All the Gates of Hell (10 page)

He frowned then. "As you wish, but Your -- Jin, I mean -- you're mistaken. I am not incarnate. I have simply taken an appropriate form."

Jin reached out and pinched his arm, hard.

"Ow!" said Frank, and Jin nodded.

"Feels physical to me," she said.

Frank rubbed his arm. "Your present circumstances must be confusing you, so I'll presume to explain: All
bodhisattvas
can assume corporeal form as appropriate or necessary. That's not the same thing as rejoining the Wheel of Life and Death."

Jin brightened. "Oh, you mean like my demon form?"

"Only one of many," he said, "but that's it exactly. I gather you've used this a time or two since your rebirth? You aren't actually reborn as a demon, are you? No. You simply change from one physical manifestation to another. In that form you are a demon just as I am a mortal youth now."

"Nice jacket, by the way," Jin said.

He looked at it as if he were seeing it for the first time. "Thank you. Judging appropriateness isn't one of my better skills, but I thought it was suitable."

Jin finished her own tea and put the mug down on her kitchen table. "All right, Frank, would you mind telling me why you're here?"

"To serve you, as I said. As I have been doing for some time."

"Yes, you did say. But is that all? Apparently I have some hidden reason to be here as I am now. I don't think it's beyond the pale to think that, perhaps, Guan Yin's trusted servant might know that reason and, indeed, might be present to help see that her -- my -- plan is carried out?"

As curious as he'd seemed before, Frank suddenly became even more interested in the kitchen and everything that was in it. He reached out and picked up an egg whisk. "What does this device do?"

"It disappears up your backside if you don't answer my question," Jin said sweetly.

Frank sighed in submission. "My being here is part of my service to you, yes, but your service has never been as simple as you seem to think."

"Frank, look at me," she said, and Frank obeyed. "All right now: do you know why I am here?"

"Yes, I do."

"Now we're getting somewhere. Tell me why I'm here."

"No," he said.

No
...?

"I'm not exactly current on this whole mistress/servant thing," Jin said. "And the idea of having a servant in the first place makes me a little queasy. Still, are you saying I can't give you an order? Because that's what I'm doing."

"I understand that, but I fear my answer must be 'no.' I have strict prior orders from you -- the immortal you -- that I am to reveal nothing of your intention to anyone, and especially not to your mortal incarnation."

"Frank -- "

Frank didn't look away. "Mistress, my duty to you is clear and, if disobeying you in this one matter and suffering your anger is the price of that, I will pay in whatever coin you require."

Jin rubbed the space between her eyes, wearily. "I've got to go to work in four hours and this mortal body is very tired. I'm going to bed."

"Very well. I shall stand guard outside your door."

She blinked. "Shouldn't you go home?"

"I have no home. My place is with you."

"Now wait a minute. I hardly know you..." Jin stopped, aware of how silly that sounded under the circumstances, but she couldn't just banish common sense and appearances so easily. "Look, you can't stay here."

He shrugged. "Not necessary. I can stand guard outside your apartment."

Jin realized he was serious. Letting him stay was against her better judgment, but she just shrugged. "Ok, fine. You can sleep on the couch if you want. I'm going to bed."

Jin put the bedroom door between them and felt a sigh of relief. Not because she was concerned about Frank in her apartment -- she had no doubt that he was exactly who he said he was, and there was no harm in him anywhere. Mostly she just didn't want him staring at her with those puppy dog eyes; when he did that he reminded her too much of Jeff. There had been no harm in
him
, either. Not really. But harm had happened regardless.

She needed to get to sleep, but there was still something she wanted to try first, even though she didn't have the vaguest clue of how to go about it. Then Jin had an idea. She called through the door.

"Frank? You awake?"

"Yes, Immanent-- Jin. Do you need assistance?"

"No, I need an answer."

"We did discuss this," he said.

Jin shook her head, forgetting for the moment that he couldn't see her. "No, I mean another answer. You can't tell me about Guan Yin's plans or purpose; I understand that. Can you tell me how to contact her?"

