FINAL GATE (#3 GHOST PORTAL series)

FOUR

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?