The shock from Landon's arrival wore off as he insisted they get out of the area. Being in the open was safer, but the safest was to get far from the unreachable tree-line.

He steered her to a small thicket of trees behind her; one that didn't stretch farther away whenever she walked towards it. Not a real forest, but more like a tiny camping spot for humans attempting to evade demons.

"What makes these trees different?" Jessamine squinted at the tiny cluster of bark and leaves—ten or twelve trees in a circle, creating an area of shade on a patch of dry dirt. "And why the heck did I not see this earlier?"

"Those others are a mirage," said Landon, his deep voice still hard to get used to. Jessamine thought she'd never hear it again, and were she not already sure she was awake and alive, she'd be pinching herself repeatedly.

Landon. The Landon. A precursor in her destiny, a man who'd put her on her path of becoming a demon-infested monster. Not that he'd meant to or knew that he'd be responsible for her fate, but it was his idea to go to the hidden house in the forest. His idea for her to go inside, to convince his hot girlfriend to have a threesome with him and Jessamine.

But it was Jessamine's drunken, drugged, gullible idiocy that had sealed the deal. She'd forgotten about all of it, her memory magically erased; but with Amy's video, Avery's insistence, Ada's prophecy, and now this reunion with Landon...

It was all coming back, and with such violence her head was in agony.

"They're meant to dissuade intruders, though intruders are basically impossible." He gestured towards the middle of the circle of trees, indicating that Jessamine should sit down. She had no blanket or towel to use, but in this parallel place, would anyone care if she sullied her pants? "Only the demons can reach them and hide behind them, within their branches. It's kind of their lair, if you want." He shrugged as he sat across from her. "That's not where you want to be, anyway. Surrounded by those brooding bastards? No thanks."

He was the same man Jessamine remembered. The constant amusement in his tone, that far-from-serious demeanor. A guy who lived to joke and liked to make others laugh, an entertainer. A gorgeous entertainer. Even in death, he still gave her goosebumps as his defined muscles showed through his t-shirt, and his bulky legs made her want to be squeezed between them.

Yikes, I need to get a hold on that lust.

"Landon, for real," she said, pulling her knees to her chest, ignoring the dust caused by her shoes scraping against the dirt. With him near, she felt exposed, vulnerable. He was always able to get through the layers of walls she set up to protect her heart; if anything with a simple smile or a flutter of his eyelashes. "How are you here? Why are you here? Not that I'm not happy to see you after all this time, and to find someone I know down here... but you need to give me more, man."

Landon had never been forthcoming with explanations, in the past. The group would do what he wanted when he wanted to, and he never gave reasons. They all obeyed him, even Angela, no matter her scowls and silent protests to be in charge. No, Landon was the leader of their band of miscreants, and no one dared disagree. Certainly not Jessamine, who often didn't feel like she belonged in the first place. If she were to speak up, she had no doubt they'd boot her out and she'd have no friends to get into trouble with.

Upon further reflection, she thought she'd have been better off in the long run if she'd cut ties with the group sooner rather than later.

But destiny is destiny... I would have ended up here anyway, right?

Landon fidgeted, drawing circles in the dirt with his index finger. How he was able to sit and not go through the dirt was beyond Jessamine; he was a ghost, wasn't he? Something not of the human world. So how was he sitting, how was he walking, and how was she able to feel his body heat as if it were pulsating off him?

"I was bludgeoned, did you know that?" Jessamine nodded but winced at his words. "The thing is, the blue-bodied creature that tried to kill me was sloppy. It didn't quite finish me off. Meaning I'm here as not a demon, and not a spirit, I'm just... me. Ninety-five percent dead, but not enough to qualify."

Not dead. Landon... wasn't dead?

"But you're in this realm... why aren't you out in the regular world?" Jessamine set her chin atop her knees, unable to stop her dreamy gaze from glossing over Landon. She'd had such deep feelings for him—albeit mostly physical—that it was hard to meet him again in the flesh. To smell him, a woodsy, musky scent that brought her back to all the times they'd spent together.

He rolled his shoulders. "It sucked me in with the others that were killed. They all vanished, moving on to some other ghostly plane or something. But my soul and I... we're stuck. Mortally wounded. My injury is... postponed, I guess you would say." He patted the ground. "If I were to somehow get out, I'd die instantly. It's like I'm paused, you know? Unless someone down here finishes me off, but no one can. Demons need a host to kill, and since there are none..."

"What would happen if you died in here?" Jessamine peered around, past the cover of large tree trunks, expecting to see red blobs lingering about, listening to their conversation. A part of her wondered if she'd turn into Landon's destiny; if her presence here was meant to end his.

I'm not a demon, so does that mean I should kill him? End his suffering?

"Oh, I'd probably become a demon."

She grimaced, trying to forget about her thought of helping him die.

Not if he becomes one of them.

He chuckled. "I said the others moved on elsewhere, but to be honest, I wouldn't doubt it if Angela was in here. If she was one of those blobs. She had such an evil soul, that woman."

Jessamine wouldn't disagree, but she wasn't clear on how becoming a demon worked, what the criteria was.

"Have you..." Jessamine gulped. "Have you tried to get out?"

