Author's Note: Like "The Van Dort Sisters Meet Lord Barkis," this is a fanfic of a fanfic, this time playing with the very popular fandom idea of Emily being reincarnated as Victor and Victoria's daughter. Also like that story, this can be considered as "not real," for those who care about that kind of thing. If it were real, this would have been a rough supernatural year for my OC's. Also thanks to Mr. PlayerPiano for his help, any stupid mistakes I make about old-time cameras are mine alone.

The Seance

The Camera Fiend had not been what Mary Van Dort had been expecting. She read the closing lines, then shut the book with a snap. She studied the creepy fellow on the front cover.

It was a balmy evening in late July, just before dinnertime. Mary was lounging on the loveseat in the study with her feet hanging over one armrest. Over Easter she'd fit. She'd had a growth spurt this summer and shot up at least four inches. And she'd already been tall for eleven. At this rate she might end up as tall as Lydia.

She bent her head back over the other armrest so that she could see her older sister. Lydia sat in one of the armchairs by the fireplace. She had her lap desk out and was scribbling some shorthand for the correspondence course she was taking. Liddie was almost twenty and she was a half an inch taller than their father, who was not a short man. Actually she looked exactly like Dad, though the resemblance was not as striking now that Dad was going bald and had to wear reading glasses.

Mary's neck and eyes were beginning to get sore so she rested her head normally on the throw pillow again. This way she could see Dad over at his desk on the other side of the room. He was working on some drawings. From here she could see that he'd propped up a snapshot to work from. With a touch of pride she recognized the photo she'd taken of a butterfly in the garden at school. When he couldn't work from life, Dad worked from her photographs. Mary liked this. It made her feel professional.

Mary was, she supposed, a camera fiend. In that she loved cameras. Not in the bad way that people complained about. Certainly not fiendish like the man in the book. But taking photographs took up a lot of her time. She loved the feeling of capturing a small bit of reality to keep forever. It was magic. And she went through film for her Brownies like it was going out of style. She'd even founded a Camera Club at school this past term. Membership currently consisted of herself, but Mary didn't mind being alone with her camera.

Did she get underfoot and bother people? Take a few unflattering snaps? Mary tilted the book this way and that and riffled the pages again. Maybe. For the sake of self-expression and art, though. She felt it was worth it.

"Finished already?" Dad asked, looking up from his sketchbook. He looked at her over the top of his glasses. "How was it?"

Mary considered. "Good," she said. "I liked it. It was a good adventure. The author's smart about photography. But the villain was mad. And I don't think you could really rig a camera with a gun to kill someone."

"Please don't try to find out," Lydia murmured absently, her pen still scratching. Mary ignored her. Though it did sound like something Mary might try, just to see what would happen.

"Rig a camera with a gun?" Dad asked. He took off his glasses and looked at her properly. "Someone does that in your book?"

"Yes," she said. As she spoke she tapped the toes of her boots together, enjoying the sound and the rhythm. "The photographer wants to photograph a ghost. Or the soul, whichever. But every time he murders someone he can't get a soul on film. So he puts a pistol in a camera rigged to shoot when you trip the shutter. So the timing will be right."

"Goodness," said Dad. His chair squeaked as he leaned back. "I thought it was just about someone who liked to make photographs. I should've looked more closely before I bought it for you."

Mary shrugged. "It was all right. It's a good story." Truthfully, she'd skimmed most of it, stopping here and there for the technical descriptions of cameras and photography. And the villain had been fun to read about. And he had been right. It would be something to get a ghost, a real one, on film.

Millie Clarke-Bolton's mother was big on Spiritualism. Millie wasn't quite Mary's friend. They were more thrown into each other's company at school because the other girls thought they were strange. She was nice enough but could not shut up about ectoplasm and runes and the pyramids. Given what had happened to her dad, Mary didn't think it was so crazy to think you could call up the dead and have a chat. But she didn't think Lady Clarke-Bolton's personal medium could really do it. Most if not all of the séance stuff was bunk. Mary knew for certain all of the "spirit photography" was fake. Why, she'd ended up with enough double exposures and lens flares to know that. People just did seances for fun and for attention.

Still….

"And it would be fun to get a ghost on film," she added. "Not kill anyone. But. You know. Get a photograph of a real ghost."

There was a beat of silence. She saw her sister and her father exchange a look. The kind of look that annoyed her. The "Little Mary is So Silly" look that, as the baby of the family, had plagued her her entire life.

