It really didn’t. My skeptical side was taking an absolute beating right now. But science! I wanted to shout. Empirical thought! Magnets!
“I know you might be a bit confused,” Guanyin went on. “But by and large, there’s no need to be. Earth is still Earth. Your universe is still your universe. It’s just that sometimes there’s bleed-over from other spiritual dimensions. Like today, for instance.”
I wasn’t sure what other kind of explanation would have kept my head from spinning, so I decided I’d have to roll with this one. Gods in Heaven. Check.
“To preserve order and stability, we retain dominion over the mortal realm in many areas,” Erlang Shen said, interjecting in case I’d gotten the wrong idea about the power balance. “Such as those involving yaoguai.”
Quentin slapped the nearest wall at the end of his lap around my kitchen. “Yes!” he said, his not-great patience already running thin. “Can we talk about that for a moment? Why a bunch of demons I personally dispatched a long time ago suddenly show up out of the blue?”
I cared more about the broader issue than the particulars of whom Quentin killed or didn’t kill once upon a time. “Why are there any demons walking around my town in the first place?” I asked, raising my voice above his. “These aren’t ye olden days of legend!”
“And why did Tawny Lion claim that more are coming!?” Quentin shouted, topping me with one last demand.
Erlang Shen met our agitation with stoicism. He picked up his tea, quaffed it, and set his cup down before speaking.
“The answer to all of your questions is that there’s been a jailbreak,” he replied.
Quentin couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “A jailbreak? From Diyu?”
“Yes. A number of yaoguai have escaped the plane of Hell, and we have good reason to believe they’re headed to Earth, if they’re not here already.”
Quentin didn’t respond, either a minor miracle in itself or a sign of impending disaster. He rubbed his face up and down.
“You would have learned about this had you not run off to Earth, itching for a fight, at the first sign of demonic presence,” Guanyin said to him gently.
“Hold up,” I said. “That doesn’t explain why a bunch of these escaped demons showed up in my hometown. There’s nothing special about Santa Firenza.”
“Of course there is,” Erlang Shen said. “You.”
It was my turn to go mute.
Erlang Shen saw that he needed to elaborate. He took the lid off the teapot and pushed it to the center of the table. This explanation needed props, apparently.
“Imagine the tea leaves are yaoguai,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. I had chosen the glass set, so I could see the loose tea scattered across the bottom of the broad, round pot.
Erlang Shen held up his index finger. “And this is you. The Ruyi Jingu Bang, former axis of the Milky Way.”
He dipped his finger into the vessel. The pale green liquid began swirling around it in a miniature vortex. The tea leaves were whisked along by the flow, rising and falling in a tightening loop, faster and faster until Erlang Shen ceased the water’s motion. Once everything had settled, there was a tight pile of tea debris gathered right under the spot he was pointing at.
He withdrew his finger and flicked the moisture away.
“Every otherworldly being has its own spiritual gravity,” he said. “That’s why they aggregate in the same general locations instead of dispersing to the four corners of the Earth. They’re drawn to existing supernatural masses like moons around a planet. You are what’s pulling them to this location.”
I looked at Quentin. He looked at me.
“Technically, the Monkey King also being here makes it even worse,” Erlang Shen said. “It’s not fate or destiny that has you running into your old enemies. Sun Wukong and the Ruyi Jingu Bang are each the equivalent of a black hole. Any yaoguai that come to Earth are going to get sucked into your orbits, without fail. It’s just a matter of how close and how fast.”
“Oh my god,” I said. “You’re telling me a horde of demons is going to show up on my doorstep?”
“If only,” Erlang Shen said, insensitive to how that sounded. “Then it would be a lot easier to track them down. I’d say they could show up anywhere within a couple hundred miles around your physical location, give or take.”
That wasn’t a whole lot better. I mean, it was, but still not great.
“Please tell me you’re going to do something about this,” I said. “You can’t let demons from Hell wander freely over the entire Bay Area.”
“Heaven has a plan to deal with the situation.” Erlang Shen stretched in his chair with the litheness of a panther, hinting at a wiry martial artist’s build under his suit. “My uncle the Jade Emperor has decreed that the fugitive yaoguai will be apprehended by a pair of champions who are well-tailored to facing this particular menace.”
“Okay then.” I breathed a little easier. “I’m glad you and Guanyin are on the job.”
The god returned to his normal posture and fixed me with a pointed stare. “I wasn’t talking about us.”
I didn’t get it. Were there other divine beings nearby I didn’t know about?
Quentin coughed and kicked the back of my seat.
Oh.
Ohhh.
Oh fu—
19
I don’t think I could be blamed for being slow on the uptake. It isn’t like one gets conscripted as a demon hunter on the reg.
“Whoa,” I said. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. That is a bad idea. A very bad idea.”
“I wish I could say that the circumstances were different, and that the two of us could take charge,” Guanyin said. “But for better or worse, the Jade Emperor’s policies adhere strictly to the philosophy of wu wei.”
“Without action?” I asked, translating the words directly.
“Yes. The belief that doing nothing is the best, most natural way to behave. That everything will play out as it should, as long as you don’t interfere. This is why he’s ordered the rest of the pantheon to stand by as Sun Wukong and the Ruyi Jingu Bang take care of the problem. The two of you are not true gods, so you don’t represent a commitment of Heavenly resources.”
I glanced at Quentin. His face said, I told you so. This must have been why he was so reluctant to call upon divine help in the first place. The favor they’d done for us today was snowballing out of control.
“It is the Way of Heaven to act on Earth through lesser intermediaries,” Erlang Shen said. “This is how it’s been through the centuries, from the first dynastic kings to Xuanzang to now.”
“But I’m not the intermediary you want doing this!” I said. “I don’t know anything about monsters and magic. You want some kind of sorcerer with a cage full of gremlins. Or a wushu master who’s been training his whole life for this sort of thing.”
“Did you not just wipe the floor with several yaoguai at once today?” Erlang Shen asked.
“I don’t . . . I can’t do that on command.”
“Then I suggest you learn how. And quickly.”
“What happens if I say no?”
“Look, I don’t think you understand,” he said. “You don’t have any choice in the matter.”