Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

" M ulan?" I called her name quietly as I walked through the house.

I didn't want to surprise her. She might come out swinging her staff and cursing me.

Sounds of retching eventually led me to her location. A sniffing Mulan sat on the floor of her small master bathroom, hugging the toilet.

"Good Goddess," I said, searching the shelves to find a washcloth. I wet it and then folded it to fit against the back of her neck. "Can I do a spell to calm the nausea for ya?"

Mulan squeezed her dripping eyes shut as she nodded. Any other time, she would have made herself some magick tea to cure herself.

I chanted with urgency and waved my hands around the small space. I could feel the moment it helped because Mulan lay down on the floor and sighed in relief.

I dropped to the floor and sat near her head. "This is bad, Mulan. Does Conn know ya're this ill?"

"Yes. I told him he made me sick. I made him leave."

"Did he make ya sick?"

Tears seeped from Mulan's eyes, ran down her cheeks, and dripped onto the floor. I stared at her in shock. First, she'd been lethargic and uncaring. Then she'd summoned enough power to stop a fleeing fairy. But this sickness stuff was the worst if it was making her weep.

"Ya're scaring me, Mulan."

She lifted one tired hand into the air. "Shaman staff is full of cowardly mages. They do not tell me what I most want to know."

I turned my face up to stare at her ceiling. Did she need sympathy or tough love? I had no idea. This was why I was not that great with women friends. I could rarely guess what was going on with them.

"Are ya sure the beings in yer staff are cowards? Maybe they're being prudent. Mine do things without telling me. Sure, I'm figuring out their motives now, so they can't get by with that shit anymore. I probably should have turned the Dagda stone into a beautiful amulet. Ya should see what Dylan did with his animal stone."

"Aran, stop. You are making my headache worse. Soon, I will retch again."

I tried a different question. "How did Conn make you sick?"

Her shoulder scooted against the tiles as she squirmed. "High demon gave me baby."

My head rolled until I stared down at her. "A baby? Are ya sure?"

"No. I only suspect for now. I am afraid to know truth. I too am a coward," Mulan said in a tiny voice.

"Have ya taken a test?" I asked.

Mulan turned her pale cheek and pressed it against the cold floor tiles. "Why would fifty-year-old woman have baby test lying around? No. I have no baby test."

I chuckled. "Ya can't blame me for asking. Ya keep all kinds of strange woman stuff in yer purse. Fiona keeps a baby test in the bathroom. My body is not in the baby business anymore, or I'd have one. Want me to see if any of the female demons have a test?"

"Demons just know about babies. They don't need test."

I reached out and ran a hand over her hair. "If ya told Conn, maybe he could tell ya."

"No," Mulan said flatly. "Not until I know. He is too worried for you. I don't want him to worry about baby if I only ate bad sushi."

I blinked. "When did ya eat sushi? According to Conn, we're not allowed to go out."

"I do not have demon chefs. I make my own sushi. I cook most food Conn and I eat."

Well, that was good news. "Ya didn't tell me ya could make sushi. I love sushi. Maybe ya can teach me."

Mulan snorted, then laughed. "I say demon put baby in me, and you want to talk about food."

"We can talk about anything ya want. I'm here because I was worried about ya."

"How can I be mother, Aran? I am too old."

"Not for a magickal. And Conn says ya're the equivalent of thirty. Thirty-year-olds have babies all the time." Mulan was quiet for so long that I thought she'd fallen asleep. "Are ya freaked out about it?"

"Yes. Do you think shaman staff knows?"

I shrugged, but she wasn't looking at me. The stone seemed to know everything about me. Why wouldn't her staff?

"It probably knows," I said.

She twisted until she could look up into my face. "Will you check for me? Staff talks to you. It ignores me."

What were magickal besties for if not to chastise yer magickal tools when they didn't behave? "Sure. Stay right here until I return. If ya're up for it, I'll help ya to bed and do another treatment. It should stave off the sickness long enough for ya to rest."

I got to my feet to do as Mulan asked. The main house was hotel-esque, but the cottages were small and nearly identical. Each one had a tiny coat closet in the hallway. It was unquestionably the gloomiest spot in the house.

I opened the door and grinned when I found the shaman's staff leaning in a corner. Mulan had pulled a fuzzy, bright pink sock over the top end with the turtle shells.

The moment I touched it, the staff snapped to attention. I brought it out into the hallway with me and practically felt it sigh in relief. My connection to it was stronger than it had ever been.

I held up the sock with one hand and shook the staff with the other while the tiny, turtle shells clacked. Then, I brought the two together to make sure there was no mistake about me being willing to put the sock right back on.

My head was killing me from arguing with the men in my life, so I decided to just talk out loud instead of thinking at the staff.