"Well, if you meet one, ask politely to take his photograph," Dad finally said. Liddie snorted.

"I could have a séance," Mary suggested, thinking it over. "Like Millie Clarke-Bolton's mother. I could ask if any ghosts will appear, just to have their picture taken."

"I don't think seances really work," Dad remarked quietly, eyes back on his drawing.

"Of course they don't," Lydia agreed. "And why would a ghost want its picture taken? Even if it did, how would you get it a print?"

"Have another séance to tell them it's ready," Mary shot back. "Then bury it next to their grave so they can reach it. Obviously."

Lydia gave her a long look. "Mary, your brain sometimes," she murmured with a shake of her head.

Mary scowled. At least her brain was artistic and creative. Liddie's brain was full of fishery reports and shorthand and adventure novels. Such a philistine.

"Mary," Dad said, more seriously now, "it's not a good idea to pester the dead."

"I wouldn't pester," Mary insisted. Though Dad would know about pestering the dead. Sometimes it was very annoying to have a father who'd had a paranormal experience. "I'd just ask."

Dad sighed a small sigh. Giving up on her. So many of their conversations ended that way. Like when she'd asked to learn to fly a hot air balloon. Whenever she had a brilliant idea her father usually tried to talk her out of it, then gave up with a sigh.

"I'd be famous," she went on. "Because it would be real. Not a trick or just an odd blob of light."

The dead could come back. Dad had told her so. They could come to visit if they used a haunting spell. So she'd just ask if someone wanted a photograph taken. She could offer to do some favor, like a piece of unfinished business. Or relay a message. Buy them a better tombstone with all the money she'd make from her spirit photograph and lecture tour.

"I'm going to do it," Mary announced. "I'm going to get a photograph of a real ghost."

Dad was concentrating on his drawing again. But Lydia, at last finished with her scribbling, looked her in the eye. There was a small smile on her face, mocking around the edges.

"Well, it's nice to have goals," she said sweetly. Mary stuck out her tongue. "Father, do you have any envelopes and stamps? I've just finished this course and I must send it in tomorrow."

Mary rolled her eyes and tapped her boots. Lydia tidied up her little desk and stowed it away. How Liddie thought a secretarial course was more interesting than seances and ghost photography was beyond her. But her sister really could spend happy hours working through shorthand exercises and writing up pretend correspondence. Mary'd spent the past three days watching her do it. Bizarre.

Dad riffled through a few desk drawers before shaking his head. "None, I'm afraid," he said. "Check your mother's desk in the parlor, she might have some."

"Are we dressing for dinner?" Lydia asked as she stood up. She smoothed some wrinkles out of her skirt. "I'm still in my work suit. And Mary looks like she just crawled out of a bush." She had a little grin on her face as she reached over to tug gently at Mary's tangled brown hair. Mary ducked away from her hand.

As a matter of fact Mary had been in a bush earlier. To take a photograph of the garden from inside the leaves. And just to be in a bush as she hadn't done that for a while. Dad looked down at himself. He was in his shirtsleeves with his jacket flung over the back of his chair, the way he usually was working in his study. Dad's study was the most relaxed room in the house, Mary's favorite for that reason.

Dad glanced at the clock on the mantel. The dinner bell would go any minute. "Hm, no," he said. "As it's only the three of us, I think we needn't bother."

Standards tended to drop a bit when Mother wasn't home. Mother had gone with Anne and Catherine, Mary's other sisters, to drop them off for a long visit at the country house of one of Grandmamma's friends. They were set to stay there for a week, with Grandmamma playing chaperone. Catherine was going because she'd been at school with the daughter of the family. Anne was going because the garden was famous and she wanted to see it and make sketches. Mother was staying that evening for dinner to be polite and would be home late.

When Lydia had left with her papers, Dad started clearing up what he'd been working on. Putting away pencils, stowing her photograph carefully in a sleeve. Mary kept turning the idea of a séance over in her mind. Now that Lydia had disregarded her, and Dad had asked her not to, Mary now felt honor-bound to give it a try.

She swung her legs to the floor and got up. She headed over to the bookshelf beside the fireplace and wedged The Camera Fiend in the first gap she found. As she did so she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the fireplace. Her enormous eyes and pointy chin, her mousy brown hair loose around her shoulders. Liddie, she grudgingly thought, had been right. There were little scratches all over her forehead, her hair was mostly tangles, and there was a rip in her sleeve that she hadn't noticed before.

