Rose Marshall

* Official art
* Fanart

**Rose Marshall** is a character in both the Ghost Roads and InCryptid series by Seanan McGuire. She is a hitchhiking ghost and psychopomp tasked with guiding the recent dead to the afterlife.

## About

### Abilities

As a hitchhiking ghost, Rose can turn corporeal if given a coat (or any piece of clothing that can be worn like a coat). While solid, she is functionally living, and invulnerable to some anti-ghost objects like spirit jars. She can only eat food and drink that is freely given. Her corporeality lasts until sunrise, unless she sheds the coat earlier.

Rose would have been a routewitch if she had lived, and when she's brought back to life in The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, the accumulated distance of sixty years of hitchhiking makes her the most powerful routewitch on the continent, even more than Apple, the Queen of the Routewitches.

After becoming a Fury, Rose is not always bound by the same strictures as before, at least regarding food.

## Biography

Rose was born and raised in Buckley Township, Michigan, and became a road ghost in 1952, when Bobby Cross forced her car off the road on Dead Man's Hill. In the decades since, she has continued to evade him, and acts as a psychopomp to those who die on the road. She has inspired a number of urban legends, most of which are untrue or exaggerations.

## In the Series

### The Girl in the Green Silk Gown

Thanks to Bobby Cross's schemes, Rose finds herself forcibly incarnated and must find a way to return to her ghostly existence. But to do so, she needs the help of her former enemy, Laura Moorhead.

### Angel of the Overpass

Without the protection of the Crossroads, Bobby Cross is finally vulnerable. Rose travels through the twilight and beyond to gather the powers, weapons, and allies she needs to destroy him once and for all. In the process, she becomes a Fury and is claimed by Persephone, the Ocean Lady, and the Anima Mundi.

### Backpacking Through Bedlam

Rose shows up at the old Parrish Place in Buckley the same day that Alice, Thomas, and Sally arrive, and tells them that the Ocean Lady wants them to head to Manhattan to fight the Covenant.

## Relationships

### Gary Daniels

Gary was Rose's boyfriend when she was alive, and the first person to meet her as a ghost. Gary came from a well-off family, and his parents disapproved of Rose, who was poor. Despite this, he loved her, and they planned to go to prom together. On prom night, his car broke down, but she had no way of knowing what was keeping him. Tired of waiting, she went for a drive. She ended up being killed by Bobby Cross, and Gary found her ghost up on Sparrow Hill. He gave her his suit jacket, and they drove around all night, before he brought her back home. It wasn't until he got home to find the police waiting for him that he found out Rose had died on Sparrow Hill Road.

### Emma

Emma is a Beán Sidhe and one of Rose's close friends. She runs the Last Dance Diner.

### Mary Dunlavy

Mary feels guilty for facilitating the deal that made Bobby what he is, and seeks Rose's forgiveness.

### Bethany

Bethany is Rose's great-niece, with whom she does not get along. When they first met, Bethany tried to sell out Rose to Bobby Cross, but was taken herself instead.

## Trivia

The original song, "Pretty Little Dead Girl", gives her date of death as 1953. The novel retconned this to 1952, but "two" doesn't rhyme with "cemetery", so the lyric was unchanged. It could be explained as the in-universe songwriter not having all the facts about Rose. Indeed, Seanan describes it as the "urban legend" or "filthy libel" version of her story.

## References

1. ↑ By Any Other Name
2. ↑ Backpacking Through Bedlam Ch. 9
3. ↑ http://seananmcguire.com/shr.php#songs