“Of sorts.” She turns, setting the plate of pie in front of me. “The center of the design is a pomegranate, sliced to show the seeds at the center. I can’t be sure, but it looks like there are six seeds missing. It’s Persephone’s blessing. I think, anyway. It’s not like the Lady of the Dead has me on her speed dial.”
This is starting to sound like something too good to be true. I don’t trust things that seem too good to be true. They never are. “Meaning what, exactly?”
Emma produces a button-down sweater from behind the counter and hands it to me. Coats are the traditional attire of the hitchhiking ghost, but any outerwear will do, providing it belongs to the living. Somehow, Emma manages to count. “Meaning Bobby Cross has no claim on your soul as long as Persephone is tasked with watching you. Not unless you do something monumentally stupid.”
I shrug on the sweater before reaching for the pie. “Again, meaning what, exactly?”
“I’ll be completely honest with you here, Rose. I’m an Irish death omen and collector of the unquiet dead. I was born when the Roman calendar still looked like a fad that couldn’t possibly last. And I haven’t got the slightest idea.” Emma smiles brightly. “You want a malted before you hit the road?”
“Why the hell not?” I pick up my fork, driving it deep into the flaky piecrust. “Make it a double.”
“On the house,” says Emma, and her laugh is the sound of church bells ringing in the faraway cathedrals of the dead.
Buckley, Michigan, 2014.
Time runs differently when you’re in the twilight. Sometimes, hours there can be minutes in the daylight, or days, or weeks. Once, I spent what felt like a weekend at the Last Dance, bussing tables and bumming cigarettes off one of the cooks, and when I stepped back into the lands of the living, two years had gone slithering by like snakes vanishing into high grass. So it isn’t really a surprise when I shrug off the last traces of the ghostroads and find myself in a world where the summer has somehow run backward by more than a month. The trees are lush and green, and the fall that was threatening only hours ago is long, long gone.
I’ve lost the better part of a year to the twilight. I take a moment to glare at the world before taking another moment to figure out where I am.
It doesn’t take long. I’m standing on a long country highway. There’s a telephone pole nearby, and on it is a bright orange flyer. “BUY YOUR TICKETS TODAY TO GUARANTEE A WONDERFUL NIGHT!” it screams, in big block letters. Underneath that, smaller, is the legend, “Buckley High School Senior Prom.” There’s a price—more per ticket than I paid for my dress, once upon a couple of decades ago—and a date.
It wouldn’t matter if the date wasn’t there, just like it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a calendar. The dead have their own holy days, their own ways of marking the time that passes after they’ve passed on, and for me, the holiest of holies is the Buckley High School Senior Prom. It’s like Easter. It moves around the calendar, always within a small range, always subject to its own rules . . . but it always comes as the school year is drawing to a close. One big formal dance for girls whose lives won’t offer many opportunities for formal dancing; one beautiful night for spiking punch, losing virginities, and living out your dreams. Such big dreams. Real life almost never lives up to the dreams of a senior prom. It tries. It just can’t compare.
I’ve attended thirty senior proms in the years since I died. Five of them were here in Buckley. They’re . . . magnetic, I guess is the word. Once I get close, they draw me in, just like a moth being drawn to a bug zapper. Not the most flattering comparison. Too bad it’s such an accurate one.
I sigh, leaning over and brushing my fingertips through the paper. Just to test, I try to reach for the ghostroads, and find nothing but shadows. I’m here until the last dance is over, the punch stains have been wiped off the gymnasium floor, and the drunken, giggling cheerleaders have been chased out of the janitor’s closet.
“Bully for me,” I mutter, before shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans. It may be the day of the senior prom, but the dance itself is still far enough away that I can wear jeans if I want to, rather than being locked into a homecomer’s endless, pointless struggle to get back to a place that isn’t there anymore. One eye scanning the road for a ride, I turn and begin trudging my way down the sidewalk. No matter how inconvenient it might be, this is a holy night, and on holy nights, good girls—alive or dead—follow the rites of their religion.
