GHOST PORTAL (#1 GHOST PORTAL series)

TWENTY-SEVEN

Jessamine's eyes slammed shut.

"Wait!" She panted, suddenly sealed in darkness. "Wait, what happened? Avery? Fuck."

"Don't open your eyes," said Faz, his voice firm, a hint of irritation in it.

"Fuck you and your warnings; what happened to Avery and Jamie?" Her heart was racing a million miles a minute, her legs jittering. Something dropped in her core—her slight hopes that they'd all get out of this unscathed? Her hopes of getting answers? Her hopes that Amy might have been alive?

"Calm down, please. I don't know what's happening to them, but you need to be more concerned about yourself right now."

"No, because it's them I'm concerned with, and I can't even see them!" Jessamine stomped a foot, rattling the car; then hissed at the pain lancing up from her ankle and throbbing in her knee. "Shit, shit."

Her convulsions had been somewhat under control while she listened to Avery and Jamie's conversation, but they'd returned with a brutal force and her teeth clattered as she tried to get herself together.

Please be okay, Avery. Please be okay.

"You looked at the house one time too many, so I had to close your eyes. I'm sorry. They know you're here, you established a connection. I'm going to try to sever it."

Jessamine wished she could roll the window down and let some air in; she was suffocating, and the heat slithering up her arms was becoming unbearable. "A connection to what?" She rubbed at her sore temples. "What do you keep trying to protect me from? And are Avery and Jamie going to be killed? Tell me! They? Who's they?"

Faz didn't miss a beat, though he sounded distracted, distant. "I don't know. And it's... them. The demons. In the basement, remember?" Jessamine had a painful flash of the door with its red glow, the growls emanating from behind it, the charred and bony arms seeming to reach out and beckon her to it. "Yes, those flashes—those are the basement. And those demons hiding behind that door? They want you."

"W-want me?" Jessamine gulped, wincing at the dryness of her throat. Hadn't she brought water bottles? Where the fuck was her backpack?

"They want to possess you." Faz paused, for effect, or waiting for Jessamine to panic; but by that point, she'd already come to terms with being possessed, and it didn't shock her as much as she'd anticipated. It was terrifying, it was revolting, but she wasn't surprised. "Because you're their prophesied vessel."

That took Jessamine aback, and she choked on the words she'd been preparing to say, spitting them out in a scoff, instead. "Prophesied vessel? What in the..." She wiped her mouth of the spittle she'd spewed out, and lowered to touch about the car's floor in search of her bag. She needed water. "What kind of nonsense is this?"

"Oh, so you accept possession from me, a Guide, a being that has no root in your human history and whose existence makes little to no sense to you, but you can't accept that you're foretold to be possessed by demons?"

Jessamine huffed, giving up on her search for her bag; Avery must have put it in the trunk, thinking he'd get a chance to stop and get it out for her. But now Avery was...

What is Avery? Alive? Dead? Prisoner like Amy was?

Faz had no opportunity to address her thoughts as she sought to open her eyes, against his warnings. It was all a nightmare, a bullshit dream so realistic and consuming that it had tricked her into thinking it was real. It wasn't. No, it couldn't be. Avery hadn't brought her here, she wasn't a vessel, she wasn't prophesied, and demons weren't out to get her—