Silence for a moment, then. "But you
are
her."

Jin sighed and very quickly summarized her dream of Guan Yin. "You know how I did that?"

More silence. Then, "I think so. It's very difficult, though. Out of all the Guan Yins That Were, you'd have to find the right one."

"So how do I even start looking? Or are you allowed to say?"

"There were no instructions in this regard so I suppose so. You go to sleep," he said.

"That's it?"

"No. First you go to sleep. Then you open your Third Eye and search the past from the beginning of time."

Jin sighed. "Sorry I asked. Good night, Frank."

"Good night, Jin."

Jin got undressed and flopped into bed. She turned out the lamp on her night stand and stared at the darkness. If Frank was right she was beginning to see what Guan Yin meant about the difficulty in crossing the gap between them. Could she do it? She could try. But first she had to fall asleep and that, considering how tired she was, should have been the easy part. Only it wasn't.

Head's too busy
.

The strangeness of the day itself and her encounter with the skeletal girl and Shiro the Shadow had left her much more keyed up than she'd thought. Jin stared up at the ceiling for a long time, wide awake.

Best do some reading
.

She thought about the novel she'd abandoned on her night stand weeks ago, then changed her mind. It was a dog. Besides, the stelae in front of her was much more interesting. Something about Pharaoh Ramses the Great smiting some Nubians, or the like.

Stelae
...?

Jin blinked. She was standing in front of a stelae of limestone, and she was reading it. And it made perfect sense. She saw other stones beyond the first one, thousands in fact, almost a virtual forest of stone. Some in Chinese, some Greek, some Latin and, further away still, something that looked like what she thought was Sanskrit. She could read them all.

This is interesting
.

She thought, perhaps, it was even a little strange, but couldn't quite put her finger on why it should be. The stelae were all here, and of course she could read them -- the writing was plain enough. This one talked about a Han emperor's building projects. That one was a thank-you offering to Hermes for curing a case of gout. Another was just the Roman equivalent of "Eat at Joe's," though it certainly was a classier advertisement than any Jin had seen in a long time. Yet the thing they all had in common was how ordinary they all were, stripped of the mystery of time and language.

"People are all the same," she said aloud, as if it were a revelation. She knew it wasn't. Just one more of those ordinary facts, though this one wasn't written on any particular stone. Rather, in a way it was written on all of them, an echo of the human voices that survived from their time to Jin's.

"All time is the same," she said then, though she felt this was on shakier ground. According to her reading, all time was an illusion, but that didn't mean Joyce wouldn't fuss if she showed up late. Which reminded her that she'd have to get up soon. She wanted to check the time, illusion or no, but couldn't find the clock, or her bed.

I'll just have to look harder
, she thought, even though she finally understood why her bed and her clock were missing, and why she could read all those normally impenetrable scripts. She held the thought at bay, afraid the sharp edge of her understanding would pop this particular bubble of illusion before she was done with it. Jin opened her third eye.

She later wondered if perhaps, in hindsight, it was better not to think about what she had done before she did it. If she had, truly, thought about what she might see before she did, there's a good chance she'd have refused. It was like the old story about movie monsters. Sooner or later the camera would always pull back and reveal what had been scratching at the door or lurking in the cellar, and such things were always as terrifying as the art of makeup and special effects would allow. Yet the monster revealed was never as frightening as the monster one imagined.

When she opened her Third Eye in her dream, she did not see monsters. She did, however, see herself. Guan Yin was there, standing alone among all the now ghostly and insubstantial inscribed stones. She did not look very much like all her statues, and yet Jin recognized her without any doubt. It was easy enough. Except for what looked like a plain white robe and an unearthly glow, she looked exactly like Jin. "You're real," Jin said, then glanced at the stones, "they're not."

"Ohhhh, bother," said Guan Yin. "I didn't think you'd catch me so easily."

"If I'm you," Jin countered, "how can you ever be really far away?"

Guan Yin laughed. She had a nice laugh, Jin thought. Not mocking. Delighted, rather. Joyous. Even though Jin wanted to strangle her.

