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—

"DO NOT OPEN YOUR EYES, Jessamine. I mean it." A pressure lingered on her eyelids, weighing them down. Like two fingertips blocking her, insisting that she keep her lids closed.

"Okay, but what the fuck?" She shook her head, desperate to rid herself of this creature inside controlling her body, dictating her movements. He'd had his fun, he'd issued his warnings—couldn't he leave now?

Sensations crawled about within her like an infestation of bugs; ants tiptoeing on her bones, spider-webs weaving around her veins, flies buzzing inside her belly.

"Prophesied. Remember, I told you Ada was the keeper of the prophecy?" Faz's tone wasn't as impatient as Jessamine had thought it'd be after all the thoughts he'd likely heard inside her.

"Prophecy. Fine, let's say these things exist." Jessamine would have rolled her eyes had she been allowed to open them. Instead she shrugged, deflating into the backseat cushions, a stale smell of sweat—her own—and something like sulfur attacking her nostrils.

"They do. They don't happen often, but they're real, for our kind, at least. Long ago, Ada prophesied a woman who would come to our portal and open a demon door—we didn't know of its existence yet—and unleash demons into the world."

"Demon door." Jessamine shivered at the words. "Like a door to hell?"

"You heard Ada." Faz grunted. "We have nothing to do with religion. Demon is what we call these creatures, as the name fits the bill, but they're not the demons you've been accustomed to in your human books, your... bibles."

Jessamine snorted. "I'm not accustomed to anything, because I'm not religious." She cringed, wondering if now would be the right time to become religious, and start praying for someone to save her—and Avery—from this increasingly insane predicament.

"Anyway, what's behind that demon door... it's as close to hell as you can get."

Faz grew silent, disappearing, recoiling into himself, flipping a switch to turn himself off.

"Hey!" Jessamine's eyelashes fluttered. "You can't go starting sentences and leaving me hanging like this! I'm in the dark. Literally! How do you know this shit about these demons and their door?"

"Sorry, I'm trying to communicate with other Guides inside the house." Now Faz sounded exasperated, exhausted. Not that she'd cared, but Jessamine wondered if his possession of her, his constant interferences in her bodily movements, was draining him of energy. "And we know this because we have protected that door for centuries, killing anyone who came close to it." He went quiet again, but came back before Jessamine could scold him. "Naturally, we researched ways to prevent this event, to stop this prophesied human from accomplishing her fate. But Ada said the foretold one couldn't be killed by our powers. Only another human could end the vessel, in front of the demon door, where the barrier between this world and theirs is weak."

"Whoa, whoa, slow down." Jessamine regretted all her questions, because Faz's answers were coming in spurts, accompanied by violent flashes of her own memories. Discussions with Ada—yes, she had been talking to Ada, that was the blue being in her visions, for sure—running through hallways, tripping down stairs, falling face-first into a puddle of blood.

She swayed side to side, inebriated with emotions and plagued with jolts of pain striking her extremities.

"Or you can be pushed into the demon realm. I'm sorry, Jessamine... you need to know this." A soft, soothing energy floated in her gut, yet it wasn't enough to quell all the other sensations swarming her. The flaring headache, the muscular soreness from all her shaking, the feel of her veins engorging, shooting blood down to her toes, up to her face. "We experimented; luckily, we've had trespassers throughout the years, though very few have gotten through our enchantments around the house. We brought those humans in front of the demon door, to see if they were 'it', to see if we could kill them or not... but they all perished. You," Faz made a sound akin to a gulp, "were the first human we captured that didn't die. So we knew you were it—the vessel."

"Then," Jessamine gritted her teeth, suffering through a cascade of chilling shivers, "what about Amy?"

She had no clue how she was able to weed through the memories reaching her in waves and remember one of the main purposes for coming to this dreadful place—to find Amy. But a thought of Avery had put her back on track. A brief glimpse of his smile, of those sparkling eyes, of that smooth skin that she'd been able to touch, taste. Thinking of him seemed to ground her, if only for an instant.

"What about her?"

