We are in his domain, in his wife’s garden, and there’s only one way out from here; still, it seems important that we agree. “Yes,” I say.
“Yes,” says Laura, anxiety and unease in her tone.
Persephone turns to look at her for perhaps the first time. Laura quails a little under the attention of the goddess. I would feel bad for her, but Hades is still holding my shoulders, and the cold is beginning to burn me. I don’t feel like I can ask him to let go. I want nothing more than for him to do it on his own.
“Pretty Laura,” she says, in a tone like rainstorms in spring, like hurricanes in summer. “You’ve spent so much of your given time dwelling among the dead, it’s little wonder you should wind up before us now. I wouldn’t have expected it to be on the behalf of your own personal fury. Are you sure you wish to take these risks for her sake? Knowing what you might lose, knowing that you might be lost? Are you sure your motives are true? For there is another aspect, which you may not have considered.”
Laura worries her lip between her teeth, and says nothing.
“Rose will be behind you if you look back too soon; she will not be able to guide your lost and lonely spirit back into the land of the living. You’ll be trapped here, in our domain, for all of time. Whatever you think waits for you in the afterlife of your own lands, you won’t find it if you fail.”
I gasp. I can’t help it. No ghostroads; no Tommy. If Laura loses here, she loses everything, as much as I do.
Somehow, she finds a wan and wavering smile in the depths of her courage, and offers it to Persephone. “You can’t have a katabasis if you’re afraid of failure.”
Persephone’s smile is brighter, broader than Laura’s. It is the smile of a woman who was swept out of springtime into winter, and found the heart to be happy even in the cold. Everyone I know who worships her does so willingly, and because they believe she is kind. I can’t wait to go home and tell them all that they were right; that they chose the kindest goddess the darkness had to offer them.
“Then go,” she says.
Hades releases my shoulders. “Go,” he echoes.
Laura looks at them, bewildered. “I don’t know the way,” she says.
I do. I can feel it thrumming in the soles of my feet, the last, longest road calling me to start walking, calling me to—
“The routewitches,” I say abruptly. “They’re tied to the dead. They’ve always been tied to the dead. They become road ghosts when they die. Is this the road they listen to, when they walk out of their lives?”
Hades steps around me, stopping next to his wife. Like her, he is a shifting shadow, handsome and ugly, dark and light, all at the same time. Like her, he is beautiful no matter what the blur of his face implies in any given second, and I feel, truly, as if he must be kind.
“It’s among them,” he says. “The oldest roads run deep into the lands of both the living and the dead. They must, if they’re to serve their purpose.”
I start to ask what that purpose is, but catch myself before the question can form. These are gods. I could ask them questions for a hundred years and not exhaust the things I want to know . . . but I might exhaust their patience, and I don’t know what time is doing up in the land of the living. It doesn’t matter so much for me, since most of my friends are dead, and the ones who aren’t can always ask Mary where the hell I am. But Laura? She’s still alive. Her job, her apartment, her entire world, they all depend on her making it home before too much time has passed.
“Is there anything else we need to know in order to make the journey?” I ask instead.
Hades inclines his head. He saw the choice I made: he approves of it. “She will begin and you will follow, all the way to the end of the road.” He turns to Laura then. “Start walking. The road will rise up to meet you. It is a brave thing you do, Laura Moorhead. I hope only that you do it for the right reasons.”
Laura looks away. Then, slowly, she turns, until her back is to me, until I can no longer see her face, and she begins to walk toward the end of the grove.
“Thank you for everything,” I say quickly, unwilling to leave the company of the gods without showing the proper courtesies. That’s the sort of thing that ends with someone transformed into a marble statue for a couple of centuries.
I think Hades smiles. I know Persephone reaches up and tucks an asphodel blossom behind my ear, the petals soft as silk where they brush against my skin.
“Go,” she whispers. “I know you were not faithless.”
Those words singing in my heart, I run after Laura, and I leave the terrors of divinity behind. When I catch up to her, some three feet behind, I slow down and fall into step, careful not to rush.
Behind me, I hear Persephone laughing.
* * *
We walk forever, or at least what feels like forever, the grass beneath our feet giving way first to smooth white marble and then to hard-packed earth. Laura’s shoulders are tight, her eyes fixed directly ahead, like she’s afraid of even looking to the side.
“As long as you don’t turn, you’re okay,” I call.
“That’s what you say now, but if I trip, I could turn further than I mean to,” she says. “You’ll forgive me for not taking unnecessary risks. Right now, I have more to lose than you do.”
Her voice is cold and hard, unforgiving; every syllable judges me and finds me wanting. I shiver, wishing I had a coat to pull tight around myself. The living and the dead feel cold differently. I’m used to freezing without pain, and this chill, while milder than what waits in the twilight, is more painful, because it’s more personal.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
Her shoulders slump a little. When she speaks again, her voice has thawed, at least a little. “I’m sorry, Rose. I shouldn’t yell. I know it’s not your fault that we’re here.”
