I was mixing my references but Erlang Shen appeared to follow well enough.
“We’ve only found sixteen so far, and already the grind is getting to me,” I said. “I can hardly believe it. What has happened to me since meeting Quentin and you and Guanyin has been the wildest mindbender imaginable and yet it still somehow turned into a grind like every other part of my life. At the current rate we’re pushing, I’m going to break down long before we catch the other eighty-two demons.”
“Ninety-two,” Erlang Shen corrected.
“See? I’m so burned out I can’t do basic math in my head. If you knew me, that would be a really worrying sign.”
I put my face in my hands. It stayed there long enough to trouble him.
“Genie?” he said tentatively.
“I haven’t talked to my best friend in a long time.”
It was the safety of my rabbit hollow that let me finally talk about what was truly wrong with this whole deal.
“I screwed things up with her really badly because of this demon business,” I said. “And I can’t even tell her why. She’ll never know what I’ve been doing, running around without her.”
Erlang Shen tiptoed around the cracks appearing in my voice, an arctic explorer suddenly finding himself on thin ice. “If she’s your friend, she’ll forgive you, no?”
“I don’t want her to forgive me. I’d rather she be angry at me forever.”
An outside observer would have assumed I was being illogical. And overdramatic. They’d tell me that Yunie and I could hash things out easily. Such a close friend would understand that I had good reasons for shutting her out recently and might even be okay with me not explaining them fully. She’d trust me when I told her I hadn’t ditched her for a boy.
Of course that was the case. I didn’t actually believe our eight-year relationship was completely over because of a single spate of neglectfulness on my part.
But that wasn’t the point. The looming monster here was the future, bearing down and unstoppable. Yunie and I were destined for different colleges, her to a specialized music program and me to any snob-factory that would have me. We knew this even before we entered high school.
We didn’t have much time left together. Our little routines were precious to me, and our big events even more so. The day when the two of us would have to buckle up and accept our inevitable drift apart was coming, and I didn’t want it to happen prematurely.
Reckoning with Yunie would be pulling up the anchor just a little bit farther. That was probably why I’d put it off for so long.
Erlang Shen, perhaps using some magical water-detecting sense, pushed the stack of flimsy brown napkins on the table over to me. I snatched them up and wadded them against my nose and eyes so that he couldn’t see my face.
Great, now I was blubbering in front of a god. Go me.
“I think of my family when things get rough,” Erlang Shen said. “When my resolve wavers.”
“The situation with them is even worse,” I said, muffled by the scratchy paper. “My parents think I’m a hot mess right now.”
“Not my point. What I’m trying to say is that the people we care about make the grind worthwhile. Even if the two never meet.”
He stared out the window, his fingers playing lightly against the table.
“The Jade Emperor doesn’t know about half of what I do in Heaven on his behalf,” Erlang Shen said. “And yet I put up with his incompetence, his passivity, his constant rejection. Because one day he’ll see me for my abilities. I want to show my uncle what I’m capable of more than anything else in the universe. Your friend. She means a lot to you?”
“I’d do anything for her.”
I surprised myself how easily and without embarrassment I said those words. Heartfelt declarations weren’t my strong suit.
“Then keep up the good fight, for her sake.” Erlang Shen smiled at me. “You know, when I originally fought back the waters of the Great Flood, I was trying to impress my uncle and the rest of the celestial pantheon. Not invent agriculture.”
I laughed in spite of myself.
“Genie,” Erlang Shen said. “I’ll talk to the Jade Emperor and convince him to let me help you.”
“I wasn’t trying to guilt you into—”
“No.” He shook his head. “I should have been right beside you from the start. It was a mistake not to be more hands-on.”
The weight in my chest lifted significantly. Sure, none of my problems had gone away. But given how few people with the full story were actively assisting me, my support network had risen by fifty percent.
“Thank you,” I said. “I really mean it. Thank you.”
The god shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. In the meantime, remember that Red Boy’s plan to keep you distracted has a chance to backfire on him. Each time you catch a lesser demon, you’re training your true sight muscle, not to mention your combat skills. Eventually you’ll get to the point where he can’t hide from you anymore, in this world or the next. When that happens, I’ll be right there with you for the showdown.”
“Red Boy wouldn’t stand a chance with you in our corner,” I said. “He’s a fire-type, right? If you’re the master of water, you can just put him out.”
Erlang Shen laughed as he got up and pushed in his chair. “It doesn’t work exactly like that.” Then he cocked his head, pursing his lips. “It works a little like that?”
I let the divine being leave first and gave him a few minutes to do whatever it was he needed to do to get back to Heaven. It seemed polite, though I’d only made that rule up in my head.
When I stepped out of the shack, Quentin was there by the roadside, waiting for me.
“Have a nice chat?”
I knew his peevish tone was his usual allergic reaction to Erlang Shen, but for some reason I didn’t field it well today.
“Yeah, we really connected on an emotional level,” I snapped. “I promised to turn into a stick for him.”
That was perhaps the weirdest, most hyper-targeted dig I’d ever leveled at someone, but boy did it work. Quentin looked like I’d broken him in half and left him on the curb for pickup. He was completely silent the entire trip back to civilization.
He didn’t call or text me that night either. It had become a little ritual for us to debrief and unwind over the phone after every yaoguai hunt ever since Baigujing but instead, radio silence.
While I could have reached out first to tell him I was extremely sorry he was being such a baby about this particular subject, I figured I had time to do it when I saw him at school. So I went to bed and thought little of it.
But I was wrong. Quentin wasn’t the type to stew in anger by his lonesome. He preferred action to waiting.
Which was likely why the very next day at school, I came upon him in the hallway making out with Rachel Li.
31
Well, this certainly escalated more than I was expecting.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. He and Rachel pulled away from each other, but not very far.
“Is this important?” she asked, her lips still wet.