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The noise was greater than any Quentin and I had ever made upon landing. It was meteoric. Cataclysmic. But I’d absorbed none of the shock. The shock was heaped upon the rest of the world, and the planet would have to deal with it.
I stood up in the middle of a smoking crater. I was untouched. My lack of injury made perfect sense.
I saw Guanyin kneeling over Quentin’s body, and I clambered out of the depression to their side. She was checking him with her hands, much as I’d done, but this time it meant something.
Guanyin looked up at Erlang Shen and then gave me a bitter smile.
“I sure can pick ’em, huh?” she said wryly.
“He had us all fooled. Can you heal Quentin?”
“I can try to restore Quentin, or I can help you end this,” she answered. “But not both. It’s taking most of what I’ve got to hold the two of them back, and I don’t have enough karmic juice to go around. I’m already bewitching too many people right now to keep this fight a secret.”
That she didn’t talk about Quentin like he was dead gave me a thump of hope in my chest. “Fix him,” I said. “Please.”
“The two of you will be on your own afterward. You’re asking me to put my faith in you.”
“We can do it.” I was ready to lie to her to get Quentin back, but this felt like the truth.
“Very well.” She cleared a space around him and put her hands on the sides of his face.
A sphere of energy encircled them both. Quentin and Guanyin began twitching. Their movements weren’t voluntary, especially not his. The little settlings of his stony form and her breathing were being played at higher than normal speed. And, I soon noticed, in reverse.
Dust around them that had risen sank back down to the ground. Errant stalks of dry grass cartwheeled backward, cleaning up their tracks as they went. A tiny beetle caught in the bubble moonwalked away.
A rocky splitting noise sent fear through my spine, but it was only the seam on Quentin’s body sealing up. The gray pallor of his skin dissolved, and it became warm and touchable once more.
Guanyin was winding back causality itself. Undoing the passage of time.
She was so powerful. I had to fight the urge to fall to my knees and clasp my hands together in awe.
Quentin awoke with a gasp. He scrambled back from Guanyin in surprise. She staggered to her feet, breathing heavily.
“Well,” she said, “that’s everything I’ve got left in the tank.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. The goddess looked pale and bloodless, as if she’d traded her very life for Quentin’s.
“I’ll recover once I’m back in Heaven, but I won’t be doing that particular trick again for another century or three,” she said, her voice already wavering like a ghost’s. “Which means it’s all on you to clean up properly. I don’t even have the energy to maintain my grip on Earth right now.”
She sounded like we were about to lose connection for who knew how long. I had to choose my remaining words to her carefully.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you!”
“You can thank me by winning,” she answered. “I’m not supposed to condone physical violence, but when it comes to those two laan zai . . .”
I raised my palms upward and then clenched my fists. “I promise to serve as your mortal intermediary.”
Guanyin smiled. She fritzed once, twice. And then she was gone.
I couldn’t escape the feeling that I’d been dropped off at the world’s coolest party by the world’s coolest older cousin.
“What just happened?” Quentin asked.
“You died and came back to life,” I said. “Get with the program.”
Even after all that, Guanyin had given us one last gift. Her spells were wearing off gradually instead of blinking out with her. In the sky, Erlang Shen pounded on the barrier, which looked to be on the verge of shattering, and Red Boy was only now picking up speed again.
I pointed Quentin upward. “Body block him,” I said. “Don’t let him near me for a minute.”
