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“I promised myself I wouldn’t pry into yer personal life, but I hate that ya sound so sad. Do ya want to talk about what happened? I can be a good listener when I set my mind to it.”

“What is there to say? I got great lover I wanted. He was everything I longed to find all my life.”

I waited for the rest, but it never came. “How can ya make that sound like a bad thing? I’m full of envy.”

“Because my lover is powerful high demon... and I am powerful Wu Shaman. We do not work as couple.”

“Oh... so ya’re saying ya feel like a prison guard who fell in love with a prisoner.”

“No!”she exclaimed, glaring at me. “That is terrible analogy. Reality is bad enough. It does not need made worse.”

“Sorry,” I said, biting my lip so I wouldn’t laugh. “Would ya prefer he’d been terrible in bed?”

Her glare dropped from me. “No. Don’t be stupid.”

I shrugged. “So that’s something good about the two of ya, right? Did Conn act disappointed or say something to ya that was unflattering?”

“His words were like gentle feathers touching my woman soul.”

If she kept talking like that, visiting hours would be over before I figured out what had gone wrong.

“Are ya going to make me keep guessing why ya’re here and not back there repeating the best night of yer life? Because I think I’ve already proven that I don’t do well at this sort of guessing thing.”

I knew something was wrong when Mulan didn’t smirk or laugh at my confession. Instead, she dropped her gaze again and studied the ground.

“Connlander told me he was married once.”

I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me. I leaned down a bit to look up at her. “I think his first wife was a banshee because Conn’s still close to her sister. Their relationship lasted for over a hundred years. That was quite a few centuries ago as I understand it.”

“High demon wants to marrymenow. He wants hundred years withme.”

“After only one night?”I laughed at Conn being willing to give up all his other women for Mulan, but soon realized I was the only one who thought his monogamous urge was hilarious. “Right. I guess it’s not funny from yer side. Sorry... I think I’m a little jealous.”

Mulan grunted at my confession but didn’t agree. “We both love impossible men.”

I thought of my impossible man who liked to kiss me but considered me to be his greatest weakness. “Yer romance is way more possible than mine. I represent both the apple and the snake in my man’s Garden of Eden story.”

She lifted her head and stared at me. “I understand reference, but it is not pagan.”

I chuckled. “I read about the Garden of Eden when I was Fiona’s age. I wanted to find out why everyone blamed Eve. Rasmus denies being part of that belief system, but I keep thinking of him as belonging to it. We argue about that a lot.”

“What creature is opposite of witch?” Mulan asked.

Her question surprised me, and I had to think about it for a bit. “Maybe my opposite is someone who’s a normal human, but I already married someone like that. Jack thought he was more, but he wasn’t.”

Jack wasn’t even a great demon hunter. And if Orlin was right, Jack’s guardian father’s powers had skipped Jack.

“Did marrying your ex-husband make you less witch than you were before?”

I hated talking about Jack, and it still surprised me how often I ended up doing it. My mind raced trying to figure out what Mulan wasreallygetting at with her probing personal questions.

Finally, I figured it out.

“I get it. Ya think ya can’t love a demon because yer job is to cast out demons. Being with Conn is a conflict of interest for ya. Right?”

“High demon brings conflict to my whole life. Everything I worked to become is nothing when I am with him.”

I sat at her feet and wondered how I would feel in her shoes. “I had a similar debate with Jack before he sent me to prison. He claimed my relationship with Conn was reason enough for the world to consider me a criminal. Yet Conn never did a single bad thing to Jack—never. The whole debate was so illogical that I couldn’t take it seriously. Nothing Jack said affected me because I knew he was one hundred percent wrong.”