FINAL GATE (#3 GHOST PORTAL series)

SIX

Jessamine's tears continued to gush out, the liquid seeping into Landon's shirt. It was a weird situation—to rest her head on his shoulder, to feel his shoulder, to sense his warmth despite his cold skin, all while knowing he wasn't quite alive, and wasn't quite dead. He was in Limbo in the demonic realm, a ghost that wasn't fully a ghost. She could touch him, and he could touch her.

After what seemed like decades of blood and despair, while possessed by demons, Jessamine reveled in the contact, and especially from him. Someone from her past who knew her almost as well as she knew herself.

They were both humans, both lost in this sepia-toned whirlwind of a world, encircled by red beings who wanted to do them harm but couldn't. Beings who'd wanted to use her for evil but who'd failed.

Never in her wildest dreams and harshest nightmares had Jessamine envisioned something like this happening to her.

Landon held her close to him, his musk meshing into her nostrils and taking her panic down a notch. She'd have never guessed that at the end of her life, in an apocalyptic situation, it'd be Landon who'd be there to comfort her. Landon, the one who'd more than once broke her heart, was the only one to mend her now.

"Jess, you have to get a hold of yourself," he whispered, his breath blowing into her ear. It was icy, sending shivers down her spine. "The energy down here will drag you down and I don't want to know how that'll affect you."

"Affect me?" She sniffled and wiped her nose. Back in the day, she'd have been embarrassed to show herself like this in front of Landon; but who was he to judge her now? He was dead to the world, and so was she. "Like, depression? It's a little too late for that, because I'm already depressed."

"Yeah, and it could lead to..." He let go of her and frowned, and when she continued to stare at him as if he'd lost his mind, he mimicked slicing his throat.

"Oh. Oh." She knew what he was talking about, and fervently shook her head to deny it. "No. Never. I'm too chicken to do that, you know me. And if I did it down here... well, wouldn't I become a demon if I died in this realm? That's why you haven't ended yourself, isn't it?"

He bit his lip and nodded. "I'd rather roam around as a half-dead, half-alive zombie. No way do I want to be one of them."

"Right, and neither do I," said Jessamine, rubbing her watery eyes. The tears had stopped, but the sorrow still packed a heavy punch in her heart. "But I'll be depressed because I'm never going to stop feeling guilty for what I did."

"You said you killed someone?" Landon pulled her into his arms again. They were huddled together in the circle of trees, rocking to and fro. "Who?"

She tried to weasel out of his embrace, her body overheating with shame. "J-Jamie," she stuttered, sensing her tears rushing to her lash-line again. "His name is... was Jamie. A friend, or I'd like to think he was a friend. And he was there to help, to diffuse the situation, to..."

Landon gently seized her chin and turned her to face him. "You were possessed, Jess. Whatever your body did to him, you had no control over it. They made you do it, and wherever his spirit is now, this Jamie dude knows that, I promise."

"I should have done more, though. On the inside." Jessamine remembered how she'd screamed in her mind, how she'd detected their urge to kill the moment they'd turned her sights on Jamie. And Jamie's face—the instant realization, the immediate knowledge that by declaring his presence, by drawing the spotlight away from Avery, he'd sealed his fate. There'd been something bittersweet in his eyes, and Jessamine knew she had no alternative but to watch the life go out of him.