by F. C. Yee
I wanted to tell him that his deadline was dumb and unfair. And to break his nose for how sexist and racist his other comment was. But before I could do either, a greasy, crumpled-up paper bag landed at our feet.
“Ax, you don’t even go here!” a girl shouted from the third-floor window. “Get the hell out before I call campus security!”
Ax backed away from the building with his arms upturned and a big smile on his face. “First they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then they fight you. And then you win.”
▪ ▪ ▪
I ran up the stairwell of Ji-Hyun’s apartment building, taking the steps three by three. For now, I had to set aside the conversation with the guy in designer jeans who had the nerve to unironically compare himself to Gandhi using quotes that weren’t historically accurate in the first place.
I knew I would find Quentin on the roof. Not through any sort of magical detection, but because I knew his habits. Whenever he needed to scramble, disappear, or be alone, he always clambered straight up.
He and I had done the same in my school the first time my Ruyi Jingu Bang powers had manifested themselves. Or really, he’d done the climbing while I panicked and screamed the whole time because my arm had turned into a gigantic stretchy noodle.
Was it weird that I missed those times? Back then, I only had to worry about my town getting eaten and burned by demons. There was no time for existential crises about my future.
The door to the roof had been locked. In my hurry I accidentally snapped it going through. Whoops. On the other side, though, among the ventilation housing and some forgotten rusty deck chairs, was Quentin. He held the shining mass of ectoplasm in his arms.
As I approached, it snapped into the form of a cube. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Quentin said to it soothingly. “She’s my friend.”
I suppose I could have been annoyed that he’d referred to me as just “a friend,” but then again, this was a supernatural cube, not an Oscars acceptance speech. “What is that?” I said. “I’ve never seen a yaoguai like that before.”
“It’s not a yaoguai.” The corners of the block softened back into a blob as he gently jounced it. “It’s a formless spirit from another realm. A being of pure meditative consciousness. I guess Guanyin’s alarm doesn’t make the distinction between non-god unearthly creatures.”
For whatever reason I didn’t like him criticizing Guanyin right now, even if he was stating facts. “All right, so how did it get here?” I snapped.
The spirit turned a deeper shade of crimson. Quentin leaned back and crooked his head toward the direction of the pool. “I think it followed in the wake of Ao Guang’s retreat. It’s scared. Formless spirits aren’t supposed to feel emotions, but this one is terrified.”
It shuddered against him. He pressed his ear closer to the skin of the creature. “Is it . . . saying something?” I asked.
Quentin frowned deeply.
“Yin Mo,” he said. “It’s screaming Yin Mo.”
▪ ▪ ▪
We thought the spirit might be more comfortable inside, so we went down the stairwell to Ji-Hyun’s apartment. We knocked on the door and she let us in, not questioning Quentin’s presence or why he, to her, appeared to be holding a big bag of nothing against his shoulder, like the parent of an invisible baby.
“Yunie’s sleeping it off,” Ji-Hyun said. “So, you know. Volume.”
“Do you have someplace Genie and I can talk?” Quentin asked her.
She led us into an empty bedroom draped in tie-dye sheets and posters that were completely blank, presumably blacklight designs. The nubs of scented candles littered the desk and windowsills. A pretty impressive wine cork collection had been started by the occupant. It was only a few more bottles of rosé away from a complete pushpin board.
“About what happened earlier . . .” Quentin said after Ji-Hyun closed the door.
“What about what happened earlier?” I said. “I thought you wanted to discuss how there’s a hole in the fabric of existence next door that’s leaking ghostly amoeba.”
“No, I wanted to talk about how you mucked up the Mandate Challenge!”
Oh, nelly. We were going to go there, weren’t we? I sucked in air to oxygenate my arguing muscles.
“We were straight on course to having a better leader than the Jade Emperor, and then you derailed the whole train!” Quentin said. “There’s no telling what’ll happen now!”
