Avery wasn't sure how long he stood there, stiff, fighting a migraine as Ada absorbed energy from Jamie. She didn't move; not breathing, not giving any sign of life except for the glow coming from underneath her, illuminating her. Which might not have been an abnormal thing, if Avery thought about it—a being like Ada didn't need to breathe, did she?

Jamie was breathing, albeit barely. But any time Avery tried to get closer, to check on his friend, a Guide got in his way and pushed him back.

"No interrupting," they said, their voices as firm as Ada's had been.

Avery glared at each of them in turn, unable to defy them or push back.

Yeah, they're definitely her underlings, aren't they?

When Ada returned to "normal"—her human shape reconfiguring itself, her facial features reappearing, the intense glow going away—the tension in the clearance died down. Guides scattered off to their former tasks, resuming the building process, or ushering ghosts farther into the forest.

Avery was allowed to approach Jamie, at last, to find him sweaty, pallid, panting. His skin had turned a faint green shade, as if those silvery tethers had actually drained him of blood, of life. His eyes were closed, and visible shivers shot down his arms and legs.

"Did you hurt him?" Avery gritted his teeth, holding in a growl.

They'd been aware of the danger, and yet to see his friend in such a frail state, he wondered if it'd been worth it. Jamie wasn't supposed to die, he wasn't supposed to be there, at all.

"No," said Ada, shaking herself off, combing her fingers through her hair. "He's weak, of course, because I took much more energy from him than planned. But he will be fine, and I doubt any of what I did hurt him."

"What?" Avery raised a fist and stormed up to Ada. "Is he going to die from this? Did you kill him?"

She shooed him off with a wave of her hand. "Are you listening to me at all? He'll be fine, Avery." Nonchalant, she brushed past him and wandered up to Jamie, to sprinkle a powdery substance over his body.

Avery raced over to block her—though how, he had no idea, as he couldn't push her the way she pushed him—a yelp growing in his throat. "Hey, stop it! What the fuck are you doing to him?"

Ada whirled around, scowling at him. "Will you calm down?" She clapped her hands together, ridding her palms of the dust she'd used to put over Jamie. "It's a sleeping spell, so he can find peace in his slumber. If he sleeps, he'll gather his energy faster, okay? He's fine, I promise you."

A promise from Ada meant about as much as one from a total stranger, but Avery knew he had no chance to change her mind, her actions. It was too late—this spell she claimed would help Jamie was already taking effect. Jamie stopped convulsing about and his harsh breaths became softer, smoother ones. His eyelids no longer fluttered, and his limbs grew limp as he fell into a hopefully restorative slumber.

"Whatever." Avery stuffed his hands under his armpits and spun from Jamie's slumbering form on the ground, near the portal. "So, what's up? What happened?"

Frowning, Ada shimmied towards the opposite side of the clearing, where no Guides concentrated, no ghosts lingered. She beckoned him to follow, and so he did, understanding she wanted to get away from curious ears.

They stopped next to a a stack of bricks, and Ada motioned at him to sit atop it.

"You're acting weird," he said, sitting down as he scanned her face. She was twitching, as if struggling to figure out if she wanted to smile or frown deeper than she already was. "Weirder than usual, I mean."

"Because the situation is weird," she said, voice lowered, loaded with concern. "Turns out, Jessamine hasn't traveled to the Nevada portal yet. It's the closest one, and she hasn't come near it."

Avery sent one leg over the other. "Okay, so where is she, then? Did they know?"

"No one knows," said Ada, unleashing a sigh that rippled through her, causing her to deflate like a popped balloon. "My Nevada colleague communicated with his closest portal, while I was there. She'd been there, to that demon door. Nevada wouldn't specify the state, unfortunately. But those Guides, from the non-Nevada portal, were dealing with the aftermath of her abrupt arrival. They'd had no warning of her coming, and they lost several of their own in the fire she caused."

"Lost?" Avery pressed a tightened fist to his mouth. "Guides can die?" He had a double take. "Wait, you didn't even tell the other Guides at other portals about your prophecy? About a crazed, demon-possessed woman who'd show up at their dwelling and blow it the fuck up to get her demons out?"

Ada shrank. If she'd had regular cheeks, Avery imagined they'd have turned red in shame. "I..." She wrung her hands and looked down, her face contorted in all sorts of emotions.

Not that he wanted to sympathize with her, but Avery perceived her humanity, for once. If she'd ever been human—he didn't know for sure. But such a reaction, such embarrassment showed that deep down, she wasn't entirely insensitive or inhuman.

