Angel of the Overpass

Official cover

**Angel of the Overpass** is the third novel in the Ghost Roads series by Seanan McGuire. It features Rose Marshall.

## Synopsis

**The third book of the Ghost Roads series returns to the highways of America, where hitchhiking ghost Rose Marshall continues her battle with her killer—the immortal Bobby Cross.**

*Lady of shadows, keeper of changes, plant the seeds of faith within me, that I might grow and flourish, that I might find my way through danger and uncertainty to the safety of your garden. Let my roots grow strong and my skin grow thick, that I might stand fast against all who would destroy me. Grant to me your favor, grant to me your grace, and when my time is done, grant to me the wisdom to lay my burdens down and rest beside you, one more flower in a sea of blooms, where nothing shall ever trouble me again.*

Rose Marshall died when she was sixteen years old and on her way to her high school prom. She hasn’t been resting easy since then—Bobby Cross, the man who killed her, got away clean after running her off the road, and she’s not the kind of girl who can let something like that slide. She’s been looking for a way to stop him since before they put her body in the ground.

But things have changed in the twilight world where the spirits of the restless dead continue their “lives.” The crossroads have been destroyed, and Bobby’s protections are gone. For the first time, it might be possible for Rose to defeat him.

Not alone, though. She’ll need every friend she’s managed to make and every favor she’s managed to add to her account if she wants to stand a chance…and this may be her *last* chance to be avenged, since what is Bobby Cross without the crossroads?

Everything Rose knows is about to change.

## Plot

**Chapter 1: Rubber Meets the Road**: Rose explains her story in an aside as she's once again fleeing Bobby Cross. She tells how he found her at a restaurant in Alabama.

**Chapter 2: Unhappy Reunions**: At the restaurant, Bobby demands Rose give herself up to him. She refuses and throws her coffee in his face, then runs. She slips into the twilight and ends up in Corletta's homestead, where some ever-lasters recite a prophecy, telling her to speak with Persephone. Back in the daylight, Bon picks her up.

**Chapter 3: Under the Cornfield Sky**: Bon takes Rose to a diner, where Apple is waiting for her. Apple tells her that the Crossroads are dead (which Rose already knows), and asks her to finally kill Bobby Cross.

**Chapter 4: The Hard and the Easy**: Rose enters the starlight, where she meets Pippa in a ghost subway station. Pippa orders her to stay there while she does something else, and vanishes. Rose is attacked by an entity made up of a swarm of flies, and jumps down onto the train tracks to escape it. She just manages to avoid an oncoming train by hiding in a hollow in the platform wall. She realizes the trains are the same type of monster as Bobby's car. Pippa comes back and dispatches the swarm-monster, and takes Rose somewhere else.

**Chapter 5: Down Among the Dead Men Let Him Lie**: Pippa tells Rose that Persephone will let her hunt down Bobby, if she first finds proof that the Crossroads are dead. Rose moves back into the twilight, ending up at a gas station where a ghost of all the dinosaurs whose bodies turned into oil starts chasing her.

**Chapter 6: There's Always Running and Screaming**: Rose flees the dinosaur ghost, eventually getting it to stop by showing Persephone's symbol. She makes her way to a phantom truck stop that was firebombed, full of kids and a few truckers trapped inside. Rose tells the kids they need to leave and find out what kind of ghosts they're going to be, and then talks to the truckers to get a ride.

**Chapter 7: Back Where We Belong**: Carl the trucker and his truck Jolene, who are in the process of becoming a coachman, give Rose a ride to the Last Dance, as she explains the twilight, ghosthood, and her story to him.

**Chapter 8: Where All Roads Cross**: Rose explains to Emma and Gary what she's going to do. She enters the daylight in New Gravesend, and after running into Chief Smith, finds the place where the crossroads were killed. Entering the "crossroads dimension", she meets the anima mundi, which tells her about the crossroads, reality, and themself.