His lack of faith disturbed me. “Quentin, I don’t want a better god, I want the best god,” I said. “The fact that you don’t consider that to be Guanyin is either very wrong or very telling. After all the times she’s saved your ass in this era and the last, you’re really saying you’d rather work for your bro from Party Central over her?”
Bro code dictated that Quentin defend his friend’s honor. “First off,” he said. “Guan Yu is a tactical genius. Just because he likes to have fun doesn’t mean he wouldn’t make a great King of Heaven. And second, you’re forgetting that Guanyin is my closest friend, and I trust her to make her own decisions, unlike you!”
I couldn’t tell what made me more angry, Quentin calling someone other than me his closest friend, or him claiming more of Guanyin than I could. Both felt deeply wrong.
“Sometimes the people close to you don’t share everything!” I said. “Sometimes they want things they don’t tell you about!”
“Yeah,” he said, looking extra hurt. “Like the fact that you’re considering not going to college?”
The spirit in his arms flailed its pseudopods and turned as purple as a Concord grape. Quentin maneuvered his face out of its thrashing like he was avoiding getting smacked by a toddler.
“That’s right,” he went on before I could say anything, as if he’d found damning evidence that I’d been cheating on him. “I heard the whole thing with you and that Ax guy. When we first met, you would have slapped someone across the face for suggesting you give up on your education. And now you’re going to throw away your dream for money?”
“Quentin, to a very large extent, college was about money! The whole point of getting my degree was so that I could make more money as an adult! I may not be able to wait that long anymore!”
I hadn’t had time to weigh Ax’s proposition before, but now that I was talking about it out loud, it sounded less like a fevered delusion and more like a real option. My family needed money, didn’t they? I needed to take care of my family, didn’t I? Well, now I had the means dangling in front of me. The only requirement was that I sell out my core identity to take on an unbelievable risk because a complete stranger told me to. Simple as that.
The ironic thing was that I was incredibly lucky—privileged—to have this choice. If I didn’t live in the one part of the country that sailed on a sea of bloated promises, swollen wallets, and computer code, I would never have gotten close to such a big pile of cash in such a short amount of time. Hooray for the Bay Area.
“I can’t believe this,” Quentin said. “Since we met, our lives revolved around school! We scheduled demon hunts around it! In the course of one weekend, you’re going to decide that none of that mattered?”
I pointed at him. “When we met, you were an insufferable asshole! Things change, people change, and if you’re going to imply that I’m the only person not allowed to change, then you’d better get the hell out right now because I’m not here for it!”
The blob suddenly shifted into a tetrahedron, then a sphere, and then a spiky sea urchin shape. Quentin tried to keep it still.
“It’s reacting to your emotions!” he hissed at me. “Calm down!”
“And not yours?” I whisper-shouted back. “You calm down!”
Quentin paused and then bit back whatever he was going to say. Not in front of the blob!
We glared furiously at each other while he gently patted the spirit, comforting it back into its amorphous, pale-hued state. “I’m going to find a safe place to put this thing,” he said. “Call me once you’ve defeated wh
atever Genie doppelganger I’m talking to right now.” He opened the door and walked out of the bedroom.
“That doesn’t even make sense!” I yelled at his back as he left the apartment. I had the distinct feeling the blob had sided with him over me during the argument, and it pissed me off.
Ji-Hyun looked at me from the kitchen. She was stirring a Bloody Mary with a celery stalk.
Ah, hell. We hadn’t used a silence spell, and she’d heard the whole thing. Silence was the first piece of magic I’d ever seen Quentin do, and we’d forgotten. Our negligence was getting out of control.
“I’m not going to judge you two for arguing over a video game, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Ji-Hyun said. “I know they can get pretty intense, and if that’s what you two center your relationship on, then that’s what’s important to you.”
I didn’t follow her until I realized that was how she’d interpreted our nonsense words. King of Heaven. Demon hunts. It probably sounded like guild drama in an MMORPG. I knew a couple of friendships at SF Prep that had ended over such issues.
