DEMON DOOR (#2 GHOST PORTAL series)

SIX

Avery's jaw dropped so fast he could have sworn he heard the bone click, and worried he might have lost the lower half of his face. Jamie's mouth opened, and little squirming noises came out, but no proper words or coherent sentences came with them.

"I... you... fuck," said Avery, unable to muster much coherence himself. He gawked at Ada, but his brain wouldn't formulate anything else to say.

"This was why I didn't want to tell you," said Ada, exasperated. "Let me explain the reasoning for this, and perhaps it'll be less of a shock for you." She gestured at two planks of wood off to the side, implying that Avery and Jamie should sit.

Avery's legs were so wobbly that he didn't refuse.

Go into the demonic realm? Is that even possible? Is she insane?

Once they'd found a semi-comfortable spot on the wood to sit—Avery fidgeted for a few minutes working to find an area where splinters didn't pierce through his pants—Ada hovered before them, her arms swaying at her sides.

"Like I said, we don't know much about the demonic realm, nor the demons themselves. Yes, I implied otherwise, but in truth, all I know about that demon door is that it's a portal, like our ghost one. But it's meant for particularly troubled spirits who have doubts that prevent them from moving on." She waved towards the sky. "If they're stuck in Limbo too long, they can get drawn to the basement, and then on to the demon door. It's unpredictable."

Avery shivered as a cold breeze blew through the clearing. A cloud cruised over the sun, and the gloominess of the area worsened tenfold without the rays of light once blasting down onto the grass and the debris. Now the place well and truly looked like a deserted war-zone.

"As for the demons themselves..." Ada shook her head. "We don't know what their weak spots are, except for darkness. That's why we try to keep the door to the basement closed, and lights always turned off down there. The dark seems to slow them down. They feed on light... sunlight, from what we understand."

Jamie coughed and rubbed his arms, likely experiencing the chill that the cloud coverage had sent down from the skies. "If you know so little about them, how would you know that tiny piece of information? Sounds pretty random."

Avery ground his teeth, refraining from adding, "seems like you, as usual, know more than you claim."

Ada squinted at Jamie. "That's because it is random. The demons whisper, sometimes." She lowered her voice, as if to whisper like the demons had, to imitate them. "We have to check on the door downstairs from time to time, to ensure it's closed. Which means we have to get close to that door. To monitor if spirits are wandering down there, in their Limbo version of the basement."

"Limbo version?" Jamie kept his arms around himself, but leaned forward. "They have a basement in Limbo?"

"Limbo looks exactly the same as this dimension, though darker, a bit more on the gloomy side. It's a separate yet slightly connected plane," said Ada, rolling her wrists. "It's here, it's within this plane, but humans can't see it, can't access it; though sometimes spirits bleed through." She fixed on Avery, who was so absorbed in her speech that he'd opted to keep quiet. "That's why you've captured ghosts on all your fancy devices, why you're fascinated by them. They can't exist within our living realm, though, so they remain faint and have difficulty communicating. Guides, however, basically dwell in both the living and the Limbo realm; we're literally in two places at once. That's how we keep track, how we're able to see what's going on in Limbo. That's how we see if souls are traversing through the demon door."

Avery massaged his scalp, drinking in all the information Ada was providing. All the things he'd wanted answers for, for years now—delivered to him on a silver platter. But it was a platter that reeked of deception; because Ada was only telling him since she wanted something from him, from Jamie.