“It’s okay.” It isn’t. “What happens now? Do we just walk until we come out?”
“We’re not the only spirits on this road,” says Laura. “Some of them are likely to be angry, because we could still get out, and they can’t. They’re going to try to make me turn around. They’ll say horrible things, maybe using your voice, to trick me into looking. I can’t let them trick me. Do you understand?”
Even if I need her to turn, even if I’m in genuine distress, she won’t be able to, because it could be a trick. I shiver again, this time with something deeper than cold. “I do,” I say.
“Good,” she says, and keeps walking.
The road is long, and that’s enough to make it hard, especially since we’re both human; we both get tired, even here in the Underworld, where the rules are different, but not entirely suspended. We’ve gone for what feels like hours, what feels like miles, when I stop, bracing my hands on my knees, and struggle to catch my breath.
“Wait,” I wheeze. Laura tenses and keeps on walking. Louder, I call, “Please, wait. I’m not asking you to turn around, but I need a break. I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“Says the teenager,” says Laura, but she stops. That’s all I wanted. “We can’t stop for long.”
“Why not?”
“No food. No water. No way to take a proper rest without risking me rolling over and seeing you. Plus the longer we hold still, the more likely it is that something unpleasant will catch up with us and make this harder than it has to be. Is that enough reason for you?”
It is. “Just give me a second,” I say, and breathe in, slowly, carefully, trying to get my lungs back on Team Rose, and off whatever weird tangent they decided would suit them better.
My heart slows. The ache in my lungs subsides. I straighten.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s go.”
Laura resumes her walk, and I follow her, keeping a safe distance between us—close enough that I won’t lose sight of her, far enough back that if I trip, I won’t touch her by mistake and cause her to
turn around.
We walk, and we walk, and we walk, and I’m bored out of my mind, but that’s okay, because I’m starting to feel like we’re going to make it.
Naturally, that’s when my own voice snivels from behind me, “Laura, I think I broke my ankle. Please help.”
“That’s not me,” I call.
“Please. I need help.”
“Honestly, do you think I’d be crying over a little broken ankle? I died in a fiery car crash. Buck up, buttercup, and do a better job of pretending to be me. Better yet, find a different hobby. Coloring books are popular right now. They make them for grownups, even.”
“She’s just going to desert you once you get her out,” says the voice, sounding less like the real me, and more like the little voice that sometimes tells me the rules are for other people, people who’ve suffered less than I have. This is the cruel side of my soul, and I don’t like it having a voice of its own.
So I turn around, because there’s nothing in the rules that says I can’t, and I punch the speaker—a thin streak of gray shadow that looks only vaguely humanoid—squarely in the nose it doesn’t have. It falls back, startled.
Five more rise up to grab me and jerk me off the path, and I am overwhelmed. The last thing I see is Laura’s back as she keeps walking, heading away from me, heading toward the land of the living.
Chapter 21
Leave Your Body at the Door
I SCREAM AS THEY PULL ME DOWN. I don’t want to—it seems weak, and more, it seems like the sort of thing that might distract Laura from getting the hell out of here—but I can’t help it. Their fingers are digging into my arms, and their bodies are covering mine, smothering me in shadow. These aren’t any kind of ghost I’ve ever dealt with before, because these aren’t ghosts at all. Ghosts are for the land of the living. These are spirits, shades, dead people who have never left the dubious safety of the Underworld.
Some of them may have tried. There has to be a reason they’re here, on this road, interfering with a rescue. They pause as I strike at them, their featureless faces showing their confusion, and I realize they assumed I was dead. This is jealousy. This is bitterness over the idea that I might get something they were denied.
But I’m not dead. I’m a living teenager following an older—also living—woman toward the exit.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I snarl, punching another of them in the featureless face. “I’m not a good target. Fuck off.”
The shades draw back, still holding me down, but clumping together in confusion, unable to decide the appropriate way to deal with dragging a living girl off of the path. I punch a few more of them for good measure. There’s nothing there for my fists to hit, but they react as if I’ve made contact all the same. I can’t tell whether it’s instinct driving them to fall back and pull away from me or some prohibition against grabbing the living, but it’s working. It’s working.
“I swear to Saint Celia, I will tell Persephone on you,” I hiss, and while the first divinity I invoke may not be familiar to them, the second certainly is. They fall back further, and I’m finally able to scramble to my feet, fists up, feet braced, ready to punch the entire spirit world if that’s what it takes to get back on the path before Laura reaches the exit.
To set me free, she’s supposed to look back and see me. What happens if she looks back and I’m not there? I didn’t think to ask that question when I had the chance, but I’m direly afraid these shades already know.
I don’t want to be alive. Until this moment, I would have said it was the thing I wanted least in all the world. I’m ready to revise that. I would rather live than spend forever as a shadow on this road, terrorizing travelers, trying to keep others from finding their happy endings. So I punch and punch and when they fall back again, I spin on my heels and I run. I run like Cerberus is behind me, jaws slavering and serpents hissing with the desire for flesh. I run like Bobby Cross is at my heels, ready to finish what he began so many years ago.