**Chapter 9: Back to the Beginning With Me**: Rose re-enters the daylight in Warsaw, Indiana, where she faces Bobby Cross, but manages to drive him off. She gets a ride from Timothy, a gas station attendant. On the way to his aunt Daisy's diner, they see the results of Bobby's carnage. At the diner, Rose realizes there's a mesmer cage painted around the door, and nearly everyone inside is a ghost, including Daisy herself. Rose breaks the cage and frees the ghosts, fixing it in time to prevent Daisy from fading away.

**Chapter 10: Romance for the Road**: Rose and Nate, a cartographer rescued from Daisy's Diner, reminisce and catch up. Rose realizes Bobby had approached Nate before he was trapped at the diner, and interrogates him about the meeting. She has a flashback to Texas in 2011, when Bobby caused a bus crash to try and catch her. Rose realizes Nate has a way to contact Bobby, and asks him to send a message.

**Chapter 11: Long Time Gone**: Bobby arrives to talk to Nate. Hiding from him, Rose pulls a scythe out of the ground and reveals herself. She attacks his car with it, but wherever her body touches it leaches her essence into the car itself. The ghost dinosaur joins the fight on Rose's side, attacking the car even as it's being absorbed. Rose continues attacking the car, eventually puncturing the gas tank and forcing Bobby out of it. As the car sinks into the road, Bobby rapidly ages, and then sinks into the road himself. The last of Bobby's victims, freed from the car, go with the dinosaur. Pippa appears and tells Rose she's now one of the Furies. Rose goes through a doorway to the Last Dance, where only Emma and Persephone are waiting. Persephone tells her what being a Fury entails, and what Rose can do for herself and for Bethany.

**Chapter 12: Everything's Staying the Same**: Rose drives Gary to the Ocean Lady, talking to him along the way about how they're no longer the same people who fell in love when they were alive. At Apple's truck stop, Rose tells Bethany she can become either a midnight beauty or a reaper. Bethany chooses to become a reaper. Through Apple, Rose asks the Ocean Lady to change Gary into a proper ghost. She makes him a ferryman, the inverse of a hitcher.

## Characters

**Major**

* Rose Marshall
* Bobby Cross
* Apple
* Persephone
* Ocean Lady
* Anima Mundi
* Emma
* Gary Daniels
* Bethany
* Pippa

**Minor**

* Frank and Breanna ("Bre"), diner owners
* Corletta
* Siobhan ("Bon")
* Teenagers dead in a diner
	+ Davy
* Carl (coachman) and Jolene, his car
* Police Chief Smith
* Timothy
* Daisy
* Christina, Timothy's friend
* Nate
* Angela (bus victim)
* Infant bus victim, turned poltergeist
* Paul (routewitch)

**Mentioned**

* Benjamin Dunlavy
* Mary Dunlavy
* Antimony Price, Price family
* Laura Moorhead
* Tommy (Phantom Rider)
* Arthur Marshall
* Morty Marshall
* Cerberus
* Hades
* Hel
* Morrigan
* A few distant cousins living in a trailer park in Oklahoma
* Gary's parents
* James Smith, Fern Conway, Cylia Mackie, Sam Taylor, James's cousin Norbert

## Field Guide

* Hitchhiker
* Anima Mundi
* Routewitch
* Homesteader
* Ever-laster
* Ferryman
* Psychopomp
	+ May be hitchhiker, ferryman, gather-grim, Fury
* Dullahan
* Phantom subway of the starlight
* Unidentified hive-gnat-thing
* Beán Sidhe
* Gorgon (as a ghost)
* Wadjet (?) (as a ghost)
* Johrlac (as ghosts)
* Ghost ants, ghosts of rocks and dirt and plants
* Dinosaur ghost
* Nightcrawler
* Cartographer
* Umbramancer
* Poltergeist
* Fury
* Coachman

**Mentioned**

* Witch
* Sorcerer
* Phantom Nanny
* Road ghosts, house ghosts, family ghosts
* Unicorn
* Dragon
* Crossroads
* Outfielder
* Cornfield Ghost
* Gather-grims
* Haint
* White Lady
* Will-o-wisp
* Onibi
* Phantom Rider
* Roadworker
* Cyclist
* Beán nighe

