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Yunie and I’d had a ton of arguments growing up. An inevitable consequence of being so close. But we’d never laid a hand on each other. I was always so much bigger that the lightest rough-housing would immediately lose its innocent edge. So as an only child, I never really knew what all-out fighting with a sibling felt like.
I did now. That was the strange new feeling. I was sister-fighting.
And losing badly. Guanyin was as lengthy as I was and possessed the massive strength that every god seemed to have, regardless of their magical specialization. And she was attacking me like someone who held the moral high ground. I couldn’t hit her back very hard in that situation.
No, I had to sit there and take it. Even though I was new to this, somehow I understood the unspoken rule of sister-fighting. The aggrieved party gets to be more vicious.
It took emptying the entire bottle of sanitizer on me to sate Guanyin’s rage. She threw the empty plastic container against my forehead, and it bounced away. Then she slumped back against the nearest cubicle wall and caught her breath. I stayed where I was, looking at the ceiling, and grinned uncontrollably.
“I believe the phrase you’re looking for is ‘Thank you,’” I said.
“You smarmy little know-it-all,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You just had to act out in front of the assembly of Heaven, didn’t you? You don’t understand what you’ve done.”
“On the contrary.” I struggled to my elbows. “I know exactly what I did.”
“Oh really?” Guanyin sneered. “You think because you talk to me you know what gods are like? You think you’re privy to the inner machinations of the celestial pantheon because you sat in on one meeting? There are institutional forces at work here, and you just blew your nose all over them!”
“Okay, let’s say you’re right,” I said. “The Jade Emperor and the other gods—I can’t comprehend what goes on in their heads. They don’t operate by human standards. I don’t know what they’re like. But I know you.”
I sat up and faced her. “You’re perfect for the job. You’re competent. Strong. And most importantly, you give a damn. Why would I not want a ruler of Heaven I can understand?”
Guanyin closed her eyes and thumped her head back against the cubicle wall.
“They don’t want me,” she muttered. “Why do you think I spend so much time on Earth? They don’t want me up there. You heard how they reacted.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Well screw them. What do you want?”
She tensed up so hard I thought she was going to explode like a grenade. But then she relaxed and glared at me. I smirked, knowing I had her.
“Okay, I’m sorry for not checking with you first,” I said. “That was very uncool of me. But if you truly don’t want to be in charge, if you don’t even want to try, then withdraw. Call the other gods again right now and tell them you don’t want to be part of the Mandate Challenge.”
Guanyin snorted and looked to the side. “You know if I’m stuck in Heaven, I won’t be able to babysit your dumb ass on Earth.”
My grin spread even wider. The seed of possibility had been planted in her mind.
“I didn’t do it to make my life easier,” I said. “Or yours. If you’re waiting for me to regret it, you might as well stop time right now, because it’s never going to happen. Ever. There is no one in this world or the next who should be in charge more than you.”
Guanyin sighed. The fight had gone out of her. “Shut the hell up,” she said. “And answer your stupid phone. That buzzing is driving me nuts.”
Yunie, I thought. I pulled out my phone only to find I was wrong. I had no call. And the buzzing got louder and louder.
Someone’s shoes entered my view. They were Quentin’s nondescript black oxfords, which met our school’s dress code. He’d never bothered to swap them out for another pair.
Quentin looked askance at the destruction that Guanyin and I had wrought in the office. Ten minutes were up. And on his ears, my enchanted demon-alarm earrings were vibrating so violently that it looked like he might take off and fly at any moment.
“Hey, so if you’re done with whatever you’re doing, someone’s about to get eaten,” he said.
14
It had been a long time since we’d done one of these. An old-fashioned hunt. Quentin’s earrings went off whenever a demon got really close to a human, which usually meant impending dinnertime for the yaoguai. We were on a clock.
And what made it even worse was the direction we needed to head was right back toward the college campus. I cursed up and down at my negligence. Yunie.
One of the things I’d learned about my friend was that she had an unbelievable amount of spiritual energy for a human being, rivaling Xuanzang from the days of yore. Which meant she stood out among a crowd as the absolute tastiest person to eat for a yaoguai bent on consuming power. For the sake of speed, Quentin and I left Guanyin behind with the mutual understanding that we could handle a basic hunt on our own.
Muscle memory took over hard. Acquire target. Get on Quentin’s back. Jump. Land. Start punching. It was so ingrained that Quentin and I found ourselves right back at Ji-Hyun’s apartment without thinking.
But the demon that had set off the earring alarm wasn’t a vicious beast about to devour my friend. It was a little iridescent blob that floated in the air, pulsating over the doorframe of the building like a party balloon. And the human it was drifting too close to was that Axton kid who’d walked into the pool and interrupted my talk with Ao Guang.