"This is yer one chance to redeem yerselves. The normally fierce Wu Shaman is lying on the floor of her bathroom and crying because she's very sick. Why didn't ya tell her that she was pregnant? Her feelings are hurt that ya stopped talking to her."

We could not reveal it , a woman's voice said.

I narrowed my gaze on the staff. "Why not?"

Mulan carries a child who doesn't like us .

The excuse was so ridiculous that I couldn't help but snort in disbelief. "Are ya kidding me?"

No , she said.

"She considers ya cowards for refusing to talk to her. That's what landed ya in the closet."

Will you walk us into natural light? It has been hours since we felt the sun against the staff. We crave the light.

I walked to the back porch and stepped outside. I could literally hear a woman sighing in my head, and it was the staff. Thinking how weird this conversation was, I sat down in a lawn chair and leaned the sighing staff against my knee.

It was time to do my bestie thing. "A powerful magickal can't trust very many beings. Mulan's entire family disowned her a short while ago, and after she did all she bloody could to make them happy. And don't even get me started about what she did to save her brother-in-law. Her life is filled with people who choose not to support her. I endured that kind of life for seven years, and every day was miserable.

I banged the staff against my knee, making the turtle shells swing and clack. "When the bowman shot me, the beings in my stone called me to them to save my life. They assured me I would heal and helped my soul return to the mortal realm where it belonged."

I banged the staff against my knee a few more times. "The beings in the stone and I don't agree on everything. We have our yelling moments, and yet I know they're watching out for me. Mulan doesn't have that with ya. And I know why because the beings in my stone told me. The three of ya can't agree on anything. Ya like yer bickering so much that ya're hurting Mulan rather than helping her."

We are not the cause of her pain.

"No, but ya could be helping her body adapt to the baby and spare her the sickness. If ya're not part of the solution, then ya're part of the problem. Haven't ya ever heard that old saying?"

I heard the woman—their mage representative—sighing in my head again.

"Now..." I began. "I don't know if ya were ever a mother, but there's no more vulnerable state for a woman. Everything in her body devotes itself to growing the baby, and the physical changes are not always pleasant."

The Wu Shaman is angry with us. Her child is angry with us. What would you have us do?

"Ask her what she needs. The baby may be upset because ya're being unkind to its mother. She's spent the day throwing up when ya could have helped her. Her body is exhausted. I wove a stomach-calming spell, but it won't last long. If ya were my magickal tool, I'd break ya into pieces, release the three of ya back into the void, and make myself a new one. Ya're damn lucky all the Wu Shaman did to ya was stash ya in a dark closet."

My chest buzzed in three short bursts. My mages were laughing at what I was doing. I smacked my chest and then banged the staff harder against my knee. The turtle shells swung wildly. If anyone had been watching me slap my chest while shaking the staff, they would have thought I'd gone insane.

"I'm not yer owner, and ya weren't drawn into this chunk of wood to help me. So I have no opinion about ya that matters. Mulan is the only one who should matter to ya."

Take us back to her. We will make amends.

"I think that would be best for everyone." I stood up and went back into the house. "When ya're back on good terms again, ya should tell her how ya froze the fairy. She deserves to know."

This time, the sighing was so loud I thought my eardrums would shatter from the air release.

"What now?" I demanded.

We did not stop the fairy. The baby helped its mother do it. We could only have restrained the fairy creature. What happened was beyond our magick. We reshape the elements.

I stopped walking. "So, whose magick froze the fairy?"

The baby she carries has more powerful blood than either of its parents. The Wu Shaman was a stolen child. Her parents lost their first baby, so they stole Mulan from the place where she was born. We do not know how they knew about her magickal heritage. They fed her tea to make her forget her questions about her power. Even before us, she was never typical.

This was a day of high strangeness everywhere I went. Then full realization hit. "Wait... so her parents aren't her biological parents? And that sister of hers isn't her actual sister?"

No.

"Do ya know who her actual parents are?"

No.

"Well, what do ya know?"

There was a long pause. We know only myths and legends. Her female ancestors died protecting her lineage. Her blood is colored with gold, and we have seen it often. We cannot enlighten you further. You already know more than we know.

I picked up the staff and glared at it the way Mulan often did. "How could I possibly know more about the Wu Shaman than the three of ya?"

You draw her people to you. Mulan has become something greater than the human females who bore the offspring so long ago. Their sires named them something different from themselves to make it easier to destroy them. But not all were evil. Not all needed to be destroyed. We are glad we were not alive then.

My throat went dry. Afraid to give voice to what they were implying, I switched to thinking rather than speaking. Are ya saying that Mulan is descended from nephilim who escaped being killed by their watcher fathers? But they were allegedly giants, and Mulan is so definitely not a giant. What ya're saying is hard to believe.

Mulan's weary-sounding staff cleared her throat before answering me. How could someone dead sound so tired of life? When I talked face-to-face with One of The Three, the stone's dead mage hadn't seemed to feel anything beyond irritation at me being there when I shouldn't have been.

