The enemy of my enemy is my temporary ally.

That was the best way to describe Ada, all along: a temporary ally. Not a friend, much closer to an enemy, but who eerily had the same goals as he did; to save the world. A creature that called herself benevolent, but that was more of a neutral, chaotic being. An individual with a wealth of knowledge but who only revealed minute details of it when attacked, or when guilty.

Ada's energy filled Avery up, drawing strength from unknown places, empowering him for what was to come. Like all other times she'd possessed him, though, he also got an invasive, insecure sensation. With access to all his thoughts, Ada was a menace, and might retain anything that passed through his mind to better use it against him later. Why, he had no idea; every time he pictured Ada she shifted into a malicious monster that was out to hurt him, hurt Jessamine, hurt the world.

But he knew, deep down, that she was the opposite of evil, and even when she lied through her teeth she meant well.

He'd have preferred to meditate before she entered him, this time around. There was too much trauma in his brain, too many events he hadn't properly processed still squirming around within him. No matter her promises to not analyze his mind, he wished she wasn't able to access his thoughts of that stress, those events.

He did his hardest to veil every flash of memories, to prevent them from rolling like a film in his head; but too much had happened. Too much had befallen him, and he was too weak to control his thoughts. Ada would see them all, and if she kept quiet and didn't judge him, then he wouldn't judge her.

He kept seeing Jamie's dead body, on the basement floor. The moments when he was dying, his blood gushing out. And the moments right after he died, as he lay motionless on the concrete, still spilling all over the place. He saw when he buried Jamie, remembered the earthy scent of dirt and the coppery stench of Jamie's dried-up wound, and Jamie's lidded eyes, the skin of his face looking ready to melt off. And then when he'd had to dig Jamie up, to witness all the trauma he'd hoped to shove deep down inside. To view Jamie's spirit bringing the body to life, except there was nothing alive about him—gray flesh, lifeless gaze, a guttural, zombie-like voice. A sense of vacancy in how he stood there, in front of Avery, barely knowing him anymore.

But Jamie wasn't the only one invading his mind. Jessamine was prominent, too, and more so since he'd heard her voice from behind the demon door. Her eyes blared in his recollections; grassy green, then black as the night, then bloody red and leaking. The curves of her body, first with clothes on, then the memory of her naked skin as he held her, as they made love under the faint glow of her bedside lamp. The way she'd bit her lower lip to hold in a moan of pleasure; and how she'd unleashed that moan without much ado, writhing in lust. It echoed through Avery like a pleasurable bass, a harmonious harp.

If it were only his actual memories of her that prevailed, Avery would have blushed and begged Ada to ignore him. But he had visions of what might have happened, too. Recollections of demon-Jessamine's kiss in the basement, and how it had rattled his insides, made him wonder what was real, what was fake, what was forbidden. He couldn't stop envisioning how things would have been had he succumbed to her kiss. Had he grabbed her waist and pulled her against him, to feel how she'd aroused him, how she'd woken up the risk-taking side of him. How would it have been, had he slept with demon-Jessamine?

Fun, he had no doubt, but ending badly. She'd have been the female praying mantis that would have slashed his throat once she'd gotten her pleasure, her fill of him. Yet he couldn't help it—the way she'd tasted, the way her lips had felt on his was weirdly dangerous, appetizingly sensual, and it had unearthed a hidden, repressed fantasy he'd never tell anyone about. A need to breach the barriers of good versus evil, to absorb the flavor of being bad, of being with someone bad.

No sooner had he started imagining himself removing Jessamine's clothes than the visions switched again. Jessamine was his enemy. She'd killed Jamie, she'd sank her teeth into the tender flesh of his neck, and sucked up every last fiber of his soul—

No, stop, that's not true.

He internally pinched himself for falling into the trap; for believing Jessamine, the real Jessamine, had had any say in what happened to Jamie. She had no control, she had no means to prevent it from happening. The demons did the deed, they were the ones who raked their talons across Jamie's throat, and—

"Focus, Avery," said Ada, her voice tiptoeing into Avery's mind and erasing all his vagrant thoughts. "I understand your troubles, but trust me when I tell you they're the last things that matter to me right now. Your desires, your fantasies—I'm not interested in those. If anything, they're quite normal for someone who's grieving. So stop fighting to block them, and start concentrating on driving."