"It's impossible," he said, his voice dimming as he stretched out his legs. His worn-down Converse shoes grazed Jessamine's foot. "Trust me, I want to get out and as far from the house as possible. How fucking sweet it'd be if I could be a normal spirit, yeah? Spook a couple people, haunt a street somewhere. Or be slurped up into Limbo and then through the ghost portal and on to my Afterlife. The dream." He tilted back, arms extended as he set his palms into the dirt and looked up at the shelter of leaves overhead.

Jessamine frowned at him. For someone who was stuck, he seemed to know too much about the proceedings for dead people. How spirits converged from one realm to another, how they navigated to the place they belonged to.

"How are you aware of all this stuff?"

The corners of Landon's lips tugged up, but he kept his gaze on the sky. "The demons whisper. They have gatherings and aren't super discreet; I mean, I can't blame them. There are never any foreign entities down here, aside from me. Most of them don't even know I exist, because I keep to myself. I stay out of their way, so they won't detect me." He raised a hand to push a few dark blond curls from his face. "I overhear quite a bit, and if they're aware of it, they don't care. I can't get out to tell anyone," he flinched as he finally peered back at Jessamine, "and I'm sorry, sweetheart, but you can't get out either."

Jessamine had already come to that conclusion, but again she wondered how Landon would know. She pulled her chin up from her knees. "What do you know about me? About... what I am?"

Landon's lips pinched. "Everything." He narrowed his gaze and quickly averted it from Jessamine. "That you were the main part of a prophecy involving the demons and letting them out into the world. And that to stop you, you'd have to be killed in front of the door, like me, or thrown in here. And that if you were thrown in here, it'd halt the prophecy, and you'd be sealed in here forever. Your destiny: to bring chaos to the mortal dimension with the demons, or to rot away in this world if you failed. You're here, they're here, so... you didn't succeed."

She sensed tears gathering under her lash-line and slipped her nose between her legs. Landon hadn't seen her cry before, and she'd be damned if she let that happen now, while she was at her most vulnerable. He was a sweet-talker; a handsome, backstabbing asshole who'd used all her affections to boost his ego. But gods, he was so hot doing it.

He reminded her of Avery, in a sense. They were both bad-boy types, though Landon really was a bad-boy; Avery only gave off the vibe to protect himself. Deep down, he had a heart of gold and a lot of trauma.

Trauma that Jessamine had worsened with what she'd done.

The tears poured out against her will, but she kept her face smashed against her legs, unwilling to let Landon witness her breakdown.

Being sealed in this realm sounded like a fatal fate, for sure; but if it meant the world was safe from demons, and safe from her, then she accepted it. She wasn't dead, but it was as if she were. She'd been prepared to kill herself anyway, before the demon's deafening growls had made her open the red door. Cloistered in this depressing, dreary dimension wasn't much different or better than death; or so, she assumed.

To her dismay, Landon must have heard her sobs, because she felt his arms wrapping around her. She hadn't detected him getting up, and hadn't expected to be able to touch him, or for him to touch her. His skin was cold, icy, yet it sent jolts of warmth to her core, prompting her to shed more tears. Tears of panic, of fear, but also of relief—through all this, at least she wouldn't be alone. Two lost souls in a realm of demons? No problem, since they'd have each other.

Not that she'd ever known Landon to think of anyone but himself—and to some extent, Angela—but a presence was a presence, and she wouldn't be picky. She presumed he wouldn't be either.

Plus, he was nice to look at. And for all she knew, maybe he'd changed a bit since becoming a permanent resident of the demonic realm.

He tugged her upright, and spun her to him as he crouched before her. He swept a thumb-pad under her eyes, wiping away the liquid still pouring freely from her. "It's going to be okay," he susurrated in a seductive whisper. Seduction was not the move to employ now, as Jessamine was bawling her eyes out, but it almost made her laugh, which helped.

"It won't," she said between swallows, trying to rein her pain in. "But I don't have much of a choice, do I? This was the only way to save the world."

Landon caressed her cheek. "You're not staying in here." He shook his head slowly. "Not if I can help it. Me? I deserve this. I was a piece of shit. But you're alive, not wounded, your soul is mostly whole, I can tell. I know I said you're stuck, but fuck that. You don't belong in here. The demons are out of you now, so there has to be a way to tell your destiny to go fuck itself, yeah?"

Jessamine appreciated the enthusiasm, but it was bitter on her tongue. She knew better than to hope, knew better than to expect anything other than this. Ada had made it clear, and so had the demons, when they were inside her: it was do or die, and she'd more or less died.

And in any case, this place was where she deserved to be, too. Landon didn't know everything; he knew only what the demons whispered about down here. But what happened on the outside, in the basement, while they were controlling her body... that, he wasn't aware of.

Jessamine would never live it down. Even if she miraculously got out, how would she ever be able to ask for forgiveness? How would she ever face Avery again? She didn't want to see his pain, to witness his rage, to sense his attraction and feelings for her diminishing until there was nothing left but hatred. And disgust.

"I don't deserve to get out, Landon," she said, sniffling as more tears rushed to her eyes. "I k-killed someone very important on the other side. There's no way I can... own up to my actions. I'm better off staying in here, I tell you. Away from my guilt and the consequences of my actions... I don't want to get out. Don't make me."

○○○