“Did it work?”
I shake my head. Regret is thick in my throat as I say, “No. There were conditions, and he didn’t quite fulfill them, and he had to go home alone.”
Gary surges impulsively forward, grabbing my hands in his. I flinch, unable to control my response to what feels entirely like being held captive by a corpse, but I don’t pull away, much as I want to, much as I ache to. He’s suddenly smiling, bright and happy once again, and I love him, I do, for all that we have a long way to go before I can say this particular off-ramp will be anything like behind us.
“I can fulfill them,” he says. “No matter what they are, I can do it. I can do this for you.”
“I don’t see how it would help,” I say. His hands loosen a little. I seize the opportunity to slip my hands free, trying to conceal my relief. “I mean, yeah, Orpheus went to the Underworld, but he was trying to make a dead woman alive again, not make a live one dead. It doesn’t apply.”
“That, and one of the conditions is ‘alive,’” says a voice from behind me. Apple sounds weary, like she can’t believe she has to explain any of these things. I guess we’re probably a pretty exhausting break in her routine. “The dead can’t lead the dead away from the Elysian Fields. If they could, there wouldn’t be any point in having an afterlife. We’d never be able to keep them all down there.”
“Then why are we even talking about this?” I turn. “I’m not married. Gary’s the closest thing I have to an Orpheus. How would we even find the entrance to the Underworld?”
“There are still a few, if you know where to look. Emma’s making a list of the ones she remembers now, and we’ll start looking for plane tickets once she’s done.”
“Plane . . .” My stomach sinks. “This is why she was asking about planes. I don’t have a passport. The ID we got for me won’t stand up.”
Apple waves a hand. “Let me worry about that. Right now, you’re my subject, and when you’re not, you’re still my ally. I get to take care of you.”
I hear Gary make an unhappy sound behind me, and send a silent thanks to any divinity that might be that she didn’t say she was going to save me. “Are you coming with me?”
“No.” It might be a trick of the light, but I think I see relief in her eyes. “Even if I wanted to play the Orpheus to your Eurydice, I couldn’t leave the Ocean Lady. As long as I’m in power, I’m her anchor. I would have to step aside, and you don’t get second chances at this throne. I’m not done here yet. So no, I won’t be your escort.”
There’s only one living person left. I stare at her. “Laura’s not my husband or my lover.”
“Maybe not, but when she told the road she was your aunt, she made herself family, on the same symbolic level as a marriage. The road you’ll have to walk together will listen to her if she says it again. There probably won’t be any real consequences for her if she makes the journey on the basis of that claim.”
Probably. That’s encouraging. “You seem to be skipping over the part where I don’t want to be alive anymore.”
“Orpheus lost Eurydice because he stepped out of the Underworld and looked back before she could do the same,” says Apple. “We’re going to ask Laura to do what he did, only she’s going to do it on purpose.”
I stare at her, feeling the first trembling brush of hope against my unruly heart. How do you die without dying? You descend into the Underworld and let someone else screw up the process of getting you out. It won’t be suicide. It won’t be murder. It won’t be anything we have a word for, and if it works, oh, if it works, I’ll be dead again, dead and free to return to the kind of ghost I’ve always been.
“What’s the catch?” I ask.
“Laura has to agree,” says Apple. “And if she fails—if she lets you exit the Underworld with her, without looking back—there isn’t another way. You’ll be alive until you die, and there won’t be any guarantee you’ll make it back to what you’ve been for the last sixty years.”
“Oh,” I say faintly. “Is that all?”
The pavement beneath our feet shudders before Apple can answer, briefly becoming gravel, then hard-packed dirt, before settling on fresh, new tar. The smell of it permeates the air. There’s barely time for it to register before the sky overhead turns bruised and ominous. Apple pales.
“Run,” she says.
We do.
We run like there’s nothing to the world but running, like we can do this. Gary stumbles, body no longer accustomed to the act of fleeing from danger; in that moment, I can see him wishing for his wheels. I grab the sleeve of his shirt, doing my best not to touch his skin, and haul him with us as we flee toward the safety of the rest stop.