I have one small advantage over the breathing girls of Buckley, the ones for whom tonight will be the first, last, and only senior prom. Unlike them, I don’t have to worry about what I’m going to wear. I just have to worry about how many of them will be dead before morning.
On second thought, maybe they should be worrying about that, too.
Buckley Township: where the more things change, the more they stay the same. The town has grown since I lived here, slowly spilling out into the surrounding fields and farmlands. The forest is still mostly intact, the trees standing sentry against intrusion. The lake and the swamp are exactly as they’ve always been, dangerous, foreboding, and deadly to the unprepared. I used to wonder how many bodies were buried there. Now that I’ve met a few of the ghosts who haunt the waters of Buckley, I can say with authority that I don’t want to know. The land around Buckley has never been tamed, not really, and it doesn’t suffer fools lightly, if it suffers them at all.
The storefronts have altered as they strive to keep up with the times, but they still seem to lag behind the outside world, the towns and cities that aren’t struggling to survive in the hand of the forest, that aren’t trapped under the shade of the nearby hills. It’s strange to walk these streets and see signs offering computer repair and cell phone services where the record store and the five-and-dime used to be. Time stops for no one, I guess. There’s another Buckley nestled deep down in the twilight, one where it’s still 1952, one where all the little details still match the little details hidden in my heart. That’s a dead town, a place that only exists because I do—there are no other Buckley ghosts from my generation still wandering the ghostroads. When I move on, if I move on, that dead little town will fade away. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, because this is the real Buckley, this changing, increasingly strange place, and it deserves to be fresher in my mind than its own time-locked reflection.
I’m lost deep enough in my own thoughts that I don’t realize that I’ve managed to walk halfway to the school until the car pulls up next to me, blinker flashing in the brief staccato rhythm that means “You’ve got a ride” in the secret language of the road. I stop where I am and turn toward the car, a battered old Toyota in that shade of middle-class brown that hides the rust better than just about anything else. The passenger-side window creaks down, revealing a teenage girl with hair almost exactly the color of her car’s paint job. I don’t get many rides from girls. Something about me says “there but for the grace of God,” and they keep their distance.
She has red-and-yellow ribbons in her hair—the Buckley High School colors—and flecks of coppery rust dot the middle-class brown of her eyes. “Get in,” she says, with a small lift of her chin. It’s more command than request, and I find myself obeying without stopping to think about it. “I’ll fill you in on the way.”
Prom night isn’t like Halloween, when the dead live again, but it’s something similar for me, anniversary of my death, pagan ritual in school colors. I can feel solidity falling into my bones like night falling on the forest, turning me physical from the inside out. I slide into the seat, almost taking comfort in the way my feet pass briefly through the floorboard before I pull them back—still dead, still free, at least for the moment. It’s too late to run away, but it’s too soon for the music to start. “Thanks for the ride,” I say, old ritual, new target.
“I was going your way,” she replies, with an equally ritual calm, and I realize that I never told her which way I was going. She hits the accelerator, eyes on the road as she adds, “
There’s a wrap for you in the back. I looked through some of the old yearbooks to make sure I had the right color.” I hesitate, and she sighs heavily. “It’s just a damn coat, okay? You need it if you don’t intend to go walking through any walls in the next few hours. I feel more comfortable when I know my passengers are actually gaining some small measure of protection from their seat belts.”
“I—wait—what?”
“Although I guess if you’re dead already, the seat belt thing is sort of a moot point.” She stops at the light on Pierce and Robinson—there wasn’t a light there when I was alive, just one more sign of how the town has changed—before turning to look at me. “I’d feel better if you were corporeal in my car, okay? And since I’m the driver, I get to choose the radio station and dictate the physical state of my passengers.”
The look in her eyes finally snaps into focus. I can’t stop myself from frowning as I ask, “You’re a routewitch, aren’t you? What are you doing in Buckley?” What are you doing here, on the night of the prom, the one night when I can’t cross the city limits or get away? Why did you pick me up?
What’s going on here?
