the language of my heart. She does now, after a fashion, and the structure ahead of us is every good thing about every good place the road has ever offered me. It's the diner where Gary kissed me for the first time, nervous teenage affection that tasted like chocolate soda and tomorrow. It's the truck stop where Larry bought me a burger and let me show him the way he had to go. It's a thousand places, a thousand moments, and it hurts my heart, makes it skip a beat it shouldn't be taking. Looking at the Rest Stop, I understand why the routewitches don't encourage the dead to come here. In its own strange way, the truth of the Ocean Lady's soul might kill us.

L'il Abner the first scoots up behind me, warm and solid in the slightly unreal twilight dark, and says, "We're almost here, Miss Rose. You might want to get yourself ready."

"Are you going to tell me what I'm getting ready for?"

"That's for the Queen to do, Miss. All we know is that she sent us to find you, and that it was very important that when we found you, we found you in the corn."

It doesn't take a genius to know that doesn't sound good. I clutch the edge of the pickup bed, the heartbeat I shouldn't have hammering in my chest, and I let the Ocean Lady open her arms and welcome her wayward children home.

***

The Queen of the Routewitches doesn't need to explain herself to dead girls, which explains my collection, but she's a reasonable person, in her way, and she doesn't make me wait for my reception. She's standing on the blacktop when the truck pulls up, an old green-painted picnic table with an honest-to-God picnic basket on it behind her. There's an older routewitch seated there, a woman I don't know, with ribbons tangled in her oddly girlish ponytail.