In the Shadow of Blackbirds(51)

Julius’s Cadillac.

I sat up straight and stiff.

Aunt Eva was in the passenger seat—I could see the silhouettes of her work cap and flu mask. I tore off my goggles and ran to the front door.

The two of them climbed out of the vehicle and shut the doors. Julius wore the same gray fedora as the night before, and he lugged a crate of oranges under his arm. Aunt Eva laughed and chatted with so much giddy enthusiasm that she didn’t even notice me standing guard in the doorway until they reached the porch steps.

“Mary Shelley!” She grabbed her chest. “You scared me, just standing there. What are you doing without your mask?”

Julius thumped up the porch steps behind her. “Would you look at that? It does have a mouth and a nose.” He gave my chin a flick, but I jerked away.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Julius surprised me at the factory and offered to drive me home.” Aunt Eva gestured for us to hurry inside. “Come in, both of you. Shut the door, Mary Shelley. Julius, please have a seat in the living room.”

Julius sauntered in with his crate.

“Who’s there?” asked Oberon.

I grabbed my aunt by her wrist before she could take two steps up the stairs. “Why is he here?”

“He’s lonely and grieving, so he picked me up from the shipyard. I invited him to supper. Go in and sit with him.”

“Where are you going to be?” I asked.

“Upstairs.”

“Why?”

She yanked me toward her and spoke through gritted teeth: “Because I wasn’t expecting him, and I need to change out of these awful, smelly work clothes. I’m embarrassed beyond words right now. Please be a kind hostess while I make myself presentable.” She pushed me toward the living room and announced in a cheerier voice, “If you’ll both excuse me for a moment …”

She hurried up the rest of the stairs. A smell of grease and perspiration so thick I could almost see it lingered in her wake.

I headed into the living room and plopped myself in the rocking chair across from Julius. “Why are you here?”

“Why do you sound upset?”

“I just want to know what you want.”

He tossed his hat on a cushion beside him and sank back into Aunt Eva’s flowery ivory sofa—a tiny piece of Victorian doll’s furniture compared to his long body. As usual, he wore no mask, and a pale and worn appearance soured his entire face. His eyes were bloodshot and his pupils pinprick small, as they were the night before.

“You should be nice to me,” he said. “I brought you something.”

I turned my attention to the fruit crate sitting at his feet. “Oranges?”

“No.” He hoisted the crate with a grunt, carted it over to me, and dropped down on one knee by my side. A chalky flavor numbed my tongue—a feeling emanating from Julius that I couldn’t identify.

“I brought you Stephen’s books,” he said.

I opened my mouth to react, but no words found their way to my lips—only a shaky flutter of air.

He placed a leather-bound volume on my lap: Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. The cover’s rich mahogany scent filled my nose, bringing me back to rain-soaked Oregon afternoons spent with Stephen.

A second book followed: The Mysterious Island, the novel Stephen had been reading the day we last saw each other. I touched the embossed title and remembered how the book had rested on his knee when he sat at the bottom of the staircase. I smelled briny sea air and heard the low thunder of waves crashing against the beach across from his house, as well as the ticking of the grandfather clock with the pockmarked moon face and the swinging brass pendulum.

A tear burned down my cheek. Julius pulled a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and offered it to me.

“Thank you.” I wiped my eyes.

He rose from the floor and sat on the little round end table next to me. “I know how close the two of you were since you were children.” His chilly hand settled around my shoulder. “And I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what you said after last night’s séance. I don’t think you’re crazy.”

I kept my eyes on Stephen’s books.

“Mary Shelley,” said Julius as he moved his fingers to the back of my hand, “will you please help me remove his spirit from my house?”

Those words got me to look straight at him. “Do you see him, too?”

“No, but I hear him. In his room. Sometimes, even in the middle of the day, the floorboards groan, and I know it’s him.”

“Is that what those noises were when I last posed for you—when you and Gracie kept looking up at the ceiling in horror and your mother got hurt?”

“I—yes, I think it was.” His hand trembled against mine. “I can’t even sleep in that house anymore. I want to move, but I need money.”

“Are you planning to sell the house?”

“I can’t. My stepfather left the property to Stephen and my mother.”

“What about all the money from the spirit photographs?”

He snorted. “I’m not a fellow who saves up his nickels and dimes. I have an expensive image to maintain. Customers to impress. Hobbies …”

“Then don’t complain about being stuck there. Maybe if you hadn’t tossed out Stephen’s photographs or hurt him—”