"Why capture her at all? Why let her die?" Jessamine envisioned Amy's video, and all her partially positive thoughts of Avery evaporated. "By then, you knew I was the vessel; I was here three years ago. Amy... came here within the past month."

"Look," said Faz, his timbre hesitant, holding something back. "I wasn't around for that; I was possessing you, remember? You've carried me inside you since you left this house. So why did they kill Amy? I presume to keep our secrets. We couldn't have anyone divulging our location."

"Wait." Jessamine's fingers curled, her hand forming a fist. "So they did kill her? Like Avery assumed?"

Faz was so quiet, Jessamine imagined this blue being hovering in front of her, mouth agape, squinting at her without knowing how to reply.

"We kill to protect our secrets, Jessamine. I'm sorry. I can't justify it, but that's how we function, that's our process. If someone stumbles upon our lair, our first instinct is to keep Limbo safe, to keep the spirits in waiting safe. No matter who it is, we must finish them to ensure our processes remain a secret."

The onrush of information was still accompanied by flashes of recollections—now she saw herself wandering through the attic. So she'd been up there, too?

The nausea she'd somehow managed to keep contained started to reanimate.

"So, explain this," she said, head spinning, as in actually spinning, without her controlling it. "I'm prophesied to hold in and release demons, and I'd assume to do all sorts of evil shit; but you guys let me go? You didn't keep me captive? That's kind of stupid, isn't it?"

"We had to. Even if we'd kept you with us, you'd have gotten out eventually, because you weren't meant to be contained. We couldn't kill you. See... the prophecy states a human has to kill you, yes? We're not human, and we couldn't wait around for the next trespasser to show up. There was no way to keep you captive in there without... consequences."

Jessamine slowly saw flaws in these Guides' programming, in their organization. "You had humans around when I was there. My friends; Landon, Angela, the others... did you not capture them? Or only me?"

Faz's weight inside her mind grew less heavy for the space of an instant. "We did capture them, yes." He resumed his overwhelming, brain-filling position at once. "But they weren't the humans we needed. They would have reacted to the demon door when we brought them in front of it, and they didn't. Because, you see, another part of the prophecy clarified that a very particular person would be responsible for ending the prophecy; one who would bring you back here. As in, for the second time." He paused, as if taking a breath. "That meant the human we needed wasn't one of your friends, as they'd brought you here first. And we did test them, just in case, while keeping you isolated somewhere else in the house to ensure you didn't interfere. But they weren't it. So we had to let you go."

"Another part of the prophecy?" Jessamine was winded from hearing these new clauses, discovering that her friends had been used for supernatural experiments linked to her. Or was she winded by the visions of said friends, standing in front of the door, glaring into its fiery depths, as if behind it were growing flames waiting to engulf them? "How many chapters does this thing have?"

"I don't know. But a human was meant to bring you back here, like I said. And then they had a choice—to kill you, push you in, or... help you destroy the world."

She had another quick thought of Avery, hoping he'd survived whatever Ada was doing to him. Torture? Or simply killing him to preserve her secrets, like she'd done with Amy? And Jamie—poor Jamie, such a sweet soul; he didn't deserve this. Were they about to be sacrificed because of her? Avery had wanted to come here, seeking Amy, seeking the truth; and now he was locked in a house that wanted Jessamine's soul, wanted her body. It was her fault, and yet she'd done nothing to make it happen, and could do nothing to stop it now.

Or were they still up in the attic, talking, wasting time? Had they found a means to hold Ada off while they figured out how to escape? Or were they hoping Jessamine would rescue them?

How she wished to open her eyes and check—one quick glimpse would show if a bright blue light spilled through the attic's boarded windows, and that was how she'd know they were still up there. How she'd know they were alive, despite having delivered her here, to her doom—

"Oh, shit." She gasped, clapped a hand to her mouth, turned her head towards where she knew the house to be, though she couldn't see it. "Bring me back here... second time... Avery? Jamie? It's one of them? One of them is... the other part of the prophecy?"