But why had she let herself get to this type of embarrassment? Why leave her fellow Guides clueless?

That's the heartless part of her. She has no right to be ashamed of it.

"We're not immune to fire." She wouldn't look at Avery. "Which I wasn't aware of until now. But we don't die, not really. We... are reset. Sent to some alternate dimension to resource. Or to receive punishment. It's likely the plane of existence we Guides originally came from, but I wouldn't know, as I've never been incapacitated. Neither have any of my Guides." Though she kept her chin lowered, Avery saw the distress swooping across her face, the lines creasing near her eyes. "It's rare, extremely rare for a Guide to perish."

Avery couldn't talk, too much fury brewing on the inside. He knew if he opened his mouth, he'd respond with harshness; and harshness would set her off, and he'd never get the full story, the list of answers he needed.

"We don't confront anything but humans, normally. And that's only when they happen to wander too close to us, and we have no trouble disposing of them. But demons... well, they've never gotten out before. And clearly they can harm us." She whipped her neck up, but instead of looking at Avery, she twisted to the basement's entrance. "They've whispered. They've enticed us, threatened us through that door. But no one has fully opened it before. Not since they created it and sealed themselves inside. We thought... I thought we'd always be safe."

As much as he wanted to have sympathy for her suffering—finding out her kind was killable, and that the demons she'd been taunted by were able to deactivate her—Avery couldn't feel bad for her. All her pain might have been prevented, had she been upfront with other Guides, had she told them all she knew.

She's a bit too good at keeping secrets, and now she's seeing how detrimental that is, isn't she?

"But why didn't you warn them? Any of them?" He scoffed. "You greedily kept the information about demons to yourself, and for what? Because you thought you'd be able to stop Jessamine? Because you wanted the glory for yourself if you were able to?"

Ada cringed. "You misunderstand me, boy. I don't seek glory, no Guide does. We're not programmed that way."

The word programmed made Avery chew on his lip to not accuse her of lying.

"I didn't know how to tell them," she continued, the shame in her posture fleeing as she squared her shoulders. "I've only communicated with other Guides a handful of other times in the past, and I was... intimidated by them. More so, I didn't think they'd believe me if I told them. A prophecy?" She snorted. "Guides aren't prophets. We don't receive prophecies. Prophets are from other dimensions, but not here, not in this world."

The more she said dimensions, the more Avery grew dizzy with the heaviness of the word. It implied there were more than a few planes of existence, more than humans, more than even aliens out there.

He remembered the monsters mentioned by the demons, and shuddered. Did Ada know about those?

"I've often speculated on whether I'm... well, some sort of hybrid being. Something of mixed dimensions." She tipped her chin again. "I feared the other Guides would reject me. That my responsibilities would be taken away, that I'd be sent off who-knew-where. I didn't want that." She froze. "I've been a good Guide for centuries. The best Guide. I followed the rules, I guided ghosts to their afterlives, I protected the demon door honorably."

"The demon door." Avery peered towards the basement. "A demon door popped up here; did they pop up in other locations at the same time? Or just now, after Jessamine fulfilled the prophecy?"

"I don't know." Ada joined her hands, massaging them together. "I had a limited amount of time to speak with Nevada, but as far as I could tell, they've been aware of a door in their basement for a while. They didn't know its purpose, and it smelled off to them, so they steered clear of it, and ensured spirits didn't go in."

Avery got up and smacked his hands on his thighs. "They've had a demon door for who knows how long, and you didn't bother to check, didn't bother to explain? And they didn't ask?" He huffed. "Gosh, you Guides are complicated. How is this possible? How are you all so... so... inattentive?"

If he'd noticed a random door showing up in a home he'd lived in for centuries, he'd have started asking questions, for sure. Why were these Guides so straight-laced, so stuck in their ways that they wouldn't question something off?

"Look, we have a natural order of things," said Ada, starting to sound irritated. "There's a balance, and we all knew that balance would be tested. And we all knew other portals would come to be. Some would take in our spirits, some would absorb creatures we didn't know the names of. Some would produce more of us Guides. Our existence, our purpose—it's all a bit vague, even to us."

Avery rubbed his temples. "How did you come to be?"

"No," Ada shook her head, "that's a story for another time. It's too long and too difficult to explain. Know this," she fixed on him with a firmness he'd forgotten she was capable of, "all Guides were created equal."

