In the Shadow of Blackbirds(36)

We followed her into a small living room decorated in fringed electric lamps and paintings of mustard-yellow flowers that weren’t particularly pretty. A blond young man with cloudy eyes puffed on a cigarette at a round wooden table in the center of the space. Julius closed the room’s door.

“This is my fiancé, Roy.” Lena nodded toward the young man at the table. “Roy, this is Julius’s muse and her aunt.”

“I’m not his muse,” I told Roy, who looked straight through me like he didn’t care one way or another.

“I have a homemade anti-influenza remedy for you to snack on.” Lena picked up a bowl of sugar cubes from the table. “You’re going to need to take off your masks for the séance. The gauze scares away the spirits who died before the flu attacked. They worry surgeons are sitting around the table, waiting to operate on them.”

Julius snickered. “You just don’t want to wear your own mask, Lena. You hate how it looks on you, so you blame the helpless spirits.”

“I don’t see you spoiling your handsome face with the gauze, either, Mr. Embers.”

“If Death is coming for me,” said Julius, lifting his chin, “I want him to see my entire face. He’s not going to find me cowering behind anything.”

Aunt Eva massaged her masked cheek. “Are you sure we need to take off our gauze? The flu just arrived on my block tonight.”

“The flu is everywhere,” said Roy, sucking on his cigarette.

“That’s what I told her.” Julius scooted chairs out for each of us. “Sit down, ladies. Take off your masks and eat Miss Abberley’s snack so we can begin.”

Aunt Eva took the seat next to Julius, so I positioned myself in the chair between her and Roy and dropped my coin purse next to my aunt’s bag. I pulled down my mask until it dangled around my throat like a necklace and watched Aunt Eva do the same. Lena presented us with the bowl of sugar cubes, which smelled like my father’s hands after he’d fill cans of kerosene in the back storeroom of Black’s Groceries.

I sniffed at the cubes again. “Sugar cubes soaked in kerosene? Is that your flu remedy?”

“Precisely.” Lena scooted an extra chair between Roy and Julius for herself. “That’s how you get rid of germs. You burn them away.”

“I’ll burn my throat away.”

“That’s the point.” She sat down. “Eat it or leave.”

I picked up a glistening cube and studied it.

Aunt Eva placed a piece of sugar on her tongue, grimaced, and swallowed it whole. Her face turned red. Her eyes watered, and I half expected her to breathe fire. “May I have a drink of water, please?”

“Roy, be a gentleman.” Lena knocked Roy’s arm with her elbow. “Get Mrs. Ottinger a glass of water.”

I raised my cube to my mouth but transferred it inside my fist at the last second and pretended to swallow. When Roy hustled back in with the sloshing glass for Aunt Eva, I flicked the cube to the floor beneath the table.

“So, tell me, ladies.” Lena leaned forward on her elbows. “Who do you want me to bring to you tonight?”

My jaw dropped. “We can’t tell you that information. How will we know whether or not you’re a cheat?”

Lena raised an eyebrow. “A cheat?”

“Mary Shelley!” rasped my aunt. “Be polite. We’re guests here.”

“If I tell you whom I want to see,” I said, folding my hands on the table, “and drop clues about what I want him or her to say, we’ll have no proof whether or not you genuinely contact the dead.”

“Are you insinuating I can’t contact the dead?”

“I’m saying, if you can, you don’t need to ask whom we want to see.”

“Good Lord.” Julius rubbed his swollen eyes. “Listen to all those proper whoms. No wonder Stephen couldn’t keep his hands off her.”

Lena’s eyes pounced on me. “Stephen? Is that who you want to find?”

I glared at Julius. “I didn’t want you saying anything to her about your brother and me. I don’t want her summoning him.”

“Then why did you agree to come here?” asked Aunt Eva, her voice struggling back to life after the kerosene. “I thought you wanted to find Stephen.”

“I’m here because I’m curious. If you’re going to summon a spirit for me, Miss Abberley, I want you to pick someone obscure—someone no one here would have ever mentioned to you. If I see you’re genuinely gifted, I’ll pay you to show me how you channel your gifts. But I’m not parting with one precious cent if you’re going to sit there and ask me to feed you information.”

Lena tugged on one of her coiled curls. “Are you setting rules for me?”

“Yes. If I’m to pay you for tutelage, I’d be an employer of sorts.”

Roy chuckled and actually spoke more than four words. “You’re being challenged, Lena. It’s about time, after all that spoiling you get from your doting followers.”

“Shut up, Roy. Put out your cigarette.” Lena rose from her chair and pressed her hands against the table. “I’ve got rules for you, too, Miss Black.”

“What are they?”

“No getting out of your chair after I turn off the lights. No talking. No breaking the sacred circle. No touching the ectoplasm.”