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Morphing into his demon self, Conn disappeared. A few seconds later, he reappeared and let the cage drop against the foyer tiles.

“Easy on the tiles, you two,” Henry yelled.

I winced as I looked at Conn. “If the tiles break, ya’re the one who’ll have to replace them. I’m not paying for them.”

Grinning with a mouth full of sharp fangs, Conn grabbed the fairy by the back of the shirt and threw him into the cage. I winced a bit as a weakened Ezra bounced off the bars. Once the lock and the magick to hold him were in place, Conn morphed back to his human self.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Call Ben and get him to send the collection van. Ezra needs to be shipped back to Ireland as soon as it can be arranged. He’ll need an escort capable of making sure he doesn’t break free. The Shadows Breakers will have to handle his delivery to his people. I’m done playing nice with him. Let Murray know he’s off the hook. We removed the poison from him.”

Ezra glared at me from the cage. “I’ll be back to make ya regret this.”

“Come back if ya want,” I said, weary of his bravado. “Just know that next time, I’ll kill ya before ya get a chance to raise yer hand to me. If ya ever get near any of my family or friends again, I’ll cut ya up into pieces and feed ya to my demon wolves. I’m sure they’ll find yer magick very tasty. Then it will be as if ya never existed at all. Ya best shut yer mouth now before ya make me mad enough to see killing ya as a better idea than sending ya home.”

“What demon wolves?” Ezra asked.

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “None of yer business, fairy. They never were.” I looked at Conn. “Part one is done. I need a break before we deal with jiangshi. Is Zenos alright?”

Conn snickered, picked me up, and swung me around. “I’m so damn proud of you. Yes, the dragon mage is fine. He changed into his full dragon form and went for a swim in our lake.”

My mouth dropped open. “Where do we have a lake?”

“We own seven acres outside what’s fenced in. There’s a body of water that’s quite large. Maybe it’s more of a pond. I’m not an expert.”

I laughed. “If ya hadn’t stopped me, I’d have done the same thing to Jack that I did to Ezra.”

“Ezra was a fling. Jack fathered your child.”

“Goddess, let’s not argue about Jack today. Get that fairy out of my sight. I don’t like the way he’s glaring at me.”

Conn turned and whistled. Several of Henry’s people came running with custom moving rollers. They tilted the fairy’s cage left and right before getting enough wheels under it to roll it out the front door. It barely fit. I chuckled and rubbed my forehead with my bleeding hand.

“Shit. I just rubbed blood all over my face. Now I need to go wash up.”

Conn laughed as he pulled his phone out to call Ben.

I looked at the bloody dagger still in my hand. Then I noticed that the tiles around my feet were stained red. Blood had also dripped on my pants and onto my shoes. I had blood from the fairy and myself all over my body. Normally, I would have burned it off with magickal flames, but I needed to conserve what magick I had left for the jiangshi work later.

I sighed as I looked at my house’s caretakers. “I’m sorry, Henry. I told ya I tend to make a mess when I work. I hope you can get up the blood.”

“If not, we’ll just put a rug over it until Conn pays to have the floor replaced,” Henry said dryly, fighting his smirk. “And yes, you did warn me about your penchant for being messy.”

I grinned at him. “Did ya enjoy the show?”

“Immensely,” Henry said with a grin. “Zenos said to give this to you.”

Using my least bloodiest fingers, I plucked the wooden disk filled with angel magick from Henry’s hand. I slipped it in my cleanest jeans pocket to avoid smearing it with blood.

“Come back for the encore later. Ya’ll really see something then.”

“Will part two also take place in the foyer? Perhaps I should find some sheets to put on the floor to catch body fluids. In my experience, dead bodies are nearly as messy as you are. I can only imagine what will happen when you and the Wu Shaman attempt to bring such an old dead man back to life. When this is over, I think you and I need to talk about several better and less messy ways for you to spend your vacation time.”

I hung my head at Henry’s lecture and laughed until tears streamed down my bloody face.

Chapter Nineteen

Rasmus might not be good at jumping into fights to help, but he hustled me into the shower and picked out a decent set of clothes for me to wear. I came out of the bathroom wrapped in a giant bath towel the size of a blanket to find my bloody clothes and shoes stuffed into a spare trash bag for Henry’s people to try to save.