"Oh, wow. Great pep talk, Aunt Rose."
"Cheering you up isn't my job. Getting you there is. So keep on walking."
Bethany mutters and keeps on walking. That's all I want at this point. The road is humming more and more strongly under my feet, and the distant taste of copper is beginning to cling to the back of my throat. We're getting closer. If we just keep moving, we've got a good chance of making it.
The road curves, bending back into the cornfield. Then it splits, the wider, smoother avenue continuing in one direction, while a narrow dirt trail branches off to the right. The ground is pitted and broken, making the first dirt road we walked down seem like a boulevard. Of course, that's the way we have to go. I actually slow down a little to let Bethany catch up. The increasing pull of the crossroad tells me that this is probably the first road—a conviction that only grows when I set foot on it. If the previous two roads were electric, this is like grabbing hold of a live wire. Bethany feels it, too, even more than I do. She gasps when she steps onto the broken ground. Then she starts walking faster, rapidly outpacing me. I let her. This is her journey, not mine.
She walks faster and faster, the corn closing around us like a series of green and growing curtains. I feel the second road almost before I can see it up ahead of us, a clean slash through the cornfield. This must be why the Queen wanted me taken from a place with corn. The spot where I left the daylight would determine where I'd tumble back into it, and if she knew the crossroad was going to be in a cornfield, doing it this way saved us a lot of time.
"We're here!" Bethany almost shouts, and breaks into a run, old woman racing through the corn. I'm half-afraid she's going to fall and break her neck. I still don't try to stop her. The crossroad has her now. If she dies in the process of getting to her goal, my part of the deal is still done.
Then Bethany steps from one road onto the other, standing at the point where the two roads cross. Too late to turn back now. She's committed.
***
"I am come to the crossroad with empty hands and a hopeful heart," chants Bethany, with the faintly desperate sing-song of a schoolgirl reciting a lesson she hasn't really learned. "I am come to the crossroad to bargain with all I have and all I am. I am come to the crossroad with nothing to refuse. Please, please, please, hear me, heed me, and give me the chance to pay for what I need."
Silence falls around her, blocking out all sound from the crossroad. I don't see anyone come to join her, but there is a sudden increase in the shadows clinging to the corn. Whatever happens between Bethany and the crossroad is going to be a private thing. No voyeurs allowed, living or dead.
Someone steps up next to me. I didn't hear him coming; I don't think he was there to hear. He feels like an absence in the cornfield next to me, a space that happens to be shaped like a man. A man who, when I look at him from the corner of my eye, could have been one of the younger teachers at my high school, but who, when I look at him directly, isn't there to see. I keep my eyes turned resolutely forward, watching Bethany talking to the open air.
"Hello, Rose," says the man. His voice is plummy and warm, and I forget what it sounds like almost as quickly as I hear it. "It's been a while."
"True," I say. "I haven't had cause to come."
"Everyone has cause to come."
"That's a matter of opinion."
"Oh, Rose, Rose, Rose. You went to the routewitches. You could have come to us."
"To help me against Bobby Cross? Isn't it your fault he's on the loose to begin with?"
There's a momentary silence, made deeper by the absolute still of the cornfield around us. Finally, chidingly, he says, "That isn't fair. He asked, we gave. That's the nature of commerce."
"Uh-huh."
"We would have been glad to grant you aid."
"And charge me what, exactly?" Bethany is still waving her hands at the air, a look of naked desperation on her face. Whatever they're asking, whatever she's offering, I can't shake the feeling that she's fighting for her life right in front of me. This is all her fault. I shouldn't feel sorry for her. But I do. I guess Marshall girls just have a way of getting themselves into trouble.
"Ah. Now that's the question."
"Kinda figured." I shake my head, the man-shaped hole in the world flickering around the edges every time he comes almost into view. "I know it's your job to sell. I'm not buying."
"That will change," he says, and he's gone, taking the feeling of gnawing, alien absence with him.
"Hope not," I reply, and stand alone in the silence, waiting for Bethany to finish making her deal with the crossroad, and whatever angel, demon, or worse waits there for people like us. If I'm lucky, and the ghostroads are kind, I'll never have a reason to find out which one it is.