Ada and Avery engaged in a silent staring session that was only interrupted by the arrival of another Guide, squeezing between them. When Avery disengaged from Ada and swerved backwards to leave room for the interrupting Guide, he recognized the form and features of Faz—the one who'd possessed Jessamine.

His staring—more like scowling—resumed, but fixed on Faz now. "What do you want?"

Arms raised, Faz bowed his head, instantly averting his gaze from Avery's. "I'm not here to cause trouble, and I'm sorry to interrupt," he said, his figure diminishing in size, as if shrinking from Avery's aggression.

"Avery, mind your tone, please." Ada extended her misty arms and with her energy, she swiveled Faz to face her, instead. "Ignore his rudeness, Faz. Speak freely." She sounded so sweet, so nice to Faz—was she friendly only to her fellow Guides? Had she fooled them into thinking she was a genuine, caring creature?

Faz cleared his throat, but kept his chin tucked. "I think I can help, Ada. With finding Jessamine." He fidgeted side to side like a kid eager to ask permission to spend the night at a friend's house.

"Oh?" Ada quirked an eyebrow, and shot a sharp look at Avery, before returning to Faz, lifting his chin. "I appreciate your willingness to help, but I'm not sure you can. What did you have in mind?"

He continued his nervous twitching, his fingers jittering, reminding Avery more and more of an anxious teenager. Was he a teenager? Or a child? Or a young, shy man? "Well, I have some additional knowledge when it comes to Jessamine, because I possessed her. If I remember correctly, doesn't that mean I left a bit of myself inside her? Isn't that what happens when we possess someone?"

Ada lit up—as in actually lit up, glowing from within—and perked up, her arms still outstretched towards Faz, as if holding his shoulders. "You're correct, that is what happens. A piece of yourself—of course, I should have thought of that, but I rarely ever possess anyone and I'd forgotten."

Avery studied her, his mind filling with images of her slipping into someone's body. She said rarely—which meant she had possessed humans before. But who? And why? He'd been under the impression Guides preferred to kill humans, not get inside their heads. Or to avoid them altogether and throw them off the path so they'd never reach the portal. Faz was the exception among the Guides—his role had been to prevent or at least try to delay the inevitable—but Ada? Whose body would she have invaded, and for what purpose?

As much as she annoyed Avery, Ada also fascinated him, though he'd never admit that out loud. She was such a curious being, created for the sole purpose of guiding spirits to their afterlife, but she didn't even know what that afterlife was. She sensed when they were ready, activated a door, let them through, and repeated the process. Over and over, witnessing souls squirm through a portal and on to a world she'd never access. Or had she been there, and after several years of good behavior, she'd been given some kind of promotion? Had she been human, at any point? Or was she always a Guide, born this way centuries ago with her role tattooed on her brain?

Her actions disgusted Avery—all her secrets, her decisions to delay delivering important information, her habit of murdering humans that got too close to her precious portal—and yet his intrigue of her wouldn't dissipate.

These Guides—there was so much more to them that he wished he'd be able to understand, but he didn't have the time or resources to investigate them. And in any case, Ada would tell him to fuck off if he asked her to sit down for an interview. It'd be a dream come true to get a one-on-one with a supernatural being no one knew the existence of—but Ada would prefer it that way. That she remain anonymous and unknown, and her job uncomplicated.

Avery, however, was a stubborn man who was desperate to share answers and truths with his viewers.

Maybe if I survive this... maybe if I succeed and save the world, she'll open her doors and let the world see what she does.

He wouldn't consider her role good, per se, but she wasn't evil. Not completely. She was a neutral being, who didn't get involved unless she had a prophecy. And then she started assassinating any human who got in her way.

"Faz," Ada's voice brushed away the clouds in Avery's mind, "you can definitely help us find her."

Faz straightened up, shimmying sideways so he could float facing both Ada and Avery. There was a slight smugness to his expression, and Avery felt it was directed at him. "Consider it done. Whatever I can do to help... since I failed to help before."

Ada offered a sympathetic smile. "It wasn't your fault, Faz. She'd come this far already." Her gaze stopped on Avery, narrowed, then refilled with warmth as it returned to Faz. "Which means it was too late. The demons had reached out to her, they'd established a link. If anything, you delayed her longer than I'd expected you to."

Avery's nostrils flared at Ada's inconspicuous accusation, but he shoved his irritation down, unwilling to get on her bad side again. "So, how does this work?"

"I've been trying to locate her myself, to be honest," said Ada, spinning away from them. "But I think she turned off or broke the connection I have with her, the one established between us; her, the demon vessel, and me, the creator of the prophecy." She twisted back to them, turned towards Faz in particular. "But you can sense her, can't you? Your connection to her is different. There's a piece of you in her, like you said. Tracking her would be like tracking yourself."

"Yes, well," Faz gulped, "I have been able to locate her. I know where she is."

Ada's eyebrows traipsed up her forehead, and she set her hands on her hips. She exuded a motherly vibe that Avery hadn't ever gotten from her, and it prompted him to take a step or two backwards. "And you omitted to tell me?"

Faz gulped again, dropping his chin, wringing his hands in front of his blue body. "You were all so busy, and from what I gathered, Avery wasn't ready to confront her yet. I opted to wait until there was no other way but to track her down ourselves. I," he looked up at Ada and winced, "I'm sorry, Ada, for making such a decision myself. But I thought it best."

She examined his face for a few moments before letting go of her hips, her arms raising then falling to her sides in an exasperated manner. "Fine. Where is she, then?"

"It's a vague location, I warn you. I can sense more of what she's doing than where she's at." Faz sucked his lips in and fixed on the ground, sliding side-to-side. Avery saw his cheeks twitching. "She's currently busy killing humans to... drink from them." He shuddered, then glanced up again. "Drinking, draining these poor people of blood. She's quite thirsty, and it takes a lot to quench her thirst. It's... disturbing."