Nephilim blood has thinned over the millennia, but their descendants—the few who survived to procreate—still carry divinity and wield great power. The gift of their fathers lives on in their DNA. Her birth parents were for sure Chinese, but one or both of them had nephilim magick in their blood. This is the logical answer. We cannot confirm our theory.

Nephilim were the product of a male watcher in his natural form pairing with a human female. According to Rasmus, none of the male watchers ever suspected their hybrid children would cause so many problems for the planet. Regret still overshadowed the memories of it for him and his brethren.

Zenos told me the watchers woke him and other dragons from hibernation to help rid the earth of the nephilim offspring. What followed was a long history of struggles between humans and dragons. He cited doing his part for the greater good before promptly returning to his hibernation.

Yet Mulan's ancestors had somehow survived all efforts to erase their existence. They had continued to live and millennia later created her. And now she had survived to create another nephilim—a partly demon one.

It thrilled me that her parents weren't her real ones, but the rest of the story was the stuff of nightmares. What kind of creature was their baby going to be? It boggled my mind to think about the possibilities.

Nephilim , the being in the staff whispered to answer my thoughts. It would make the child a demon nephilim and perhaps the first of its kind.

"Good Goddess," I said, speaking my shock.

What I was thinking was that this sounded like a prophecy coming to pass. Only it wasn't a prophecy. It was reality—Mulan's reality.

We did not share the truth with her because the Wu Shaman would have challenged her parents to confirm it. They would have killed her to hide what they did rather than simply give her a tea of forgetfulness. Her shaman status was profitable for them. The money she made paid the bills for all their businesses. They value power above all else. The recovered jiangshi received enough power from you to replace her. This is why they gave up their parental rights to Mulan. They don't want her interfering with their plans.

"I knew there were good reasons to hate those people."

She loved them. They were all she knew as parents. It would destroy her even more to learn the whole truth now that they discarded her. There is also the additional concern that your guardians might feel obligated to kill her and her unborn child before she produces an actual child.

"Forget the guardians. They would never try to harm her because they know I would kill them without regret. While I can't destroy them, I can keep them from regenerating for a very long time. Chopping demons into pieces is my forte. Chopping up a guardian would hurt my soul, but I'd do it before I let Mulan come to harm. She didn't choose her parents. None of this is Mulan's fault. She's an innocent."

The mages were right about how tough it would be for the Wu Shaman to hear all of what they'd told me. But I whole-heartedly believed they were wrong about it destroying her. I think it would reshape her reality and erase the child guilt her parents had used to control her. More importantly, Mulan had a right to know who and what she truly was.

And I would be here to help her. Conn would be by her side. Together, we would learn the truths of her past and explore what her heritage meant for her future.

"Mulan needs to know, and ya need to tell her. If ya don't tell her, she'll feel she can never trust ya. Weigh the consequences of being put in hibernation for the rest of her life against the cost of telling her what ya know. There is only one answer that allows ya to continue working with her. No matter what else she is, she became a Wu Shaman and still takes that role seriously."

Your words carry wisdom. We will consider your council.

I carried the staff to the bedroom and found Mulan curled into a ball on the bed. I pulled a cozy cover from the bottom and gently draped it over her to keep her warm. Her legs stretched out beneath the cover, but she didn't wake.

My fierce little friend was completely exhausted. I never saw Mulan look so fragile, and I hoped I never had to see her like this again.

Put us near her. Proximity is best for our magick. We will send enough healing to ease her illness. Your magick help will not be needed with this.

I nodded but didn't answer as I laid the staff in bed beside her.

If her mages didn't come clean with her in the next day or so, then I would tell Mulan what they said. I was fairly sure they knew that about me.

But I intended to tell Conn as soon as I could. Because if there was a baby—and I was pretty sure there was—he was most definitely its father.

Goddess only knew what security measures we would need to protect an infant demon royal. We'd at least have to hire a trustworthy nanny. A magical baby daycare had not been part of our grand plan. Since nannies cost a lot of money, we'd have to improve our ability to turn over jobs.

Those were all minor details, though.

What worried me most was Rasmus and Zara. Did the renamed ‘guardians' share the nephilim aversion of their watcher ancestors?

There was no way to ask without telling them Mulan's story, and she might not want it shared. Of course, telling me was like writing it on a billboard that lots of people could eventually see if they read my mind. I don't think the shaman staff knew that my mind shouted my thoughts to the world without my permission.

As if I didn't already have a hundred concerns, my phone pinged with a new message. Henry said Ben was at the driveway gate with a van full of strangers. At least, they were strangers to Henry. I texted back to let him in because Henry would have kept him waiting until I did.

Looking Mulan over once more to be sure she was still doing okay, I left the sleeping Wu Shaman to go greet them.