“But you need to learn how to fight with each other better if you want your relationship to succeed,” she said.
“I thought successful relationships meant never fighting.”
Ji-Hyun chose to drink half of her brunch cocktail before explaining. I waited.
“That’s not the case at all,” she said. “Everyone fights. The important part is being fair to each other while you’re doing it. The two of you are good at expressing what you feel, which is nice, but you’re crap at acknowledging why you feel it. I give you a flat C.”
The rules of hospitality prevented me from telling the older girl off. Instead I narrowed my eyes at her.
Ji-Hyun pointed to herself with her celery. “Burgeoning doctor, remember? I have a full complement of Intro Psych courses under my belt.”
She bit the stalk with a crunch. “I really should be charging you money for this advice.”
15
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” I said. “You were at death’s door this afternoon.”
“I feel better now,” Yunie said. She craned her neck in the mirror as she put in her other earring. Music pumped faintly through the door. It was coming across the pool, from the other building in the complex. The festivities had shifted location. To the other side of the spirit-vomiting waters.
“Ji-Hyun isn’t partying tonight,” I said. “She’s with her study group.”
“Yeah, her study group at the grad center bar.” Yunie made the tippy-drinky motion with her hand. “I’m not going to have anything. Or at least I’m not going to have anything out of a Solo cup ever again. Yeesh.”
I couldn’t believe that my friend, or anyone else for that matter, had the endurance for this. I’d once chased a horse demon twenty miles down Highway 101 in the dead of night without breaking a sweat, but trying to be social throughout last night’s party had crushed me into a marble.
A knock came at the door. It was too genteel to be Quentin, and Ji-Hyun would have let herself in, so I assumed it was one of her ghost roommates, who theoretically existed and yet were never here.
When I opened the door I got a surprise.
“What?” Guanyin said, reading my face. “Is now a bad time?”
When I couldn’t muster a response, the goddess stepped inside and closed the door behind her discreetly. If the filthiness of Ji-Hyun’s apartment bothered her, she didn’t let it show.
It was surprisingly difficult to process this visit. Guanyin came on official business or in times of desperate need. She didn’t show up out of the blue, like a mortal who needed to talk.
“I need to talk,” she said.
Wow. Okay. I looked around for a clean place to sit and saw Yunie staring at us.
The wrongness of this situation jumped an order of magnitude higher.
“Hi,” Yunie said. “You must be Guanyin.”
“Yunie,” the Goddess of Mercy said with a fixed smile. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
And then that was it. They didn’t say anything else or shake hands. I provided zero conversational help.
It was because I had absolutely no plan for a meeting like this. In fact, it was explicitly never supposed to happen. Guanyin was breaking the promise she’d made to me to keep anything supernatural as far away from Yunie as possible. And the goddess herself counted.
While I knew Guanyin could be trusted to the ends of the universe, she represented so much magic walking around that it was as if the guy holding the suitcase of ballistic missile launch codes had strolled into the apartment. It was technically safe, but I still didn’t want it near my human friend.
Yunie tapped her foot, a musician waiting for her entrance.
“So you’re the person taking up all of Genie’s time,” she said with what was supposed to be a joking lilt.
Oh dear.
“She and I do important work together,” Guanyin said after a pause. “Of course, it’s all very behind-the-scenes, but regular people like you benefit.”
Ohhhhhh dear.
Guanyin’s number one concern was humanity, of course, but her complete lack of bias toward individuals sometimes made her come off as cold. Like she thought people were interchangeable. That was . . . an incompatible philosophy with Yunie’s worldview. And self-view.
“I mean, it must be important work,” Yunie drawled. “She comes back with her clothes torn, like she’s been attacked by wild animals. I once saw her arm looking all metal-y. I hope that with everything she does, she’s not in any danger. That she has enough support.”
Guanyin let slide the implication that she wasn’t giving me enough help. Or maybe she didn’t let it slide, because there was another awkward silence. The goddess towered over my friend as they stared at each other.