He came back to, remembering that yes, he was driving, and yes, Ada was correct; he needed to focus. Having a car accident now, amidst all this chaos, would be the tip of the iceberg.

But as his vision adjusted, he recalled why he'd slipped into his thoughts—the sky. He'd noticed it, he'd panicked at it; because it wasn't a normal sky, and it had thrown him into a place of terror.

Beyond the forest, it was different. And it had frightened him, prompted him to retreat into himself. It was red, as if bleeding, bloody tears streaking through what was once a vast, blue stretch of heaven. As if the world was coming undone, ripped at the seams, or having been shot and shocked through its heart.

Apocalyptic was the only adjective Avery found fitting enough to describe the scene before him. The biblical plague come to life, complete with reddening clouds, purple lightning, earthquakes splitting the ground and swallowing up entire populations, and hurricanes devouring cities.

How many had died, so far? He was afraid to find out. He hadn't looked at his phone and his news apps since they'd left the house, but last he'd checked, the world was losing its mind. Newscasters were panicked, crying on screen as they announced death after death after death. Attacks from dinosaur-like beings—they still wouldn't admit these were dinosaurs, plain and simple. Buildings collapsing and crushing hordes of people, waves guzzling up beaches, making them vanish altogether. It was utter, unbelievable chaos—and it was real.

Most news stations weren't sure how or where to begin reporting. They couldn't define, qualify, or quantify what was happening. No such events were mentioned in any religious texts, and no self-proclaimed mediums or magic practitioners had predicted anything of the sort, ever. Not a soul on this earth knew what was going on... except for Avery.

Had Guides in other places convinced other humans to be like Avery? The somewhat willing, completely scared people who had to aid in shoving monsters into their respective gates and locking them up?

He drove frantically, ignoring speed limits. Not that there was anyone out and about, as curfews had been established and any sane person wouldn't dare go outside with the apocalypse going on.

Avery had long since figured out he wasn't sane.

"Did you ever predict this?" Avery squinted at the horizon, at the blend of red and orange and pink, unsure if the sun was setting or rising or if everything was on fire. "This nuclear level catastrophe; was it in your prophecy, somewhere?"

Ada's silence worried Avery. Did she not know how to answer, or was she filtering her words, figuring out how to tell him a dark truth without causing him to crash the car? Or perhaps she was putting together one of her lies, not wanting Avery to be too aware of her knowledge?

One can never know, with her.

How he wished he could read her mind as easily as she read his.

"No," she said at last, a tremble in her tone. "I mean, I wasn't even supposed to receive a prophecy at all. As far as I'm aware, I'm the only one of my kind who ever has, and I have no idea why. Why me? Why now? What did I do to be put in this position?"

Avery gripped the wheel as they passed a car on fire on the side of the road, its flames stretching out and almost scratching at Avery's vehicle. He gritted his teeth and avoided the need to peer in the rearview mirror, to watch if the car would explode.

"I never knew there'd be such consequences," continued Ada, sounding small, distant. "That this prophecy would lead me to decide whether I'd let the demons take over the world and plunge it into darkness, or to allow other worlds to open up within this one and also destroy it."

"Yeah," Avery cringed, "I got that vibe, too. It's fucked up. Choose the better of two evils, is that the saying?"

"No matter what we did, we were doomed." Ada sighed, the sensation of her angst inside like a coolness creeping into Avery's heart. "I guess prophecies all come with a price, but no one told me that. No one told me anything. I'm a Guide, but no one guided me."

Her genuine deception tugged at Avery's heartstrings. Sure, he hated her, had suspected and mistrusted her from the start; but for a second there, he was sympathetic. He acknowledged her plight and its immense difficulty, and the position she'd been put in without ever asking for it. She was a Guide, a peaceful being meant to lead spirits to their Afterlife. And here she was now instead, weighed down by the knowledge that the world was more than it seemed and she was responsible for fixing it. And if she didn't, then her purpose was void. Her existence meant nothing. All her centuries of doing good work were nullified.