Behind us, an engine roars like some prehistoric demon, all rage and danger and jagged, cutting edges. I don’t look back. I don’t need to look back. I’ve been running from Bobby Cross for so long that I don’t need to see him to know when he’s behind me, to know . . .
Wait. I stop, letting go of Gary’s sleeve, watching as momentum carries him several long, loping steps onward before he seems to realize that something has changed, and not necessarily for the better. He slows. Apple doesn’t. She hasn’t noticed anything. All she knows is that someone is invading her lands, and that she’s stronger at the rest stop than she is anywhere else. She needs that strength if she’s to defend what’s hers.
I have my own strength. Slowly, I turn, and there he is, Bobby Cross and that damned car of his, parked so the sleek metal side of his ride blocks all exit from the parking lot. That’s why it’s flickering, I realize. The Ocean Lady doesn’t want us to be trapped, so she’s shuffling through other versions of this same setting, trying to find one where we can run like rabbits in all directions.
I’m done running. “Howdy, Bobby,” I call, putting every ounce of spite and disdain I possess into his name. I’ve got spite to spare right now. It’s been a hard couple of days. “Here to check out your handiwork?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Rosie,” he says. If my tone is disdain given form, his is oil and misplaced seduction. He thinks he can still win me over, he really does. I’d laugh, if I didn’t want to gag.
“Liar,” I say, and spread my arms, giving a little pirouette to show him the whole of me: the modern clothes, the uncut hair. My shirt tugs up in the back at the motion, and I’m sure he gets a glimpse of my tattoo, broken protection that it currently is. “Like it?”
“Very much,” he says. He’s smiling when I stop my spin—but he hasn’t moved. He’s blocking the exit. He’s not coming in. Interesting. “I thought you might run here, and here you are. I never expected to find you hiding behind the girl-queen’s skirts. Thought better of you, Rosie.”
“I wish you wouldn’t think of me at all.”
Bobby’s laughter is genuine and delighted, the sweet tone of a man with nothing to lose. I want to slap that smug smile off his face, grind it under my heel and leave it broken in the dirt.
“Now, Rose,” he says. “That’s never going to happen. I’m going to be thinking of you forever. You’ve led me quite the dance, haven’t you, little girl? Up one side and down the other. I never would have thought you had it in you the first time I laid eyes on you.”
The door of the rest stop opens, closes, the bell above it ringing. I don’t know if that means Apple and Gary went in or if it means the others came out, and I don’t dare look. My nerve will break if I do. Bobby’s trying to scare us—scare me—into making a mistake, and maybe he has, but I don’t think so. I think he’s arrogant, and crude, and weaker than he wants me to believe he is.
“The first time you laid eyes on me, all you could see was the back of my head,” I counter. “Did you even know who you were running off the road? Or did you just figure a teenage girl driving alone would be easy prey? Don’t try to make it out like we’re some great epic rivalry. You’re an asshole. You killed me. I got awa
y.”
“But then I arranged to have you brought back to life. Just my way of saying sorry, Rosie, for all the trouble I’ve caused you.” He’s a phenomenal actor, there’s no question of that: the way he smiles at me would have made my knees go weak, decades and deaths ago. “I put you right back the way you were, only better.”
“Better?” All my effort not to let him get a rise out of me was for naught, because I’m seeing red now. I’m so mad I can barely focus, can barely keep from launching myself at him. And that’s what he wants, or he wouldn’t be here. He’s being so careful not to let his feet touch the edge of the rest stop. The Ocean Lady can’t keep him off, can’t deny him passage when he’s been here before, but Apple? She doesn’t have to let him into her stronghold.
If I could get him past the border, she’d be able to have her way with him. Too bad I don’t have a bulldozer.
