"Jesus, Claire. That's practically suicide. Why did she do it?" Rage made fire spark in his palms. He closed his hands to hide it from her. How could a mother pick up her young daughter and just walk straight into hell?

Claire looked down at the blanket and picked at a stray thread. "My mother was impetuous, sometimes more like a child than an adult. I suspect mental illness, but I was so young when she died. I'm just not sure. She told me she'd fought with Crane earlier in the day about how to handle the daaeman they would bring through. My mother had—" She swallowed hard. "She had—"

"Hey, look, Claire. It's okay if you don't want to tell me all this."

She shook her head and raised her gaze to meet his. "Just know two things before I say this. Know that I loved my mother more than anyone in either of these worlds. Also know that I am nothing, I mean, nothing, like her."

Adam nodded. "Okay." He knew that already.

She lowered her head again. "She had aspirations of allying with the Atrika and bringing them back here. She wanted to take over with their help." Claire looked up him, her pretty eyes wide and shining with tears and shame. "Adam, my mother wanted chaos and bloodshed so she could have power and prestige."

Adam didn't even blink. "Claire, your mother was Duskoff. She was a warlock. It's what they all want. That's why they break the rede."

She went back to studying the crust-strewn pizza box. "Anyway, she'd fought with Crane. He'd disagreed with her about how best to employ the daaeman they'd pulled through. My mother was angry, so she walked into the portal, thinking she'd find the Atrika on the other side and do it her way."

Adam couldn't reply.

He got up, paced across the room and back before he could speak. "So she just gathered her six-year-old daughter from the garden where she'd been playing and walked through an alien doorway not knowing what would happen on the other side?"

Anger simmered under the surface of his skin. A thousand licks of flame. Protectiveness of Claire, even twenty-five years after the fact, swelled.

While he'd been having the training wheels taken off his bike and having birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese, Claire's mother had been busy taking her away from everyone and everything that was familiar to her. Not to mention knowingly putting her daughter into harm's way—directly into the arms of demons.

Claire raised her head, protective anger to match his crossing over her pretty features. She opened her mouth to retort and he held up a hand. "Okay, I'm sorry. I know. You loved your mother."

"I did."

Of course she had. Her mother had been the only human being—aeamon—in Claire's entire existence.