"Except for you, apparently," hissed Avery under his breath.

She ignored him. "We all received our instructions at the same time, when we arrived: to oversee the souls of dead humans, and ensure they ended up where they belonged. In a realm we couldn't access, but could open the door to. The ghost portal." She inhaled, filling herself with air, perking her chest out. "We did know malicious forces would rise. Not all spirits would be at ease, nor would they all let us guide them appropriately. Some would be easy, some would grow enraged. A realm would come to be, one where the misunderstood spirits would flock, but we didn't know its name, nor when or if it would show up. I knew immediately when our demon door came. Not all Guides will have sensed theirs, as not all doors populated at the same time."

Avery snickered. For someone who claimed to not know much, she in fact knew too much.

"You're created equal, you say," he let out a chortle, "but you're not equal, are you? Not if you don't all feel the same things at the same time."

"Perhaps. Equal, but different in our demeanors, in our strengths." She winced. "And I think our demonic realms are different, too. For one thing, Nevada had a different name for theirs. Evil lair, they called it."

Avery refrained from laughing again. "Evil lair, wow, creative."

"We're not known for our creativity," said Ada, a sharp edge to her tone. "Others call it the underneath or the other place. But that's beside the point. The point is, we all knew something would exist... and I was the only one who knew that that something would be a terrible realm that would be opened and corrupted."

"And you said nothing." Avery wrinkled his nose and kicked at a clump of dirt near the pile of bricks he'd sat on. "That goes back to my point—you're selfish, self-righteous. You worried about them not believing you, but you didn't even bother to try. Don't you think they'd have rallied with you instead of pointing out your differences? Don't you trust in your kind to have your back?"

She always spoke of Guides as this revered, incredible species of who-knew-what, yet now she painted them in a darker light, showing they were flawed, not as perfect as she kept claiming.

Though Avery was angry, the growl that reverberated through the space wasn't his; it was Ada's.

"I've had enough of your attitude," she said, threat rampant in her deeper timbre. Her blue shade flickered with gold and orange, as if she were igniting on the inside. "You're not a Guide, you never will be. You're not in my position, are you? So perhaps you should stop judging me."

Avery folded his arms and studied her through slitted eyes. "I'm pretty pleased I'm not a Guide, actually."

"I heard a prophecy," said Ada, swishing up to hover before him, her forehead aligned with his. She was hot, suffocatingly so, and Avery flinched at her proximity, her heat. "And I kept it to myself hoping it wouldn't come true, not hoping to avert it myself. I'm not as self-serving as you'd like to portray me."

Avery sought to stand tall and straight in front of her, but the continuous blinking of the hues of gold and orange in her body, like flashing lights, destabilized him.

"You... you're not trustworthy, though." He pinched his lips, looking down his nose at her, as best as he could considering she was slowly blinding him. "How are we supposed to follow your orders, to trust you want the best for the world if you keep so many secrets, even from your own kind?"

She blew up. Her form was larger, higher, hotter than Avery had ever felt it, pressing into his body with such ferocity he tripped backwards and fell onto his ass. She wasn't corporeal, yet he'd sensed her as if she were a brick wall about to shoot through him.

"Young man, you fail to see the point I wish to make, and I'm growing quite tired of you." She inhaled, exhaled, and a surge of lava-like heat blew over Avery's cheeks as she floated above him, as if about to crush him. "That prophecy I heard, it came true. It came true because you enabled it, let us not forget. Did you not come here to consult me, to offer me your help in fixing what you'd done? Yet you dare to speak down to me as if I'd committed the gravest of sins?"

Avery gulped, unwillingly averting his gaze. He couldn't look at her without sensing his retinas burning. "Fuck you."

"No, young man." Ada used her power to force his chin up, to consider her. "You have no room to judge. You're lucky to be alive, lucky your destiny is essential and tethered to Jessamine's. If you weren't the only way to stop her, you'd be dead because of what you did." Her words were heated, each letter smacking into Avery's cheeks, branding them. "If you wish to stay alive and keep helping, remember your place. Benevolent as I can be, you know first-hand that I can and will kill any human who threatens me and mine. And that includes you."

The violence in her tone illustrated her sentences, proved them.

Avery sealed his lips shut, and though he imagined ten thousand ways to torture this blue-bodied being until she suffocated and disappeared, he nodded.

He thought of Amy—and that reminded him that yes, Ada could kill him too, if she wanted.

He didn't want to die yet, and certainly not at her hands.

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