“I was born in Detroit. We moved to Buckley when I was five,” she replies, attention going back to the road. “My grandfather was from Buckley, and when my dad died, Mom decided she’d come here to be close to his side of the family. Her side’s nothing to write home about. Neither is his, really, but I live with them. I don’t have to write.”
“Oh.” Even routewitches have to come from somewhere, I suppose. I’ve just never given much thought to where they belong when they aren’t running the roads or going home to the arms of the Ocean Lady. I lean over the seat, looking into the back. A wispy strip of pale green silk lies puddled on the upholstery. That familiar jolt of solidity races up my fingers as I pick it up, noting the thin lines of silver embroidery that run through the fabric. It’s beautiful, delicate, and a perfect complement to the prom gown I’ll be wearing before the night is over.
I settle back into my seat and wind the wrap loosely around my shoulders, feeling gravity settle over me like a shroud. I fasten the seat belt before looking toward the routewitch behind the wheel. Her eyes are still locked on the street beyond the windscreen. I clear my throat, and say, “Um, thanks. For the coat. And the ride. My name’s Rose.”
She actually laughs at that, the sound easy and clear and eerily familiar. “Oh, I know. You’re Rose Marshall, otherwise known as ‘the Girl in the Diner,’ or ‘the Lady in Green.’ Personally, I like the local name: ‘the Spirit of Sparrow Hill Road.’ You’re here because this is the anniversary of your death, and whenever you’re near Buckley during prom season, you wind up crashing the party.”
“How did you—”
“You’re here tonight, specifically, because I begged the road to send you. The signs and portents have been crazy ever since the start of the school year. Old lady Martin’s cat had a whole litter of kittens with no eyes, and somehow, all the scripts for the senior play got replaced with Macbeth. Something seriously major league bad is coming. I wanted at least a little supernatural muscle on our side when things went south.”
I blink. “What makes you think I can do anything to help?”
“It’s prom night in Buckley, and you’re a Marshall. Marshalls always come back to Buckley when they’re needed. It’s what makes us better than the Healys.”
Only one word in that sentence really stands out to me, and I’m repeating it before I take the time to think, voice going a little shrill as I demand, “Us?”
“Us,” she agrees, and slants a smile my way, a wicked gleam in her eye that I remember seeing, too many times, in the eyes of my big brother. “Hi, Aunt Rose. I’m Bethany. I’m your brother Arthur’s granddaughter.”
“Of course you are.” I slump in my seat, feeling the prom coming closer by the second, while this girl who is blood of my blood drives us toward the high school.
Prom night in Buckley Township. Not exactly the most wonderful night of the year.
The high school hasn’t changed nearly as much as the rest of the town. The squat brick buildings still seem to huddle like angry gods in the middle of their parking lots and athletic fields, glowering out over the students who dare to approach. Some people say schools are cathedrals to learning. Not Buckley High. Buckley High is a prison, and the only way to get parole is to keep your grades up, keep your head down, and pray.
Bethany pulls into a spot near the street, using the spreading leaves of the sycamore trees to conceal the car from casual view. “We have about two hours before the dance starts,” she says, as she unclasps her seat belt. “I’m on the decorating committee, so I can get us inside now without raising suspicion.”
“And the fact that nobody knows me won’t be a problem because—?”
“I’ll tell them you’re my cousin from downstate, and that your folks made me bring you to the prom.” She slants a half-amused glance in my direction. “It’s not like it’s totally a lie. We are related, and you are from downstate. It’s just that you’re coming from underground, not points south.”
“Dead girl jokes. Oh, yeah, those are my favorite. Almost as much fun as being branded the pity date.” I’m still grumbling as I climb out of the car, feeling the hot mugginess of the summer air settle across my skin. Michigan summers. I used to measure out my life in Michigan summers. Now I use them to measure out my death. “Then what? I help you hang streamers, pretend I’m not looking when somebody spikes the punch, and wait to see if some unnamed doom falls on the senior prom?”