“All that distance you have wrapped around you now, all that potential . . . do you even know how powerful you could be, if you wanted to? You could be a demigoddess of these highways, Rosie. There’s people who would kill to have the sort of opportunity you had. Sixty years running, and then alive again, with all that potential in your hands? You should be falling to your knees and thanking me.”
The door opens and closes again. Bobby’s eyes flicker away from my face for a moment, long enough for me to see his façade of arrogant comfort crack. I’m not alone anymore, if I ever was, and I meant what I said to Gary: I may not need saving, but help? Help is something I’ll always accept. What is a hitchhiker, after all, if not someone who relies on others to help them reach their destination?
“But I don’t need you to,” he says, voice going fast and low and filled with the sort of tempting rhythm that he once used to seduce audiences all over the world. Only now it’s turned entirely on me, and now I have a body to contend with, a body that has desires and hormones and other inconvenient attributes. Bobby is the worst man I’ve ever known. That doesn’t mean he’s not attractive.
“All I need you to do is take my hand and let me show you how amazing we could be together,” he continues. “My drive and your distance—I don’t need you for the tank. I’ll sign a contract before the crossroads swearing I’ll never do that, never waste you that way. Together, we could be unstoppable. Together, we could tear up every road on this continent, and when you’re ready to settle down, we could bring you back here and put a real woman on the throne. The kind who understands that power belongs in the hands of people who’ll actually use it, not the ones who’ll let it go to waste.”
It takes me a moment before I realize what he’s saying. I blink. “I can’t be queen.”
“Why not? You’re a routewitch now. All you need to do is learn what that means. You’ve walked the Ocean Lady. Isn’t that the continental coronation test? Hell, you’ve done it living and dead. Some would say you’re queen already, you just don’t know it.”
“No, I mean I can’t be queen,” I say. “Dead women can’t be Queen of the Routewitches.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” he says. “You’re not dead anymore. You can live as long as you want. The kind of distance you’ve got, you can be just this side of immortal. I would never have made the deal I did if I’d had what you’ve got.” There’s a hunger in his eyes as he runs them over my body, a hunger that has nothing to do with my flesh.
He thinks he can use me to get out of his deal with the crossroads. That couldn’t be more obvious if he was passing me notes in biology class. Do you like me, yes or no; will you help me escape and possibly offend something so big and strange and eldritch that its anger may destroy the entire twilight, but who cares, who cares, I’m finally free.
“Oh, Bobby,” I sigh, as sweetly as I can. Hope sparks in his eyes. “You don’t understand. I want to be dead.”
He recoils. “Don’t joke.”
“Not joking. I want to be intangible and invisible. I want to walk through walls and stick my thumb out for motorists who don’t know what they’re getting into, what they’re picking up. I want to be a ghost, and you took that from me. So, no. I won’t be your pawn, and I won’t be your queen, and I won’t be riding with you, now or ever. Go find yourself another patsy. Or, you know, come over here and show me the error of my ways.”
“Yes,” hisses Apple, stepping up next to me. Her hands are clenched, and static sparks of power run across her hair, making it frizz at the ends. “Please. Step onto my lands.”
“The Ocean Lady belongs to everyone,” says Bobby. “You routewitches don’t own her.”
“No, but she owns us, and I own this,” says Apple. “Come on.”
“Yeah, Bobby, come on,” I say. “Or are you afraid? That doesn’t make any sense. Big bad Diamond Bobby, afraid of a little routewitch?”
He glares at me, the mask dropping away, replaced by that old, familiar loathing. Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse. “Bitch,” he spits. “You’ll regret this.”
“Pretty sure you got that wrong,” I say. “Pretty sure the only one who’s going to be regretting this is you. I left my regrets on Sparrow Hill Road.”
Then—the ultimate insult to a man like Bobby Cross, a man who’s used to all eyes being on him, center of the stage, focus of the shot—I turn my back on him and start walking, casually, calmly, toward the rest stop. Emma and Laura are standing outside, one of them to either side of the door. Gary is marooned in the center of the parking lot, a helpless expression on his face. He’s starting to realize how different the rules are among the dead. He’s starting to understand why he’s not the one who’s going to save me. Good. Maybe this will be the thing that sets his head straight, and Bobby will have done one good thing in his artificially endless life.
