Her aunt nodded. “What about your father?”

“What about him?”

Her aunt looked at her curiously. “He needs to be told what happened. Do you know who he is?”

“No.”

“No hint of who he is all these years?”

Raven shook her head. She didn’t like the way her aunt was looking into her eyes, as if she knew she was lying.

Aunt Sondra came closer. “When you were a baby, Audrey once asked me to come help when you had a high fever. It was the first time I’d seen you. I hadn’t even known she was pregnant.” She looked at Jackie for a few seconds. “She had one of her episodes while I was there—you know what I mean by that?”

“Yes,” Raven said.

“She said something very strange to me. About who your father is.”

Raven’s heart thudded. She could easily see Mama talking about her father the raven when she was immersed in the spirit world. She sometimes lost control of her thoughts when she was halfway between the human and spirit worlds.

“Did she tell you that? About the raven?” her aunt asked.

Raven tried to hide her panic. If her aunt found out what Raven believed about her father, she would put Raven in a place for people with mind sickness. Mama had said Aunt Sondra and their father had tried to put her in one of those places—because she practiced earth arts they didn’t understand. From the time Raven could remember, Mama had forbidden her to speak of her father being a spirit. She had warned of the dire consequences over and over. Raven was terrified she would be taken from her home if she told anyone the truth. Her aunt would say she was sick and couldn’t take care of herself.

She had to say something her aunt would believe. She remembered a man Mama had mentioned recently. “My mother told me my father was someone she didn’t want me to know. A bad man. A senator.”

“A senator!” Aunt Sondra said. “I very much doubt that, Raven!”

What was that name her mother had said the day she was halfway in the spirit world? If Raven said it, her aunt might believe she’d been told about her human father. The senator was somehow associated with Mama’s father—her aunt would believe her sister had known him. And the man would pose no threat to Raven because Mama had said he was dead.

“Bonhammer, I think was the name,” Raven said.

“Bauhammer? Senator Bauhammer?” her aunt said.

“Yes. That’s him.”

Aunt Sondra looked too stunned to speak.

“He’s dead. I have no father,” Raven said.

“I know he’s dead. My father—your grandfather—went to his funeral.”

Raven was relieved to hear her verify that.

“He was a married man, Raven,” Aunt Sondra said. “And much older than your mother.”

“What does that matter?”

“My sister would never have—”

Aunt Sondra abruptly went silent. She looked strange. Inexplicably horrified.

“What’s wrong?” Raven said.

“Oh my god,” Aunt Sondra whispered. She took out her phone and typed something into it. As she scrolled her finger on the screen, Raven and Jackie looked at each other. He was as confused by her aunt’s actions as Raven was.

Her aunt stopped scrolling and stared at her phone. She pressed her hand to her mouth.

“What?” Raven said. “What are you reading?”

“Oh god . . . Audrey. What have you done?” Tears spilled from her eyes. The most brazen person Raven had ever known was crying.

“Why are you crying?”

She held the phone out so Raven could see. There was a news article.

Granddaughter of Senator Bauhammer Abducted. Search Widens Beyond New York.

“This happened sixteen years ago. She took you, Raven.”

“You’re wrong! That has nothing to do with me!”

Her aunt typed into her phone again and scrolled some more. She whispered, “Dear god.” She gave the phone to Raven. “Does that woman look familiar?”

The caption on the photograph said the woman was Ellis Bauhammer.

Raven stared at the woman’s face. It was almost like looking in a mirror.

PART FIVE

DAUGHTER OF THE MIRACULOUS UNIVERSE

1

RAVEN

The limousine stopped at a gray stone building with shiny gold letters that said, YORK, BAUHAMMER & SCHIFF LLP. The driver opened the door. “I don’t know how long we’ll be inside,” Raven’s aunt told him.

“I’ll stay close,” he said.

Raven followed her aunt into the building. They entered a tiny room that made Raven nervous, her first time inside an elevator.

“Sondra Lind Young to see Mr. Bauhammer,” Aunt Sondra said to the receptionist behind a desk. The woman showed them to a wooden door down the hall. The nameplate said, JONAH M. BAUHAMMER III, ESQ. The receptionist knocked lightly before she opened it. “Mrs. Lind Young is here.”

“Send her in,” a man inside said.

Aunt Sondra went ahead of Raven. The man was standing next to a big desk. He had wisps of white in his thick, dark hair, and he looked a tiny bit like Jackie might look when he grew up, except with blue eyes. He was wearing a gray suit, white shirt, and purple patterned tie. Behind him, tall windows looked out at the sky and city buildings.