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?”