Apple stays where she is, not following me. When I reach the door, I pause and look back. She’s still staring at Bobby, looking at him like she wants nothing more in this world or any other than the chance to see him dead. I wouldn’t wager on that being very far from the truth. He is the greatest shame of her kingdom, and she’d kill him if she could.
I wonder if he realizes that, if he knows how bad an idea it is for him to taunt her. I’m certainly not going to be the one who tells him. If he wants to commit suicide by angry routewitch, he can be my guest.
“Step onto my land or step away from my borders, Robert Cross, Diamond Bobby, lost boy of the autumn road,” she says, and her voice is low and soft, and I can still hear every word. Her fury is the wind that will sweep us all inevitably away. “I do not want you where you are.”
“So make me move,” he says.
Apple’s eyes widen in evident delight in the heartbeat before he realizes his mistake. She lifts her hands. He yelps—actually yelps, and it’s the best sound I’ve ever heard in my life—as he all but somersaults into his car.
The Ocean Lady trembles. Not the shaking of an earthquake: the faint, hazy shimmer of a heat mirage rising from the blacktop, twisting the world behind it. Bobby Cross slams his foot down on the gas, and he’s away, he’s away, he’s driving as fast and as hard as he can, and maybe it won’t be fast enough; maybe this is how it ends. I should feel cheated by the idea of someone else handling my oldest enemy, but I don’t. I just want this to be over. If Apple can kill him, let her; she can be my guest, and I’ll bring her flowers when she’s done. I clasp my hands against my breastbone, barely breathing over the pounding of my traitor heart, and the shimmer grows greater, and Bobby is driving, but maybe not fast enough, and—
The road folds in on itself, the old Atlantic Highway inverting like a moebius strip. There is a moment, a shivering, heartrending moment, where it looks like the motion will carry Bobby with it, slamming him down into the foundations of the road gone goddess. Then his engine roars, his car leaping forward, and he’s clear of the danger, roaring away down the next stretch of the road, untouched as always.
&
nbsp; Apple lowers her hands, panting. The sky clears, resuming its previous glistening blue. She turns, looking at the rest of us, eyes finally focusing on me.
“Come to your Queen,” she says.
I’m moving before I can decide to obey her, my legs bearing me forward of their own inclination. She holds out her hands, clearly intending for me to give her mine, and I do, even as I frown.
“What are you doing?”
There’s a weary edge to her smile, like she doesn’t believe I even have to ask. “To be Queen of the Routewitches, I must always be prepared to defend my people. I must carry as much distance as I can, for their sake, for my own sake. Will you repay what I have spent in protecting you?”
Distance again. The intangible power of going, of having gone. Harvesting it from ghosts is virtually impossible, which is why we’re not all shoved into spirit jars and wrung dry by the hungry routewitches of the world. Routewitches can pass it around like sugar candy, though, and while I’m alive, I’m a routewitch.
“Yes,” I say.
Apple squeezes my hands, sharp and sudden and a little painful. I hiss, surprised. “Yes what?” she asks.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I manage.
Apple smiles.
Pain follows.
Chapter 14
There Isn’t That Much Distance
DISTANCE IS LIKE OXYGEN: it flows around us, over us, always, and we don’t notice it until it’s gone. Distance is nothing like oxygen at all. It’s the foundation behind the bruises on our knees and the tangles in our hair, it’s the context that puts the world into focus and keeps it from becoming one big pastel blur, all soft edges and vague memories.
Twisting a road like the Atlantic Highway isn’t easy or cheap, no matter how badly the Ocean Lady wants to help the one doing the twisting. Apple spent a lot of miles on that piece of showmanship, and while I’m not sorry she did it, I probably ought to be. Her power races through my veins and crawls across my skin, picking and plucking at all the miles I’ve ever known.