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Zenos lifted a finger and pointed at Mulan’s rental van. “One of her family is hiding a big secret, Aran. I could tell ya what it is but then I would miss watching ya deal with it. Life is boring for immortals. We highly value our entertainment. It’s also going to be a lot of fun when the fairy pops free. Is yer life always this lively?”

I frowned at his predictions. Mulan’s people didn’t worry me, but Ezra escaping sure did. “Ya aren’t planning to aid the fairy in breaking free, are ya? Ezra wants me dead, Zenos. If he escapes, I’ll have to kill him.”

“Don’t be naïve, lass. Surely ya know the fairy’s been working on his escape this whole time. Yer angel stopped him good but he’s not caught in a void. And as loaded up as the fairy is on power, the magick that bound him will not hold him as long as ya were told it would. Angels are full of themselves. They screw up less often than most but they do screw up.”

“Do they screw up more than guardians?” I asked.

Zenos laughed at my question. “I think it would be fun to do a comparison.”

I rolled my eyes. “Did ya come to teach me or just harass me for yer amusement?”

“How mad would ya be if I said I came for both?”

I heard the teasing in his question so I let it slide. “What do ya know about the Wu Shaman’s family that I don’t?”

“Something juicy,” he teased.

I was about to demand the juicy details when the wards halfway up the driveway hit Mulan’s rental vehicle and flipped it up into the air.

A startled Zenos barked out a spell that hung the van in the air. “I keep forgetting ya set wards on the place. My magick won’t hold them long. Let me shift to dragon and catch the vehicle when it drops.”

Conn ran from the house shifting into his natural form as he moved. By the time he reached the spot where Mulan and her people hung in limbo, he was as big as Zenos was as a dragon.

“Well, that’s impressive. Now I see why they still consider him their king even after all this time,” Zenos said, crossing his arms to study Conn.

The demon tried to grab the van but encountered a force field of some sort. Conn turned his demon head toward us and growled.

“No need to growl at me, yer majesty. It will fall in a moment,” the dragon mage bellowed at Conn.

And it did.

Conn caught it upside down and rolled it over in his giant demon claws before setting it gently on the ground. My eyes watched in horror while my mind quietly decided that wards were yet another good reason to always wear a seatbelt.

As I got closer, I could see Mulan slumped in the driver’s seat. I ran down the driveway to see if they were okay. Zenos stayed by the house and watched. When I glanced back, I saw Henry and Gale standing beside the dragon mage as well.

Once the van was safely settled on the ground, Conn shrunk to a more normal size and destroyed the seatbelt to release a now unconscious Wu Shaman from her seat. Being in the front, Mulan had caught the worst effects of the wards going off.

I glanced in the backseats at her family. They stared wide-eyed at a growling Conn while he checked Mulan for injuries. I pushed open the side door to release the four of them from the vehicle. One of Henry’s people zoomed up beside us in some sort of small vehicle with three seats and room for luggage. It had enough space to transport all of them to the house at once.

“I’m Aran. Do any of ya speak English?” I asked.

It took them a long time, but they finally tore their startled gazes away from staring at Conn to stare blankly at me.

“Do ya speak English?” I asked again, stating the question as clearly as my accent allowed.

A grinning Zenos appeared at my side. “Need some help communicating, lass?”

“I think it’s a lost cause. They don’t speak any English.”

Zenos said something in a Chinese dialect. When he got no response, he tried another. On about the fourth try, Mulan’s father answered him back. They seemed to struggle to communicate but at least partially understood each other.

“Ask if they’re hurt, Zenos.”

Zenos spoke to the father, who spoke to the others in the language I recognized only because Mulan often swore in it. The four of them looked at me and shook their heads.

“Good,” I said, nodding my head. “Tell them to get into the cart and go to the house. Henry will show them to their rooms and help them settle in.”

Zenos pointed to the cart and motioned them to come out. He spoke a few words and then bowed to them. They inclined their heads to him without replying before slowly exiting the vehicle.