At the sight of Louise's body collapsing, Jessamine slid off the couch and nearly fainted herself. Her eyesight was blurry, her skin clammy with a thick, cold sweat, and she couldn't feel her fingers or her toes.

She wondered if she'd blacked out, because next she knew, she was standing on the other side of the room, with Jamie's help, and saw Avery guiding Louise to the couch.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," she was saying, waving him off like an annoying fly buzzing about her head. "You think this is the first time I've fainted because of the shit I visualize in client's minds? I'm fine."

Only once assured she was indeed fine—she stood up on her own and walked around without too much of a wobble—Avery agreed that it was time to go. He led them out, with Jessamine still held up by Jamie. A faint early afternoon sunlight had pooled over the cobblestone making up the front porch, and Jessamine squinted to view where she was going.

Louise hobbled to the exit with them, and whispered something to Avery, before giving them a quick nod and closing the door behind them.

Jessamine wanted to ask what she'd said, but for some reason her vocal chords were all knotted up, and she had difficulty speaking, let alone swallowing or breathing. She limply let Jamie settle her in the backseat of the car, and managed to get her seat-belt on before they took off down the beaten-path road.

No one said anything, at first, though Avery and Jamie kept exchanging strange, indecipherable looks as the car moved on to the less narrow, but still small street that would get them towards Santa Rosa. Jessamine couldn't piece together what those looks meant—not only because she was still groggy from the eerie experiment of Louise's hands in hers, but also because she truly had no clue what had happened, nor what Louise's final words before fainting had meant.

Jessamine grew restless; the seat-belt was pressing hard into her chest, and her breaths were strained and uneven. Her face grew warm, hot, steaming, and her heartbeat ran a marathon—or ran away from something inside, who knew?

The things she'd been seeing in her nightmares—that blue being talking to her, the sinister sensation of the red beings, that she hadn't visualized too well before—were coming to her now, as she was awake, with her eyes open. The images were sharper, more focused, and though she still couldn't quite hear what was being said, she could feel the energy the two types of beings were radiating, what they were infusing into her. She felt their hunger, and gulped.

Hunger? What the fuck?

Had Louise unlocked some of the memories she'd held in too deep? Those she hadn't been able to uncover on her own? Or was this a natural process, a normal thing that happened to those whose memories were triggered?

As Avery turned onto a main road, busy with cars, the vehicle rocked with the movement, which rattled something within Jessamine's mind. As if a compartment had unlatched, and all its components were spilling over the floor of her brain, mingled and mismatched and messy.

She saw a door—a door with a glowing red gleam behind it. It was familiar; had she seen it in her nightmares before? It pulsated, pulling her closer, closer, closer to it.

She raised her arms in front of her—in real time, not in her vision—and let out a tiny squeak.

Avery lost control of the car for a few seconds, swerving to avoid a collision.

"Jessamine?" His voice was high-pitched, laced with concern as he checked on her through the rear-view mirror. "You okay? Dude," he nudged Jamie with his elbow, "keep an eye on her, will you? I need to drive."

Jamie, who'd gasped at the sound of her squeal, spun in his seat—a seat that was clearly too small to properly contain his massive body. He winced at the discomfort, but reached over to pat Jessamine's knee.

"You all right? Got us a little scared there for a second." His voice was, as he'd implied, scared—it shook, though he appeared to be trying to keep it leveled.

Jessamine didn't recoil at the contact, though she'd expected to. "I..." She pinched the bridge of her nose and realized she'd been folded up in the backseat. She straightened up. "You were not alone in there, Louise said. That... it... what does that mean?"

Jamie glanced towards Avery; Jessamine caught Avery's flinch in the mirror. He sucked his lips in and stared at her, trying to fix his face as he realized she was able to see him.

"Not sure," he said, stopping at a stop light. "But it's not good." He avoided eye-contact now, and the twitching of his cheeks and mouth told Jessamine he was lying to her.

He knows; of course he does. Louise explained it to him, when she whispered to him, right?

"What's not good is all the fucked up feelings I'm getting now," said Jessamine, rubbing her arms as a chill coursed through her. She'd stopped shaking, thankfully; as if the distance from that cabin and its surrounding forest was calming her down. Not completely—she was back to the state of mind she'd been in before this trip, which was still nauseating and confusing.

"What kind of feelings?" Avery connected his gaze to hers in the mirror—his eyes were soft, but concealing secrets, she knew. And his voice was too gentle, too unlike him; he usually had a slight rasp in his tone, a sultry sexiness she enjoyed even when pissed at him.

"Those things Louise said I witnessed... ghosts, blue beings, red beings... I have been dreaming about them. But now, I..." She looked down at her hands, examining her palms as if they were screens replaying all her visions. "I sense them, too. The blue thing was cold, chilly; the red thing was warm, then grew overbearing, super hot when I was near them."

"Near them?" Avery side-glanced at Jamie, who was still turned in Jessamine's direction, one arm squished against the seat, the other hovering over her knee.