She envisioned Avery standing in front of the demon door, the demons screeching at his presence, reacting to him being the one who might destroy them. Or Jamie, pushing the door shut, being magically able to touch it because he was the one who might seal it forever.

"I assumed at once that it was Avery, because his soul riled yours up. You felt that, yes? The electricity when the two of you first touched?"

"I... I did." Jessamine tilted her head, remembering that moment; the softness of his skin paired with that shock of lightning that had sent them both spiraling into a trip they didn't know how to escape from. "But I... I mean I was thinking, after finding out about you... that you'd done that. To... scare me."

"Oh, I was trying to scare you all right—making you aggressive and irking you and sickening you—but that first jolt wasn't me. That was fate, Jessamine. Your destinies are tied together and something so strong doesn't go unnoticed."

Jessamine no longer knew which shiver was associated with which emotion. Were her trembles from the visions still cramping the sides of her head? From the pain still jarring up her legs, down her arms? Or from the sudden notion that there was such a thing as soul mates and Faz had just implied Avery was hers?

"Don't misconstrue my words," said Faz, breaking into her jumbled thoughts as if to clean them up, clear them up. "I'm not saying you're mates, but your souls are linked, and your destinies are involved with one another. I can't attest to... soul mates, nor can I confirm those are real. This... is another matter altogether."

"O... kay," said Jessamine, sucking in her lips and taking a large breath of the confined air. "So... why prevent me from coming here, then? You didn't want me to come, but... don't you want me dead?"

"I, personally, don't want you, Jessamine, dead. I know you now, I see you... what I want is for the prophecy to cease to exist, to be broken." For a second, Faz sounded kind, heart-warming, and even sincere. But his tone quickly reverted to monotone. "But I was following orders. Ada's orders. You think we like harming every human that approaches us? If we had some means of preventing this prophecy from coming true, then we would do all in our power to do so. That was my role; to possess you, protect you. And if I failed, then I was to caution you, like I'm doing now."

"Inform me?" Jessamine snorted. "By telling me I'm prophesied to carry monsters inside me to destroy the world? And that the guy I've been having feelings for has lost one of his best friends—that your kind killed—and he's meant to kill me? Oh, I'm informed, all right." She shuddered, and hugged herself, having realized all her earlier warmth was fading from her being.

"Yes, to inform you of all that, but also to let you know that you have a choice."

"What?" Jessamine's eyebrows scrunched. "A choice for what?"

"A choice to leave now and never return, and avert the prophecy. You can go, it's not impossible. I can help you."

"Leave now..." She zeroed in on where the house was, imagining it clearly in her mind. "But abandon Avery and Jamie here? Take their car and just... ditch them, leaving them to Ada's mercy?"

Faz didn't say anything at first, which confirmed her comments and made them all too true, too painful to bear.

"They're worthy sacrifices, Jessamine. Think about it."

There had to be another way to avert this, another way to not become a vessel to a horde of hungry demons. Leaving behind the two men who'd made her realize what all her problems had been about? Who'd given her answers? Who'd clarified why she'd been irritable and having nightmares? No, she couldn't do that.

Avery had hurt her, yes; but he'd done so to open her eyes to reality. And she needed to open her eyes again now, to defy Faz, defy Ada, and defy all those who thought her to be a container for evil.

"No."

She counted; one, two, three, channeling Avery's image, Jamie's image, the image of herself pushing past a barricaded door. She pressed her lips together, placed her feet hard on the floor of the car, clenched her fists, and forced her eyes open, bypassing Faz's magical enchantment to block her view of the house.

She wasn't sure how she'd done it, nor where she'd found the strength to do so; maybe her intense thoughts of Avery, the one her soul was linked with, had given her the power to do it. Or her fear for his life, for Jamie's life, had overpowered Faz's fears of a prophecy no one wanted coming true.

Her eyelids spread, and there it was; the worn-down white house in all its spooky splendor, staring back at her as if it'd been waiting for her gaze, desperate for it. The same as she'd pictured in all her visions, towering over her like a wave about to come crashing down and drown her.

She'd drown willingly to find another way than sacrificing humans.

"No, I can't do that."

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