I run like I want to keep running forever, like I want to keep being forever, and maybe that’s the truest thing of all, because I don’t want to end. I don’t want to be faceless and thoughtless and trapped. I want to be me, Rose Marshall, whatever form that takes, whether it’s the girl in the green silk gown or the time-displaced teenager squatting on Laura Moorhead’s couch. I want to continue.
The shades do not pursue me. They slither through the dark at the edges of the path, coming no closer, making no effort to grab me again.
But they talk.
“She’s going to betray you.”
“She’s already betrayed you.”
“He’s waiting.”
“Bobby’s waiting.”
“Waiting to catch you up and make you not.”
“Turn back. Turn back. Save yourself. Stay.”
I don’t respond. I don’t have my breath. My too-human lungs are laboring to keep pushing me forward, and there isn’t enough air in the world. There’s never going to be enough air in the world, ever again. At least the path isn’t marble anymore. I couldn’t run this fast on marble, not without slipping and falling and winding up even farther behind.
Then I come around a corner and there she is: Laura, still walking. In the distance, I can see a punched-out oval of light where the dark road through the Underworld terminates in the land of the living. It looks like every neon sign at every truck stop in the world, calling me, beckoning me home.
I slow. I stop running, and start walking again, even though my lungs and my legs are screaming protest, demanding that I stop altogether, that I lie down, that I rest. Oh, how I want to rest. I’ve never wanted it more. All those times I’ve wondered how anyone could decide to rest in peace when there’s so much world out there worth seeing, this is the answer. This is how they make that choice. They just get tired, and there’s so much road left between them and what they want that it seems better to lie down and sleep.
Sleep. I can sleep when I’m dead. My feet are lead, but I keep picking them up and putting them down, I keep moving, and soon enough I’m behind Laura again, ten feet back, enough that she’ll be able to see me easily when we get there. She’ll be able to see me.
“I’m with you,” I call, voice raspy from wheezing. “Keep going, and I’ll keep following.”
Her shoulders untense, just enough for me to see how tight they were before. “You’re back,” she says, relief painted broadly through her voice. “Where did you go?”
“Some of the locals decided to pull me off the path and teach me the error of my ways,” I say, trying to sound light, really sounding like I’m about to collapse where I stand. “I hit them. I hit them a lot, and they eventually realized that letting me go was better for their overall health, such as it is.”
“They’ve been imitating your voice this whole time, trying to keep me from realizing you were gone.”
I frown. “How did you . . . if you never looked back, how did you know it wasn’t me?”
“They didn’t complain.” She sounds amused. That’s . . . good? Probably. “They encouraged me to keep going, they cajoled me to turn around, they said they were scared and asked if they could walk next to me instead of behind me, but they didn’t whine. Whereas you, Rose, are so bad at being alive that complaining is the majority of your conversation.”
“I feel like I should be offended,” I mutter.
“But you’re not.”
“But I’m not.”
“Good.” She keeps walking. She must have slowed down when she realized I wasn’t behind her; otherwise, she would have reached the exit by now. She’s still walking a little slowly, giving me the time to recover from my run.
That tightness is back in her shoulders. The proximity to the exit must be making her nervous. If something is going to go wrong, this is when and where it’s going to happen.
“We’re almost there,” I
say. “We’re almost there.”
“Yes,” Laura quietly agrees. “We are.”
She walks, and I follow, and the exit draws closer step by step, the neon glow proving itself to be literal in more ways than one, because on the other side of that open arch is a parking lot, red carts scattered carelessly among the cars, the distant outline of a Target Superstore dominating the narrow slice of visible horizon. I want to laugh. I want to cry. It’s a liminal place, yes, but I never expected to find a big box store with its very own portal to the Underworld.
A wind is blowing through the door, a wind out of the land of the living, and it tastes like fall, like impending snow, like the distant grease of fast food restaurants and the exhaust rolling off the even more distant highway. All those little things will fade as soon as Laura looks back at me, covered up once again by the cotton veil of the dead. I’ll have them this brightly, this boldly, only when I’m wearing a borrowed coat and the borrowed flesh that goes with it.
I can’t wait. Being alive all the time is exhausting. I want the world to go back to the way it was, the way it’s supposed to be. I want the ghostroads to welcome me home.
Laura reaches the exit. She hesitates.
“I’m sorry, Rose,” she says, and keeps walking.
“Sorry? Sorry for what?” I try to stop.
I can’t.
Every step she takes past the exit jerks a matching step out of me, pulling me closer to the land of the living, like I’m tied to her with some unseen thread . . . and she’s not looking back.
“Laura!” I call, raising my voice to make sure she hears me. “You’re clear. You can’t be trapped. Look back!”
She keeps walking. She doesn’t look back.
“Laura!”
She stops. So do I, barely a foot from the exit. The light slanting through is too bright, and it almost touches my foot, almost illuminates me. I try to step backward. I can’t. My guide is in a different world now, and I am compelled to follow for as long as I can.