"I can't tell how close, or if they were... touching me, or whatever." Jessamine's teeth clattered, and she clenched her jaw to make them stop. "There was a door, too. Bright red. Those red things... they were behind it. They were... calling me, drawing me closer. But they weren't physically there? I saw them, picture them in my mind, as if they were floating in front of me. Big, blurry, with black eyes and black slits for mouths. I envisioned them through the door, waving at me to get nearer." She swallowed a sour taste that had lodged in her mouth, and something gurgled in her stomach.

Avery steered onward, but Jessamine paid little attention to where they were going, as she started to shiver again.

"Red beings summoning you from behind a door? You saw this, experienced this?" Jamie's voice was tentative, and he pulled his hand away from near Jessamine's knee, using it to tug at his scruffy, dark beard instead.

"And they," Jessamine cringed as she peered at her forearms, "they slashed at my arms." She didn't see any scars, any remnants of physical damage; had she hallucinated those slices across her skin, though she was feeling them now, in the present? She couldn't actually identify who or what had hurt her, but the agony of each cut streamed through her as if they were still there, on her flesh, stinging.

"Slashed your arms?" Jamie repeated her words, louder, as if to make sure Avery was hearing it all correctly.

"Yes," said Jessamine, giving him a quick, pointed look that she hoped he'd interpret as her asking him to stop repeating everything she said. "And," she grimaced as a new pain developed in her eardrums, "I think they hurt my ears, too."

A sudden flash stilled her—that of her ears and nose bleeding, of her fingers finding the blood trickling down her neck and drizzling into her mouth. She still sensed that blood's passage on her skin, tickling it, and tasted the gross copper tinge as it absorbed onto her tongue.

Jamie cocked his head, studying her with a puzzled gray gaze. Avery was silent, but she noticed him glimpsing her in the mirror, his eyes gone wide, his eyebrows raised.

"And before I could go through that door," said Jessamine, pressing her index fingers to her temples, where pain continued to jab through her. "Before I could respond to their weird call, one of those blue things... it, she—shit, it was a woman. She said, not yet, not yet, it's not time. Wow... that's the first time I've been able to understand what she spoke to me."

"And then?" Avery's high-pitched, squeaky tone resurfaced. Jessamine attributed it to when he was losing control of his emotions, when doubt overpowered his usually confident demeanor. "What did the blue thing do?"

"She..." Jessamine's shoulders slouched forward. "I don't know. It all stops there—next I remember, I'm waking in the hospital. If there's anything else to remember... I don't have access to it yet."

Jamie twisted around to sit normally again, and exchanged another secretive glance with Avery, who nodded once and took a deep, weighty breath.

"I have a few calls to make, a few people to talk to," he said, slowing the vehicle's speed down.

Jessamine perked up—as much as she could considering the soreness of her limbs and the achiness of her head—and realized they'd pulled up at the coffee shop. They were back in Westgardens, and away from Louise, the supposed medium who'd unlocked more of Jessamine's terrifying memories of things she couldn't explain.

"My place is," Jessamine pointed across the street, "in there. The loft apartments. Code is five-five-two-three. I..." she grabbed at her forehead, "I can't walk that far, I'm not... I'm not myself."

She hadn't wanted Avery aware of where she lived, but it was too late now. He was involved, he knew too much, and in any case, he'd promised to get her help.

Was Louise supposed to help me? What if she's made me worse?

Avery directed the car to the complex gate, punched in the code, then waited as the gate lifted and let him in. Jessamine gestured toward her empty parking space—she didn't currently need a car—and Avery parked, keeping the ignition on as he turned in his seat to face her.

"Sit tight. Go in, relax, watch something that'll keep your mind occupied. Or do whatever it is you do when you need to chill out," he said, then glared at Jamie. "Dude, help her out! She said she couldn't walk!"

Grumbling, Jamie hustled out and assisted Jessamine in getting to her feet. Before he guided her to her door, Avery rolled down the car window and motioned for her to listen to him.

"I'm going to figure this out, okay?" Avery reached his hand out of the car and beckoned Jessamine closer. He seized her hand and squeezed it; his touch was cold, yet oddly soothing. "We need your memories, but there has to be a less brutal way for you to recover them. I'll research."

Jessamine's lower lip puffed out, and she crushed his hand right back. "I'm freaking out. This is... a lot. And not my domain. I don't know anything about this shit, these... things I'm seeing, whether I actually saw them or imagined them or—"

Avery compressed her hand with his, cutting her off. "We'll figure it out, I swear. Your well-being is important, and your recovered memories lead to Amy, and trust me when I say I'm not going to give up on finding her. Which means I'm not going to give up on you. We're staying in town, so if you need me—call. I'm here for you."

Once Jamie got her to her door—and gave her a big bear hug, telling her it'd all be okay, that he and Avery weren't going to fuck her up, get her hurt—she watched as they drove off and out of the complex.

Inside her apartment, she disrobed, drew a scorching hot bath, and sank into the water hoping it'd wash off all her fears, ease her shivers, erase the invisible scars on her skin.

Somehow, she felt comfortable and safe enough to fall asleep.

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