GHOST PORTAL (#1 GHOST PORTAL series)

TWENTY-TWO

"No." Jessamine sat up, her facial muscles tightening with resolve. "No way. I know what you're suggesting, and I—"

"—what am I suggesting?" Avery crossed his arms, quirking one eyebrow as he scanned her face.

"To go there, to that house. I mean," she huffed, "we don't know where it is, but you're going to figure it out, right? And then you're going to take me there with you, and I—" she hiccupped, and something bubbled in her gut. "I can't go. This thing inside me, if it is inside me, it's not going to let me, let us get close! It'll kill me first, won't it?"

Avery's eyes narrowed. "First off, we obviously need you to come with us, Jessamine. You're our compass to this place—we'd get nowhere without you. And second," he scoffed, "I don't know that a possessor can technically kill you. Well," he scrunched his nose and his mouth twitched, "there are ways, but we won't get into that right now. We... I will make sure this thing doesn't hurt you."

Shudders skidded up Jessamine's spine, stiffening her neck. Her fingers were restless, bending and straightening, shaking and curling. She couldn't sit upright anymore, and the nausea that she hated to call habitual started to crawl up her throat.

"We don't even know where to go," she said, her voice choked beneath her growing ailments—the headache was coming back, too. "Don't even know where to start."

Avery shrugged, as if that detail weren't as big of a deal as Jessamine was making it sound. "We start with that," he pointed at the screen, still paused on Jessamine's eerie eyes, "and the fact that we can manipulate that thing inside you into telling us where to go. It can be manipulated; every time we talk about this shit, it reacts, yeah?"

"Ugh." Jessamine tried not to gag and held in a burp. "It sure is reacting right now. See?" She frowned at him. "I can barely even talk about this place without getting sick, but now you want me to take you there, to be there while you go about rescuing all these vanished people? Can you imagine? I'll fucking faint, I'll—"

Avery zoomed over so fast Jessamine lost her breath. He anchored himself in front of her, hands gripping the armrests of her chair, shadowing over her with an air of determination and stubbornness that was at once terrifying and reassuring. As if he were about to seize her from the chair, wrap her legs around him, and carry her off somewhere—to save her, to protect her, conceal her from whatever was eating her on the inside?

"You're going to be all right, because, as I told you, I will make sure of it. I'm not letting whatever happened to Amy... if something happened to Amy... happen to you." His words were firm, unbreakable, and bared his teeth as he spoke; a predator stepping in to protect its mate, its young, gnarling at the menaces encircling them.

"Right." Jessamine wanted to trust him; and yet the more they discussed all these hypotheses, the more uneasy she became. Her belly was filling with angst and confusion and sickness, and she didn't know that she'd be able to do anything but point him and Jamie in the right direction, when the time came. She couldn't go there, couldn't confront the place that stole her memories. She couldn't face the blue beings that whispered to her, the red ones that growled her name, and the dizzying corridors covered in blood and bodies.

Fuck. Were those bodies—

She covered her mouth, pressing her palm hard against it in fear that if she didn't, something would spew out—words or vomit, she wasn't positive, but she didn't want to find out.

"What if they're not there? Amy, the others—what if they... left? Or," she gulped, keeping her hand over her mouth, her speech muffled, "what if they're dead?"