“Something like that.” Bethany starts walking across the parking lot, cocky little routewitch too young to know how hard the world can hit. I hurry to catch up. My sneakers aren’t sneakers anymore; sometime during the ride they became green silk flats. Prom night is starting to exert its hold on me. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be bad. I don’t think we’ll be able to miss it once it starts.”
“You are way too vague to be a Marshall.”
“And you’re way too dead to criticize.” She doesn’t sound annoyed; more amused, like my complaints are meaningless. In a way, I guess they are. She’s a routewitch, and this is her territory now, not mine. It’s prom night in Buckley, which means running away isn’t an option, and the fact that she’s alive means the shots are hers to call. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. So I glower at her as we walk across the sun-bleached blacktop, faded white lines that delineate one parking spot from the next crisscrossing like railway tracks under our feet. She thinks we have two hours before the start of prom. I could tell her things about time, the way it bends and twists around the holy moments in your life, but I won’t. I don’t have the words, and I don’t think Bethany has the ears to listen.
“How is Arthur?” I ask, just to break the silence. I’m as solid as ever, but the hair that tickles the back of my neck is longer than it was when I got into the car. Prom night is rushing me on, and as all the other girls get ready, I’m getting ready, too. Whether I want to or not.
“Old. Crotchety. Mean as a snake when he thinks you’ve crossed him.” Bethany’s smile is sweet and distant. Maybe I could like her after all. “He took Mom and me in when nobody else wanted anything to do with us. I owe him a lot.”
And he’s still in Buckley, still breathing. That explains why she’s here, little routewitch running a fixed route, like a hamster running in a wheel. She’ll strike out on the open road one of these days, but even routewitches know the worth of family. She’ll stay until my brother goes.
“Does he know . . . ?” I wave a hand, jade beads rattling against each other as the bracelet on my wrist slides a few inches down my forearm. I wonder what my clothes look like now, whether anyone who happens to be passing by will see a transparent dress sketched over T-shirt and jeans, or whether the reality is already turned the other way around.
“No.” Bethany shakes her head, quick, decisive, with no pause for thought. “I tried to tell him once, but he wouldn’
t let himself hear me. He didn’t want to know. I think . . . I think he knows, deep down, that if he listened when I told him about the way the road can sing, if he believed, he’d have to believe all those stories about the ghost of Sparrow Hill Road.”
Believe that your granddaughter is some kind of witch, believe that your decades-gone little sister has never been allowed to rest. That wasn’t the sort of choice I’d have wanted to make. “Poor Art,” I sigh.
“I deal,” says Bethany, and then she’s opening the door to the Buckley High School gymnasium—when did we finish crossing the parking lot? When did we pass the point of no return?—and stepping onward, into the dark. I hesitate, clinging to the illusion of choice for as long as I can. Bethany looks back at me, eyebrows raised in silent question, and with another sigh, I step forward, following her into the darkness.
Prom themes are the universe’s way of getting us ready for the endless indignities it plans to heap on our heads, like fashion trends and bridesmaid dresses. No one ever seems to admit to being the one who thought that “Rain Forest Romance” or “A Dance on Mars” was a good idea. They just follow the mysterious sketches that tell them to put the streamers here, the crepe-paper flowers there, and the endless buckets of glitter everywhere that glitter shouldn’t go.
Whoever chose this year’s theme wasn’t feeling particularly creative. The Buckley Buccaneers will be celebrating the magic of prom night in a gymnasium transformed into a bizarre combination of pirate ship and South Seas Island, complete with sand-covered, papier-mâché “dunes.” The banners hanging to either side of the stage proclaim that tonight is a night for Adventure. Where? On the High Seas, naturally.
“This is the third pirate-themed prom I’ve been to at this school,” I inform Bethany.
“Look at it this way: it’s the third one you’ve attended, but you’ve managed to miss fifteen of them, so the numbers are still slanted in your favor.” She smirks when she sees the horrified look on my face. “The drama department really enjoys recycling props. Why don’t you go for a walk-around, and see if anything strikes you as off?”