Bobby Cross

**Robert "Bobby" Cross** is a character in the Ghost Roads series by Seanan McGuire. He is the main antagonist, being responsible for the murder of Rose Marshall and pursuing her for decades.

## About

### Personality

Bobby puts on a veneer of a charming, handsome man when dealing with people he's not simply killing, but it's all an act. He cares for nothing other than himself. He is very vain, seeing as he made a deal for eternal youth.

### Abilities

Bobby Cross has eternal youth, created by him stealing the souls of those who die in road accidents and using them to power his car.

## Biography

Bobby Cross was an actor in Hollywood, who loved racing his car, but feared getting older. In 1950, he asked the King of the Routewitches how he could stay eternally young. The King sent him to the Crossroads, where he made a bargain mediated by Mary Dunlavy. Shortly after, he vanished from Hollywood one night and was never seen again. To stay young, he feeds his car the souls of people who die on the road, most of them killed by him. He murdered Rose Marshall in 1952 by running her car off the road at Dead Man's Hill, but failed to take her soul.

## In the Series

### Sparrow Hill Road

Through several short stories, we learn how Bobby came to the routewitches, and then the crossroads, and after that murdered Rose Marshall. In 2014, Bethany attempted to make a deal with him, delivering him Rose, but her great-aunt escapes and Bobby takes Bethany instead. At the end of the novel, he kidnaps Emma to draw out Rose. Rose and Gary (who has just become a car) meet him in the midnight, where Bethany, now a Crossroads Ghost, brokers a wager between them; if Rose and Gary beat Bobby in a race, he frees Emma, but if they lose, he gets both their souls. Despite being run off the road again, Rose and Gary cross the finish line first, and Bobby is forced to give Emma back. They go back to the closest place they have to home, the Last Dance Diner.

### The Girl in the Green Silk Gown

Bobby manipulates a young routewitch named Dana into killing herself in a ritual to damage Rose's tattoo that grants her the blessing of Persephone. She attempts to fix it through becoming incarnated at Halloween, but Bobby had planned on that from the beginning and blackmailed the Barrowmans by kidnapping their daughter. Rose flees him and seeks help from Laura Moorhead, who calls the highway patrol on Bobby to get him off their tail. At the end of the novel, it is revealed that Laura had been working with him from the beginning, and the entire plot was one long scheme by him to finally kill Rose all over again (or use her for her routewitch powers). Rose is able to convince Laura to betray Bobby, who then kills her with his car. He does not get Laura's soul, however.

### Angel of the Overpass

With the destruction of the crossroads, Bobby is vulnerable, and Rose searches for a way to destroy him once and for all, even as he continues his efforts to catch her. At the climax of the novel, she has Nate call Bobby to her, and attacks his car with a scythe. Without his car, Bobby starts rapidly aging as he sinks into the ghost road. Now a Fury, Rose delivers the justice that had been denied her and all his other victims for so many years.