But it wasn't all on her, as much as it pained him to accept it. Had he done his part, his real part, and killed Jessamine when he was supposed to, this wouldn't have happened. Had he been more forceful that night when she entered the house, they wouldn't be preparing to fight off the end of the world.

He should have stabbed her in the back, not pushed her into the demonic world. The more he replayed the event in his mind, the more he understood he probably could have grabbed that knife when it was near Jamie. He could have plunged it under her skin and watched as the demons drained out of her. Her body would break down, the demons would return home, and all would be right in the world.

A world without Jessamine in it, like now; but safer.

"I get it," said Ada, interacting with Avery's guilty thoughts. "Why you didn't seize the knife, why you thought you weren't strong enough. Physically, you had all the power you needed; but it was an emotional blockage, wasn't it?" Avery pictured her studying him, gaze narrowed, lips pinched. "No, you couldn't have killed her. Because you're in love with her, so you'd rather preserve her body, just in case, huh? Throw her into a never-ending dungeon of despair, hoping she'd survive the fall. Better than killing her outright, removing her from this plane of existence, forever. There's no such thing as coming back from the dead, not really, and you knew that." She paused, and Avery could almost feel her breath on his neck. "Is that right? Have I figured you out, yet?"

Avery snorted, swatting at the air as if she'd been hovering around his head. "Yeah, fine, whatever. You've been inside my noggin one time too many, lady."

"I'm not a lady," she said, amusement in her tone. "But yes, I have. You're ashamed of all those things within you, your heart, your soul, but they make you who you are, Avery. I promise you, you're not much different from most humans, from what I gather. Some have much darker thoughts than you do."

What was darker than playing out fantasies of sleeping with a demon? Of reviewing your best friend's death over and over? Of wishing you'd killed the person you loved instead of giving them a second chance in another world?

"Love," he sucked in a deep breath, "now that's a strong word."

"But it's accurate, no?" Ada wasn't really asking the question, but prodding at him, he knew. She had the answer, with a connection to his brain; she wanted him to say it out loud, to admit it to himself. And in a sense, he already had—but not by saying the words.

Is she a therapist all of a sudden?

"I... I didn't realize I was in love with her," he gulped, "until after she was gone." A weight had left his shoulders, his heart, and it soared out of the car and out of reach. He'd said it, he'd confessed it; but did it even matter? Jessamine would never be there to hear it. "I was developing feelings for her early on, I think."

"In my experience, that's how it always is. I can't tell you how many ghosts talk to me, tell me their stories. Unrequited love, forbidden love, soul mates that run out of time—you name it. It's all depressing and it hurts, even for someone as solid as me." Avery scoffed at her, but she didn't let him disrupt her. "Beings like me don't get to find love, but we see it, we sense it. And you, Avery, are definitely in love with Jessamine. You wouldn't have acted so recklessly, otherwise."

He chortled. "Recklessly. Cute." With a snicker, he swerved to dodge what appeared to be a corpse in the road. "That's putting it lightly."

"But it's true. And I'll also tell you this—I do think somehow, underneath all the damage and the confusion, Jessamine felt the same way. Feels," she cleared her throat, "the same way. Not that it makes any difference now, but I wanted you to know that."

It was Ada's means of infusing Avery with more strength, more courage. Do it for Jessamine, she seemed to imply. To honor the woman she was, not the demon she'd been forced to become.

"So what am I supposed to do, then?" He gawked at the blaring sky, at the chunky, charcoal-tinted clouds wafting over it, choking it up with smoke. "This is my fault, most of it. Jessamine's not around to take the blame, so I must. I go to this gate, I help you close it—then what?"

"Don't think of the future yet." Ada's doubt wrapped around Avery's guts, erasing all the positive vibes she'd infected him with. "Think of the present, and pray we're able to shut that gate, and all the others... in time."

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