"Good one, Jin. Well, don't worry. I won't be so close or easy next time."

"Next time?"

"Of course. Do either of us believe I'm going to spill the proverbial beans now? Do we believe that you'll be content to just let it go and not try to contact me again? No on both counts, Luv. We know us too well."

Jin shrugged. "You more than me, and I hardly think that's fair."

Guan Yin was still smiling, but there was a somber note in her voice when she said, "Jin, I would not put either of us through this if there was any other way to save him. Believe me, I've been trying for most of a thousand years."

"Save him? You mean
Shiro
?"

Guan Yin put a finger to her lips. "Oopsie."

Jin wasn't stupid enough to think her divine self had made an actual mistake. More likely Guan Yin was going to give her just a little more this time, like throwing a dog a bone to distract her from the side of beef. Fine. Jin would take the bone, but that didn't mean she'd forgotten about the beef.

"I suppose Emma-O told you about him. Typical," Guan Yin said.

"Shiro can pass between the hells at will."

"Not quite as easily as that, but close enough. He has mobility, yes. Almost as much as we do. That's been a problem for a long time."

"He's somewhere in Medias, or was. That's another," Jin said.

"It will make avoiding him more difficult."

"Difficult? It's impossible! He shows up wherever I need to be! How the blazes am I supposed to avoid him, especially if I'm supposed to 'save' him somehow?"

"Hmmmm," was all Guan Yin said. Jin knew that sound. It was the exact same tone that Teacher took when he wasn't going to say any more on a particular subject.

"Look, can you at least tell me why I need to try and avoid him?"

Guan Yin laughed. "Jin, that's the one thing I really can't do. And by the way, we're almost out of time again. Pick better questions."

"Try this one, then: You've sent me a servant who withholds vital information. Why should I trust him any further than I can toss your sodding statue?!"

Guan Yin put her hands on her hips in gesture that reminded Jin a great deal of her friend and boss, Joyce. "For pity's sake, Luv, buy a clue! If the Celestial Youth tells you that it's raining gumbo, you better grab a bowl! He can withhold information at my command, but he can't lie. Not ever."

Jin groaned. "You're making my head hurt. Ok, fine. You can't tell me what to do about Shiro. You can't even tell me
why
you can't tell me. I'm up against something extremely nasty and you say I can't beat it!"

Guan Yin wasn't smiling now. She said, very slowly and clearly, "I never said you couldn't beat him. You already have the only weapon you need, but if I tell you what it is and how to use it then you won't have it anymore."

Jin looked at her. "Isn't there anything you can tell me? Anything at all?"

"Try trusting yourself a little more."

"Meaning you?"

"Meaning
you
," she said. "It's almost but not exactly the same thing. I'm counting on that 'not exactly,' by the way."

Jin sighed. "That's it?"

Guan Yin grinned. "One more thing, Luv. Close your Eye and open your eyes. It's time to wake up."

(())

Chapter 8

Jin dragged herself out of bed when the alarm rang, though she didn't remember much of what happened right after that. She had some vague memory of cooking breakfast, then a slightly less vague memory of an argument with Frank the Celestial Youth when she sent him out to locate Shiro.

"I'm not sure that's wise," he had said.

"I'm not sure I care at the moment," she said. "I'm not supposed to look for him. Did the previous me command
you
not to look for him?"

"Well...no."

"Then do it," Jin said. "Don't confront him, don't attack him, don't even get
near
him if you don't have to. I just want to know where he is."

Frank put on his nice leather jacket and left. Jin poured herself a third cup of black coffee and got ready for work. It occurred to her that the idea of having someone entirely at her at her disposal was a very strange one, and that it should be making her a lot more uncomfortable than it was. Yet any help she could get, she wanted.

Jin sipped her coffee, now wondering when her other promised assistant was going to show up... what was her name again? Dragon Princess? Something like that.

Jin had halfway expected to run into Teacher again on her way to work, but there was no sign of him. She arrived barely on time to find Joyce already there. She waved hello and then went to her own desk.