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Guanyin reached out to either side of her, grabbing Quentin and Erlang Shen by the hand, hard enough to make them both wince. Since I was sitting across from her out of reach, I got the full force of her withering gaze.
“What’s going on right now?” she went on. “It’s like family business, when you look at it from a certain angle. Our little divine family is responsible for this awful mess, letting yaoguai run loose on Earth. But we’re going to clean it up.”
Now I knew where Guanyin was going with the metaphor. These weren’t words of comfort. These were twists of the knife.
“And the reason why we’re going to succeed is because we know what’s important.” She wagged Quentin and Erlang Shen’s hands up and down for emphasis. “What’s important is that we don’t let anyone else get dragged into our family garbage. If someone who isn’t family suffers because of our failings, then there isn’t a word for the kind of shame we should feel. Does everyone get me?”
No one spoke. My phone started vibrating again, loud and insistent, until I finally yanked it out and put it on silent.
“I’m so glad you all understand,” Guanyin said.
29
I looked at myself in the mirror and smoothed down the front of my dress. “I can do this,” I said. “I can do this.”
Mom poked her head into my room. “Do you remember when I last wore my pearls?” she asked.
“Huh? Why?”
She grunted at my inability to follow her logic with the precision of a mind reader. “Because if it was at Auntie Helen’s gathering, then they’re in a different jewelry box, not the normal one.”
I was so confounded that I forgot what I had been preparing the last few minutes to tell her. “Then just check the other jewelry box!” I said instead.
“Don’t raise your voice at me,” she muttered before sweeping back down the hallway.
I couldn’t really blame her for being scatterbrained at the moment. Yunie’s competition performance tonight had her excited beyond measure. She reveled in any opportunity to show that her in-group was better than someone else’s. And since volleyball was definitely not as prestigious as classical music on the Asian Parent Scale, I rarely scratched that itch for my mother in the right way.
She’d been looking forward to this night. It was too bad I’d have to ruin it for her.
I approached her in the kitchen as she was busy unwrapping hard candy so as not to make sounds during the performance if she needed a throat lozenge. She’d read that advice in an opera program once and had been fascinated with the idea ever since. Like it was the fanciest way possible to stifle a cough.
“Mom,” I said. This was it. “I invited Dad.”
She stopped what she was doing and looked up at me.
“He’s got a seat at the opposite wing of the hall. I’m not trying to trick you into talking to each other or anything. It’s just that it wouldn’t be fair if only one of you got to come.”
Somewhere in my head, the idea of telling her last minute so that she wouldn’t back out had played out better than it was doing right now.
Because right now was the part of the action film where she dipped her finger in the wound I’d opened on her, tasted her own blood, and sneered disdainfully at me. The juggernaut had been unleashed. The human era had ended. The language of man could not begin to describe what would happen next.
The doorbell rang.
“That’s not him,” I said quickly. Then I ran, because whoever the hell it was, they’d given me the timeliest of outs.
I opened the door. It was Quentin.
“Is that also proper gear for outdoor exercise?” he said, eyebrow raised.
I didn’t understand what he was referencing until I remembered that we normally snuck off to train at this hour. With everything that had been going on, I’d forgotten to cancel on him.
I closed the door behind me as silently as I could. “I can’t tonight,” I said. “I should have told you sooner. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” A roguish smirk spread over his face as he drank me in.
“Oh knock it off. Just because this is the first time I’ve worn something with bare shoulders around you doesn’t mean you need to be all ‘hurr, she cleans up real good.’ I know you think you’re being nice, but it’s condescending.”
“Turn true sight on,” Quentin said.