## Locations

* Twilight
	+ Last Dance Diner
	+ Ghostroads
	+ Old Atlantic Highway
* Daylight
	+ Alabama
	+ Ohio, identified by its fields of corn
	+ Calais, Maine
	+ British Museum, UK
	+ New Gravesend, Maine
	+ Warsaw, Indiana
		- Daisy's Eats Diner
	+ Dallas, Texas
* Starlight
* Underworld

**Mentioned**

* Midnight
* Buckley Township, Michigan
	+ Old Parrish Place
* California
	+ Manzanar
	+ Fresno

## Organizations

* Item

**Mentioned**

* Item

## Objects

* Persephone's Blessing
	+ White Asphodel
	+ Katabasis
* Mesmer Cage

## Continuity

* Plot is heavily influenced by Antimony Price destroying the crossroads in That Ain't Witchcraft
* Bethany made her deal with the crossroads in Sparrow Hill Road
* Recap of Gary's death in Sparrow Hill Road
* Reference to the cuckoo tearing a hole in the universe to get to this dimension
* Routewitch sacrificed herself to damage Persephone's protection

## Trivia

* Death scents:
	+ Lilies - death on the road
	+ Honeysuckle - death of the road
	+ Red cherry syrup - carnival death
	+ Empty rooms - old age
	+ Wormwood - crossroads death
	+ Burning dust - death by fire
* The car Rose died in, borrowed from her older brother, was a 1952(?) Ford Crestline Sunliner.
* The anima mundi defaults to female form to comfort the people who see her, but chooses "they" pronouns when offered the option. (Ch. 8)

## Quotes

* "Better be careful, better stay calm, girl in green who missed her prom. Bobby's on the corner, Bobby's on the trail, Diamond bobby's out to chase your tail. Things are getting harder, things are getting strange, everything you think you know is gonna change. Ocean Lady's counting apples, one two three, go and take your questions to Persephone." -Ever-laster rhyme, Ch. 2
* "The Goddess of the Dead is my BFF! We braid each other's hair and talk about boys! Her boy is tall, dark, and terrifying, and mine is a literal car! Dating is easier for the living!" -Rose, Ch. 6
* "[The crossroads] couldn't kill me. They knew better than to try. If I die, truly die, the world dies with me. They had been me, I think, the anima numdi of someplace else, someplace terrible and tainted and far away. They were fleeing their own destruction, moving through a hole opened by something equally terrible and seizing the chance to survive. I can't say I would have done any differently if I'd seen the same opportunity...A species of pan-dimensional mathmetiticians trying to do some great work of impossible calculus. They still walk the world, but they have no spirit to throw over me like a blanket, and they belong to this reality now, as much as they can be said to belong to any. They will not harm my world again." -Anima mundi, Ch.8
* Anima mundi: "This is your psyche seeking comfort in my manifestation."
	+ Rose: "Like people assuming God's a white dude who looks sort of like decaffeinated Santa." Ch. 8
* "I don't need to add 'cracked wise to the creator of the universe, got Kansas deleted' to my dubious list of accomplishments." Ch. 8
* "All Sharpies are considered magic according to high school principals and asshole policemen." Ch. 9

## Pop Culture

* New York Fashion Week, Indy 500
* James Dean, Rod Serling, Jordan Peele
* Willy Wonka
* Detroit car factories
* Vulcan salute
* Orpheus and Eurydice, Hermes, Cerberus
* Ulster peat
* Sadie Hawkins
* Dunkin' Donuts, Jamba, Formica, Candy Crush, Model UN, Walmart, Midol
* Twilight Zone
* Dolly Parton
* Archie Comics
* Disneyland
* Gary's songs: "Doubt Comes In" from Hadestown, "Stop in the Name of Love," "Angels of the Silences" by Counting Crows, "Boys of Summer," "Happy" by Pharrel Williams, Carly Simon, "Silly Love Songs" by the Beatles
* Santa, Easter Bunny. Tooth Fairy
* Elgin Marbles
* Flatland
* Alice in Wonderland
* Ghostbusters