I walked arm in arm down the street with Yunie as if she were showing me how beautiful this day was. Quentin came around the corner and she nodded at him. You know, to be neighborly. He fell in beside us without a word, understanding that this was her show.
Somewhere through the fuzz in my head, a bell jangled. We’d entered a nearby coffee shop. It was private in the way that only a really packed place could be. No one noticed the bat demon hanging from the ceiling, also wrapped in co
ncealment. It was licking a croissant.
We sat down at a miraculously empty table without buying anything. It looked like it had been scavenged from one of the school libraries. I recognized the gray Formica from Ji-Hyun’s tour.
“You and Quentin probably want to know what’s going on,” Yunie said.
I didn’t nod.
“It’ll be easier to show you than explain.” She reached into her purse and took out a giant phone the size of a small tablet. It wasn’t hers. She thumbed through the image library until she found a video. After plugging in some ear buds, she handed the phone to me. I pressed play.
The recording was of a different building than the one we’d left. A small campus gym made out of aged brick, not one of the big glass-walled ones that was open all hours. The footage must have been shot by a neighbor across the street, maybe for a noise complaint because it was night. And a series of loud crashes came from the double door. The sound of a crowd running into locked pushbars.
“What exactly is happening here?” I said.
She looked glad I was speaking again. “After the demons came through the pool, they panicked and scattered everywhere across campus.”
“Why do you know this?” I shrieked.
“Shhh,” Yunie said. “Keep watching.”
Another crash, this time with sparks. The sign of concealment failing. “Holy mother!” the person recording yelled. “Look at this!”
I was. The picture was incredible, the camera phone expensive. The operator a good shot. I could make out with perfect clarity the doors bursting open and a horde of demons piling into the street.
It was a testament to the videographer’s modern priorities that they didn’t run away or hide. They screamed and swore but kept recording, even when one of the slavering demons spotted the human holding a funny metal rectangle. It opened its crocodilian jaws and got ready to pounce.
“Jesus, is this person dead?” I said. I looked around the underside of the phone for blood.
“You’re going to miss the best part!” Yunie hissed. She turned it back over.
“Stop right there!” a very familiar voice said in the recording. The camera panned to the side, catching a blob of light before focusing on a very familiar face. Yunie’s.
In the video, my friend rode a majestic white horse. The stallion had antlers and armor encasing its flanks. I recognized the proud, strong shine in its eyes. It was Ao Guang.
I remembered my Journey to the West. Dragons could turn into horses. The Guardian of the Eastern Sea had transformed into a mount for my friend.
He reared up on two feet and neighed ferociously. Yunie stayed in perfect control. She looked like a Valkyrie, come to collect the souls of the fallen.
“Wow,” she said, examining the yaoguai from her perch atop the dragon horse. “You—you are an eclectic-looking bunch, aren’t you?”
She pointed at a feathered, raptor-y one in the front. “Are you like a dinosaur? Are demons allowed to come in dinosaur? How does that work, paleontologically speaking?”
The yaoguai went mad, half at her flippancy and half from her spiritual presence. I’d been told repeatedly that my friend was the type of person that yaoguai liked to eat best, but it was startling and horrifying to see the effect Yunie had on them. Drool went flying. Teeth snapped together. They rushed at her and Ao Guang with such hunger that I had to look up at the Yunie next to me to assure myself she’d survived.
Yunie in the recording faced the demon charge with poise. She reached into a bejeweled saddlebag and pulled out a scroll. With only a few feet left to go before they reached her, she unfurled it.
A wash of light burst forth from the scroll’s contents. The yaoguai recoiled, spitting and screaming like vampires in the sun.
“All right, listen up, assholes!” she yelled. “My name is Eugenia Park, and I bear the seal of my friend Eugenia Lo Pei-Yi, the Divine Guardian of California! I carry her mandate, which demands and compels your obedience!”
I could make out writing on the scroll. Long, flowing classical strokes that glowed in amber. The characters were steeped in Guanyin’s magic. And on the bottom, shining white-hot like cigarette burns, were my chop seals.
Yunie was holding the scroll I’d stamped before I left. Guanyin had done a bit of reverse-forgery and laid out the terms of the truce I’d negotiated with Tiny on the blank paper, sealing the whole deal with powerful magic. She must have given the contract to Yunie during that brief period where she’d disappeared to check the Earth end of Ao Guang’s rift.
“You will get back inside, calm down, and stay there until further notice!” Video Yunie roared. She was really in her element. “The Shouhushen has given her word that you will be cared for so long as you follow her rules! Disobey and you’ll be in for a world of hurt!”