He could be frightening when he chose to be cruel. Victor Dark was a very powerful demon, and he'd fought his way to the top of the Other World hierarchy to be the current Grand Master of Other World. As an adult she understood his need to rule his realm with an iron fist, but as a child she'd been confused and afraid of him. This fact had caused a very strange childhood for Tessa and her five sisters. They'd been born in the human world never knowing what their absent father was until the death of the mother who loved them. Tessa's mother would leave her with a friend or her grandmother for a few weeks each year. At the time she'd wondered why. After meeting her father she felt certain her mother was trying to shelter her. She'd never worked up the courage to ask him why he'd shown her no interest. At time she'd wondered if she'd even have met him if her mother hadn't died. Tessa loved her sisters, but she hated what they were – half demon. Her heart belonged in the "normal" world of her mother's kind; humans.

Her sixteenth birthday present had been tail removal. What kind of a thing was that to have as a memory? Tail removal, blech. Her family didn't understand her anger about what she was. They didn't understand that all Tessa wanted was to be human! And having a tail grow in at puberty (even if you could hide it) was not normal for a human. Most of her sisters reveled in the fact that they were Victor's children. They didn't remember what it was like to be sure you were human. Finding out that she wasn't had been shocking, especially as the knowledge followed her mother's death so closely.

Tessa was the oldest of the six girls and she'd the most memories of their mother and of living in the human world. She'd been the only one to attend regular school and the only one to remember their mother dying. The triplets; Tara, Tonia, and Tabitha, had been infants and Talia and Trista, two and three. Tessa's mother's best friend kept the children for weeks after her death, and there had been no mention of a father in all of that time.