"Say, Dad," Mary said, plucking a small twig out of her hair and tossing it in the fireplace, "Do you think I need to go to the graveyard to call up a ghost, or would one come to the house?"

"There's no such thing as ghosts," Dad said mildly. He tucked his glasses into their little case and set them on the desk, then put out his desk lamp. "Only dead people who visit the land of the living. Even if someone did visit because you asked, you'd just have a photograph of a corpse, and there are plenty of those."

Mary frowned, thinking. Just because Dad had haunted once he thought he was the expert. But he did have a point. She thought some more, trying to recall bits and pieces of what her dad had told her over the years.

"Well," she said, thinking aloud, crossing her arms and tapping a finger on her chin, "then I will have to be specific. I will ask for someone who's in spirit form now. Yes! You know. They've done the butterflies, or what have you. I need one of those."

Dad was at the doorway, and he gestured for her to join him. At his side she noticed again that she really had gotten a lot taller. She was up to just beneath his nose now. He put his hand on her back as they walked down the hall toward the dining room.

"I don't think anyone comes back from that," he said. "That's why ghosts aren't real. Please don't try to...to...conjure anyone. You never know what might happen when you meet the dead. And you don't know who might show up. All right?"

Mary didn't answer. Dad knew what he was talking about on this. But he couldn't possibly know everything. It's not like she was planning to hurt anybody or marry anybody or ask for special favors. Just one photograph. Just to see if she could.

"Why not take more photographs of the garden?" Dad suggested brightly as they passed through the entry. Mrs. Reed, the housekeeper, had just rung the tinkly little bell that meant mealtime. Lydia was already waiting in the dining room. "You take lovely photos of butterflies, you know."

"Oh, yes, I will take more butterfly photos," Mary assured him, pleased by the praise. "I might do some tomorrow."

"You could come take more photographs at the wharf, as well," Lydia suggested as they took their seats at the table. "Your last set came out very nicely."

Mary gave a little half-shrug, but inside she swelled with pride. "You think?" she said. Mrs. Reed had set out soup to start. Cucumber. Not her favorite. "Grandad didn't like them."

Liddie grinned at her. "Only because you took a photograph of Ellie Knickerson after she cut her fingertip off," she said. "And then wanted him to put it in the promotional material."

That had been a good, if grisly, photo. Ellie was seven and one of four kids younger than Mary who worked with their parents at the wharf cutting up fish. Her hand had slipped and snick! Off went the top of her index finger. There'd been a lot of blood. Mary had snapped a photograph of Ellie running to the office, hand aloft and braids flying. She'd gotten another one of Lydia patching her up, and yet another of Ellie's tearstained face and bandaged finger.

"Well, it was honest! Poor Ellie," said Mary, remembering. "You think she'd like to have some prints? I didn't think to ask."

"I wouldn't think so," Dad said, wincing. He shook his head over his soup. "Poor thing. Far too young to be working."

"Well, her parents need her to," Lydia said reasonably. "Lots of children work. I've been at the cannery since I was seven."

"You've been hanging about the cannery since you were seven, not working," Dad corrected. "You were seventeen before we let you touch the knives."

"Why don't you just pay Ellie's parents more?" Mary suggested. She helped herself to a slice of bread and spread it with a hunk of butter as thick as her thumb. "Then she wouldn't have to go getting her fingers cut off."

"Precisely what I said," Dad told her. Lydia gave a little sigh.

"All well and good to say," Lydia said. "Especially in July. But if you look at what we actually make in a given season..."

By her tone it was clear she was off and Mary stopped listening. Thinking of Ellie made her think of accidents, which made her think of all the people who must get hurt on the job, and from there she thought of how some must die on the job, and she was back to the thought of getting a ghost on film. It would be ghoulish, very Camera Fiend, to hang around the cannery and wait for someone to hurt themselves badly enough to die. Mary would never. Never ever, that was terrible.

So a séance was truly the only ethical way to capture a ghost on film. The person was already dead, moved on, likely bored. And the séance would be real, so she wouldn't be faking or tricking anyone. The dead were real, the spirit was real. The dead could visit. So it was possible.It couldn't hurt to give it a try. As Lydia's voice droned at a steady pace, Mary made a plan.