Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(80)

Hate uncurls hot and liquid in my belly. "Her name was Salem," I say, dropping the act as swiftly as I adopted it. It's clear that it won't work here. "I don't know how she died the first time. I never had the opportunity to ask."

"Probably an overdose," says the man dismissively, and smiles at me. It's the coldest smile I've ever seen on a living man. "You tell my baby brother all about the holidays?"

"What makes you think I know what's going on here? I'm just as confused by all of this as he is."

"She's lying," says Jimmy, still easy, still treating all this like a game. "She explained the whole thing while we were running. All I have to do is kill her and I can be alive again."

I never said that. I said something similar, sure, but I never said that. I'm opening my mouth to tell him so when I realize what he's planning, and shut it with a snap. The man—Anton—hands his gun to Jimmy, patting the smaller, deader boy on the shoulder as he does.

"Sorry, Rose," says Jimmy, and pulls the trigger.

***

I'm getting damn tired of being shot at. You'd think that, being dead, I wouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing anymore. A finger pokes me in the shoulder, and Emma's voice says, "Get up, or it's the eels again."

I open my eyes.

Emma is crouching next to me, a brown corduroy coat draped across her knees. The sun is down; it's dark, and her presence alone is enough to tell me that Halloween is over. Bean sidhe have their own rituals regarding the holiday, and she'd never leave them early, not even for me. I'm not sure that she can. Still: "What time is it?" I ask.

"Midnight, on Martinmas. You've been out for eleven days."

"Swell." I stand up, grimacing a little at the swish of the silk skirt against my ankles. Yup. Definitely back among the unliving. "Did anyone get a picture of that little punk's face when midnight came and he faded out with the rest?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Damn." I'll have to track him down and provide him with a little private tutoring in the ways of the road. Such as 'you don't betray your fellow dead to the living.' He's already learned one of the more important lessons—'always check the fine print.'

On Halloween, if the living kill the dead, or the dead kill the living, they get a year in the daylight as their prize. But there's no prize for the dead killing the dead. Trick's on you, Jimmy, and there are bigger tricks to come, because news travels fast in the twilight, and the dead never forget.

I take the coat from Emma, shrugging it on, and smile. "Malteds?"

"I thought you'd never ask," she says, and offers me her arm. I take it, and we walk on together down the road, away from the shadow of the cornfield, and the smell of burnt pumpkin that still lingers, like a holiday's ghost, in the sweet November night.





Faithfully

A Sparrow Hill Road story

by

Seanan McGuire



Highway run

Into the midnight sun

Wheels go round and round,

You're on my mind.

Restless hearts

Sleep alone tonight

Sending all my love

Along the wire...

They say that the road

Ain't no place to start a family

Right down the line

It's been you and me

And lovin' a music man

Ain't always what it's supposed to be

Oh, girl, you stand by me

I'm forever yours...

Faithfully.

— "Faithfully," Jonathan Cain.



Love—true love—never dies.

Sometimes it just goes to sleep for a while.

***

Her name was Rose. She sat in the second row in Ms. Buchanan's third grade class. She had hair the color of the cornfields in September, and big brown doe's eyes that made me want to grab her hand and promise her that everything was going to be okay forever—double-pinky-swear. I'd known her since kindergarten, but on the second day of third grade, when she and I got picked to hand out the mimeo sheets for the teacher, walking down the aisles shoulder to shoulder...that was when I realized that I loved her. That I was never going to want to be with anybody but her.

I wasn't always nice to her the way I should have been. But I didn't join the other kids when they made fun of the patches on her sleeves or the way her skirts got shorter and shorter, eaten alive by their own mended hems. I didn't call her "Second Hand Rose" or "poor girl" like the other boys did, and if I never asked her to the school dances, I never asked anybody else, either. I was faithful to her before I knew what faithful really meant.

If I've committed any real sin in my life, it's that it took me so long to ask her if she wanted to go out with me. I fell in love when I was nine, but she didn't wear my jacket until I was fifteen, didn't smile at me with that mouth, didn't look at me with those big doe eyes of hers. I let six years slip through my fingers when I could have grabbed tight hold of every single day, and the penance for my sin is knowing I committed it. Knowing what we lost.