Raphael laughed at my outraged silence. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, as the saying goes. I have been ordered to cooperate with you.”

I snorted. “Like that means anything.”

“It’s true, I’m not great at following orders, especially when they come from Lugh. In the Demon Realm, he could punish me for my insubordination. Here, he just has to swallow it. However, I did agree with him that it’s in everyone’s best interest that I finish telling you what I’d come to tell you earlier tonight. Please forgive my fit of pique, but you have to know you are a sore trial for anyone’s patience.”

I started to retort, but he spoke right over me.

“The demon that was summoned into the Mortal Plain and left that body in the alley is known as Der Jäger.”

I’d taken enough German in high school to translate the name. “The Hunter.”

“Indeed. He’s an unusual creature. He has a unique ability to recognize demons in the Mortal Plain—and to hunt them. That’s how he earned his True Name. He is also the demon equivalent of a sociopath. His entire life revolves around the hunt and the kill. For the past three hundred years, he’s been imprisoned in the Demon Realm, but Dougal has offered him his freedom if he can find and kill Lugh.

“The good news is that since your aura overwhelms Lugh’s, Der Jäger can’t seem to catch his scent. Everyone’s quite puzzled by the phenomenon, though I suspect they’ll be even more puzzled after tonight. Der Jäger will no doubt have sensed Lugh’s presence while he and I spoke, but I’m certain he won’t have been able to home in on it in so short a time.”

“How do you know he hasn’t been able to catch Lugh’s scent?” I asked.

“Because I’m one of the bad guys, remember? That’s the whole reason I went back to the Demon Realm in the first place, to infiltrate another cell. I’ll feed you what information I can, but I’m also going to keep my cover.”

I heard the warning in his words and instantly bristled. “I told you before, if you ever hurt Andy again—”

“Good night, Morgan. Sweet dreams.”

He hung up on me, and it took every ounce of my self-restraint not to throw the phone across the room in frustration.

I wasn’t surprised when I woke up at around ten in the morning, groggy and bleary-eyed, after several hours of uninterrupted sleep. Funny how Lugh hadn’t felt like speaking to me after my little chat with Raphael. I’d been more than ready to give Lugh a piece of my mind for driving my body while I was asleep, but apparently he wasn’t overly eager to hear what I had to say about it.

I was left at something of a loss as to what to do with myself. Obviously, I couldn’t leave Andy alone and undefended, but I wasn’t going to learn much hanging around the apartment babysitting him. In the light of early morning—after getting a few hours of much-needed sleep—it was clear to me that ignoring my problems wasn’t going to make them go away. My mental vacation was well and truly over, and it was time to start getting some answers.

The only thing I could think of to do for Andy was to call Adam to come keep an eye on him. Andy really hated the idea, and who could blame him? But we both knew I couldn’t just sit around the apartment and hope everything went away.

I think my face was beet red the entire time I was in the apartment with Adam—which, considering my inability to block out the dream images Lugh had implanted in my mind, and my extreme discomfort with those images, was all of about five minutes. He gave me a curious look, but otherwise refrained from questioning me.

I had three major issues I could deal with—or not deal with, as the mood hit me. There was the question of my parentage. There was the question of my repressed memory. And, because I needed another nightmare in my life, there was Der Jäger.

What I wanted to do more than anything was hunt down and exorcize Der Jäger. Unfortunately, I hadn’t the faintest idea how to do it. I didn’t know what body he was in. And even if I did, the last thing I wanted was to draw his attention when he had no idea that I was hosting Lugh.

That left the unpalatable choices of digging into my mom’s past or digging into my own. Since I knew what the first step would be to learning about my mom, and since I hadn’t a clue how to find out what happened to me—if Lugh was right and it was something other than what I’d been told—I supposed I was stuck.

I showed up at my parents’ house just after lunchtime, having spent the entire morning procrastinating, finding one excuse after another to avoid doing what I knew I had to. My inner chickenshit prayed that she wouldn’t be home so I could put this off some more, but she came to the door before I had a chance to get my hopes up.

Her eyes widened in surprise to see me, her plucked-to-within-an-inch-of-their-life eyebrows arching hugely. I had to stifle a laugh, though admittedly I couldn’t remember the last time I’d come here when it wasn’t the mandatory Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner.

No doubt about it, there were parts of me that would have loved to disown my parents completely. Those holiday dinners were about as much fun as a yeast infection, and we’d probably all have a better time if I didn’t show up. But like it or not, this was the only family I had, and I did reluctantly love them—the man who wasn’t really my father, and my mother the Stepford wife.

“Are you going to invite me in, or are you going to keep catching flies?” I asked when my mom just stood there.

Her jaw snapped shut, and her lips pursed into her usual disapproving frown. “You could try giving me a hint of respect every once in a while.”

I refrained from reminding her that respect had to be earned. I again had to fight against my urge to flee, but now I was getting annoyed at myself, too. All the terrible things that had happened to me recently, and I was turning into a total wuss over a conversation? I mentally recited the “sticks and stones” adage and forced myself to soldier on.

“I need to talk to you about something,” I said. “I’ll try my best to be civil, and I hope you’ll do the same, but we both know we can’t talk to each other without a little sniping, so let’s just agree to ignore it.”

She sighed dramatically, but opened the door and let me in.

My mother is the last of a dying breed, the honest-to-God fifties housewife. She’d married my dad right out of college, and hadn’t worked a paying job her entire life. Her life revolved around cooking, cleaning, and being beautiful. Her children came in a distant fourth, though I knew she loved us in her own way. There wasn’t an aspect of her life I didn’t rebel against, which might explain why I was a single, work-obsessed, fiercely independent tomboy.

The house I grew up in is beautiful, always freshly cleaned, and decorated with impeccable taste. And it has the warm, homey atmosphere of a walk-in freezer. It was impossible to step inside and not become instantly conscious of my ungainliness as I joined my mother in the formal living room. The house has a den, too, but it’s not any more relaxed than the living room. I found myself demurely crossing my legs at the ankles when I sat. Of course, as soon as I noticed I practically slapped myself on the forehead and forced myself to relax.

“Shall I make us some tea?” my mother asked.

I was proud of myself for not rolling my eyes. “Thanks, but I’ll skip it.” I squirmed a bit as I tried to figure out how to get started. I mean, really, how do you ask your mom about a rape she’d never even hinted she’d suffered? Not that I’d have expected Mrs. Perfection to discuss such a distasteful topic with anyone, much less her daughter.

Prim and proper as a headmistress, she sat on the edge of a chair, her back arrow-straight. When she did the ladylike ankle-cross, she stayed that way. “What is it we need to talk about?” she asked. “Might I hope that you’ve persuaded Andrew to come home?”