Troy frowned at Roke. “You’re mistaken.”
Roke growled. Okay. Now the damned imp was just trying to piss him off.
“I’m rarely mistaken,” he said, the earth trembling.
“Easy, leech,” Troy said, hastily trying to lessen the violence that prickled in the air. “A portal won’t close if there’s still someone inside it.”
Roke cursed. If Sally hadn’t been left behind in Nevada, and she wasn’t in the portal, then where the hell was she?
“Then why isn’t she here?” he snapped, as if Sally’s absence was entirely the imp’s fault.
Troy took a cautious step backward, clearly having dealt with unreasonable vampires before.
“My only guess would be that she took a detour.”
Detour? The ground split open just inches from his feet.
“What the hell does that mean?” he snarled.
Troy paled, taking another step backward. “The truly skilled fey are capable of creating more than one opening. She could have brought you here and continued on to another location.”
Styx glanced toward Roke, his expression troubled. “Can she create portals?”
Roke shoved his fingers through his hair. There was no denying that Sally had been changing over the past weeks. She’d always been a powerful witch, but now her innate demon blood was vying for dominance and there was no telling what talents might spontaneously erupt.
“Hell, I don’t know,” he muttered, his gaze glued to the imp. “Can you find where she went?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Then who can?”
Troy gave a helpless lift of his hand and gave the wrong answer.
“No one.”
Sally would have laughed if she could have forced it past the lump in her throat.
“Father?” she muttered, staring in horror at the impossibly beautiful creature.
She’d fantasized about this moment since she was old enough to realize other kids had dads who did more than donate sperm.
Late at night, after her mother had forced her to endure hours of unrelenting training and at last locked her in her room, she’d lie on her bed and pretend that her father was just about to arrive and take her away.
Some nights he would be a badass superhero, like a Navy Seal or a storm chaser. She would pretend that he was off saving the world and that was why he hadn’t come to visit.
Some nights he would be a kind, comfortable sort of man. Maybe a teacher. Or a doctor. And he didn’t yet know that he had a daughter, but as soon as he discovered the truth, he would be rushing to take her to his home, which was filled with all the love a lonely little girl craved.
Then, she’d been forced to accept it wasn’t human blood running through her veins and her fantasies had become less idealistic and more resigned.
Obviously her mother’s quickie had been with a random demon who’d been competent at disguising his true identity and that was that.
No father rushing to claim her as his daughter.
No Christmas-card family waiting in her future.
Just a common, nameless demon whom she would never have sought out if she hadn’t needed his help to end her accidental mating.
Now she struggled to accept this . . . glorious, unnervingly alien being . . . was her father.
“Is that some sort of joke?”
He gave a slow blink. “Why would I jest about such a thing?”
Yeah. That was the question of the day, wasn’t it?
She shivered despite the heat of the sun. “I’ve stopped expecting anything to make sense after I fell down the rabbit hole.”
“This is no . . .” Sariel seemed to struggle over the unfamiliar word. “Joke. You are indeed my daughter. Blood of my blood.”
Sally licked her lips. This was some sort of trick. It had to be.
“If that’s true, then how did you meet my mother?”
His answer came without hesitation. “She was under the influence of a powerful spell that allowed me to pull her through the barriers.”
“What spell?”
“A fertility spell.”
Sally frowned. How had he known? “You could sense it?”
“Yes. It was like a beacon for me to latch on to.”
“So you brought her here and . . .” Sally grimaced. No daughter should have to consider the ins and outs of her mother’s sex life. “Seduced her?”
“Not here.” He shrugged. “But yes, I did seduce her.”
The ick factor doubled in value.
“No.” She shook her head, unconsciously pressing the box against her stomach as if it might whisk her away from this psycho wonderland. “I don’t believe you.”
Sariel’s slender nose flared in outrage. “You accuse me of lying?”
“My mother would have known the second she caught sight of you that you aren’t human,” Sally informed him, her voice two octaves too high. “She hated demons. She certainly wouldn’t have willingly crawled into bed with one, no matter how gorgeous you might be.”
The man smiled with pure arrogance. “I can be very persuasive.”
“Okay . . .” Sally held up a hand in protest. “TMI.”
“Excuse me?”
Sally shook her head. “Even if you did manage to overcome her prejudice, there’s no way she wouldn’t have aborted me once she discovered she was pregnant.”
“Ah.” He didn’t look particularly concerned that Sally might have died before she was ever born. But then, Sally was beginning to suspect that the demon didn’t have many feelings that weren’t directly connected to his own survival. “Her memories would have been stripped when she left my bed.”
“By you?”
He gave an impatient shake of his head. “No, by the barriers that surround me.”
Sally bit her lower lip. It was hard to deny the sincerity in his voice. He truly believed that he was her father.
Was it possible?
She studied the painfully beautiful face, searching for the truth.
“So she didn’t remember she slept with you?”
“That is correct.”
“Then she must have slept with a human male and assumed I was the result of that hookup,” Sally said, grudgingly accepting that Sariel’s story made as much sense as anything else.
“If you say.” He waved a dismissive hand. “My only concern was for you.”
Concern. She made a sound of disbelief.
“Yeah, right. If you actually had any concern for me, you wouldn’t have ignored me for the past thirty years.”