Is that what the height difference looks like when I stand next to Yunie? I thought. Damn.
Guanyin smiled again. “Could you give us a moment alone, dear?” she said to Yunie.
Yunie’s nostrils flared. She didn’t “give people moments alone” with me. Even Quentin knew not to ask her that. When my boyfriend needed to talk to me in private, he waited until Yunie lost interest in us and drifted away like a cat moving on to a different toy.
I made a helpless face at her. She frowned and went outside.
“Our agreement, remember?” I whispered at Guanyin once Yunie shut the door. “Work and her are never supposed to meet!” I slashed my hands up and down through the air to make a visual of the separation.
“I remember,” Guanyin said dryly. “You remind me quite often. Of all the things you’re supposed to be diligent about as the Shouhushen, that’s the only one you’ve never let your guard down on.”
“For good reason. You said you needed to talk?”
Guanyin nodded. “I received an update from Heaven.” She paused. “I’m in. I’m in consideration for the Mandate.”
I refrained myself from grabbing her and lifting her into the air as she’d done me. Her head would have punched a hole in the ceiling. Instead I grinned wildly at her and clapped with my fingertips.
“Tomorrow morning the other gods and I are going to gather at Ao Guang’s rift and go through it the opposite way,” Guanyin said. “The unfortunate reality is that whatever defeated him is likely to chase him through the same pathway he retreated along.”
I winced. “And that path ends here.” An enemy strong enough to provoke an upheaval of the cosmic order had a red carpet leading to Earth. Forget “Earth”; it was right next door, in the pool. There was more at stake here than who got to rule Heaven. If this Yin Mo made it past the party of gods, then humanity was in deep trouble.
Guanyin patted my shoulder reassuringly. “It’ll have to get through some of the finest warriors of Heaven.”
“And you.” Guanyin as the last line of defense was more reassuring to me than placing my trust in some disembodied voices. “You didn’t check in on us when Quentin�
��s alarm went off.”
“I trusted you to take care of it on your own. I need to do that more.” She fidgeted nervously, making me confused and worried. After some hand-wringing, Guanyin mustered herself, looking more vulnerable than I’d ever seen before. “I also need to thank you.”
So that was it. “Hmmmmm?” I said smugly, wanting to enjoy this moment for as long as possible. “I thought from the way you reacted, you didn’t want to be in charge of Heaven.”
“Of course I want to be in charge of Heaven,” Guanyin snapped, finally bursting through the wall of embarrassment. “Every god wants that. Nezha tries to be a selfless golden boy, and Guan Yu pretends he’s too rough around the edges for the office, but they both want it. I bet even the Great White Planet wishes he wore the crown himself, rather than having to anoint a new mandate owner time after time.”
“They’re all on my watch list, by the way,” I said.
“What?”
“My watch list for secretly being evil and betraying us,” I clarified. “After what happened with Erlang Shen? Any god we meet, I’m on the lookout for the slightest hint they’re evil. As soon as they do, BAM! Ruyi Jingu Bang right to their kneecaps.”
Guanyin sputtered silently, but as far as I was concerned my logic was flawless. Fool me twice, shame on me.
“You’re getting me off course,” she said. “The point is, very few gods approve of me or my methods. It’s not only the Jade Emperor that I’ve antagonized. When you nominated me, you couldn’t have known my history with the other gods, the way they speak to me, the compromises I’ve had to make simply to deal with them.”
I saw the strongest god I knew slump her shoulders. I thought of the many times in the past where instead of unleashing her full power, she had to work around rules and limitations imposed by the Jade Emperor. That had to be more exhausting than using her talents to the fullest.
She rubbed at her eyes with her fingers. “When you constantly hear that you can’t do something, or that your goal is out of reach, that it’s wrong for you to have ambitions, and you hear that message over and over again . . . you start to believe it yourself. That’s why I blew up at you earlier. I couldn’t reconcile the truth of what you were saying with the lies I’d accepted for so long.”