Faz had clearly been shocked by this notion—the woman he'd been possessing was now loading her body with human blood for sustenance—but Ada and Avery merely shrugged. After all, the demons had told Avery about the blood. And Jessamine had told Avery too, insisting on this particular preference demons had for re-energizing themselves.

Apparently Ada hasn't told her other Guides about it. Should I be surprised?

Ada's nostrils wrinkled. "Yes, unfortunately we already knew about this... tendency." She jutted her chin at Avery. "Avery discovered that demons need not sunlight to sustain themselves, but blood. Human blood."

Faz recoiled, shaking his head. "Well, as I said, she's drinking a lot of it. It's..." He gritted his teeth and clutched at his stomach. Were he human, Avery thought he might have puked. "It's excessive. Bloody. I've never seen anything like it, and I observed a ton of crap through her eyes. TV shows, movies, news reports—you name it. Nothing was as gruesome as this." For a split second, Faz no longer came off as a child or a teenager, but a grown man with increasing concern for the woman he'd watched over for several years.

Avery didn't know how to respond.

Ada scratched her head. "She must have opened another portal and sucked in more demons, then. The more she has inside her, the more blood she'll need to consume to feed them, right?" She blew out a breath and fixated on Faz. "What else have you seen or felt?"

"She's causing waves," he said, his chin snapping up, his glowing blue eyes wide and alert. "None of us Guides have accessed the outside world much lately. But I was inside her only days ago, and I remember television and newscasters and programs she watched, like I said. I remember the news... and her actions are currently blasted all over those news."

Avery said "fuck," and Ada cursed under her breath, though the language she used wasn't one Avery was familiar with. Some ancient Latin shit? A dead language, maybe?

A soft pitter-patter came from behind Avery, and he whirled around to find Jamie limping up to him.

"Dude, why are you awake?" Avery hurried over to help Jamie walk the rest of the way up to Ada and Faz. "You need to lie back down."

Ada glanced at him, sternness in her expression. "He's right, you should be asleep. That spell I put on you should have kept you out for a few hours."

"Sorry, but I abruptly woke up and overheard your conversation, and," Jamie held up his phone, flashing images on its screen, "she's definitely causing waves, like that dude said." He gestured at Faz. "She's on the news, or at least, her carnage is."

Avery took the phone from Jamie. "How the fuck are you getting service?" Jamie shrugged, gesturing wildly at the screen, for Avery to examine it. "Okay, okay."

The feed was blurry, choppy. The reception was bad, but Avery saw enough to understand the severity of the situation.

"... and the killer's motives remain unknown. But we're seeing more and more cases of folks drained of blood, left to rot outside near dumpsters or thrown into those dumpsters. A handful survived, but have no memory of what happened. It's looking more and more like vampires exist, Bob," said a female newscaster, her voice strained as images of covered up bodies and yellow FBI tape filled up the screen. Patches of concrete splotched with blurred red—the channel had tried to censor the blood squirted all over the place from Jessamine's chaos. "There's no trace of who the killer is. No DNA left behind. Security camera footage in several of the alleys where the dead were discovered show nothing, nothing at all. As if the footage was trampled with, erased, replaced. It's a mystery, and it's a bloody one, at that."

Avery handed Jamie his phone back. "I don't have time to watch this anymore," he said, having noticed that the video was ten minutes long. "But thanks, Jamie. This might be helpful. She's covering up her tracks, messing with footage. Magically. Only to ensure no one knows who she is and what she looks like, I'll bet. She's not disposing of the bodies... so is she ditching them in the open on purpose? Or are the demons just that careless?"

Ada waved Jamie over, to show her the video. She couldn't hold the phone, so Jamie held it for her. He let it play out, continuing from where Avery had left off.

"We want to warn our viewers that the following footage is extremely graphic, and to watch at your own discretion." Ada leaned in closer to the screen, then jolted backwards, clapping a hand over her mouth. "The marks on the necks of the victims are what make us think we have ourselves a cannibal who thinks itself to be a vampire. But there are other wounds, other places the victims were bitten. They had little to no blood left in them by the time they were found."

Ada shooed the phone away from her. "Enough. I've seen plenty of blood and gore in my lifetime, what with having to guide mangled spirits through my portal. But this," Avery could have sworn her face turned green, "this is too much."

"She's on a rampage, and she needs to be stopped." Jamie could barely stand up, so Avery helped prop him up against a recently rebuilt pillar.

"Faz." Ada was still cringing as she twisted to him. "Where is she? I know you said it was vague, but we'll take vague if that's all we have."

"California," he said, frowning. "I'm sorry, I realize that's where we are, and it's not much."

"Wait—the killings started in San Francisco," said Jamie, waving at them to pay attention to him. He was still holding his phone, watching the news as it continued to discuss Jessamine's destruction. "Then Santa Rosa, and most recently Sacramento."

"So she's heading north?" Avery rubbed his chin. "Towards Oregon, then? You said there's a portal in every state, so that might be where she's going next."

Ada shook her head. "More like she's redirecting to head over the pass, into Nevada." She shrugged a few fingers through her hair, her gaze focused on a pile of nearby rubble. "From what I detected while I was communicating with that portal, I figured out the Nevada portal is north, closer to Reno than it is to Las Vegas. And with the tension the Guides were going through over there... I can't help but think that's where she's headed next."

Avery exchanged a glance with Jamie, who lowered the phone and nodded. "She's gassed up, right?"

"Right." Avery looked at Ada, lips thinning. "We have to drive to wherever she's on her way to, to block her. So how far is it to get there?" He took a deep breath. "And where exactly are we going? Because we'd better get moving, and fast."

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