Witch in the White City: A Dark Historical Fantasy/Mystery (Neva Freeman Book 1)

by Nick Wisseman

  Or smaller.

  Or lower.

  But with Augie watching her ... maybe she could try? “I’ll see you out there.”

  He smiled. “You will. And you’ll do great.”

  Breathing slowly—evenly—she straightened her shoulders, pulled the curtains to either side, and stepped onstage.

  IT WAS HOT WHEN NEVA woke, reeling from past and present pain. Hot and wet: it felt like one of the steam engines had been rerouted to vent inside the storage room.

  The effort of standing nearly unbalanced her, and she grew no steadier as she stumbled toward the front of the storage room. At first, she managed to steer clear of its forgotten objects and their corners and edges. But her coordination was gone, seared away by the sweltering heat. And within a few steps she clipped her knee against the tooth of a stray gear.

  Limping on, another few steps saw her slumping against the stack of crates that divided the back of the storage room from the front. She steadied herself by lodging her right arm in a gap between two of the boxes. She’d rest here a moment, find the strength to move on, and ...

  But there was no strength to find.

  Neva couldn’t pull her arm back, couldn’t lean away from the crates, couldn’t work her throat to call out. She was paralyzed, so hot she was frozen. Immobile putty, a whale-oil candle molded into a helpless shape ... Except candles could melt. She could melt.

  And she did.

  A little at first, and then more, and then all as she let her bones slacken and her body go formless. She’d never deformed herself this much before. But the heat made her pliable, made her wax, and she fairly flowed through the slender corridor created by the unevenly positioned crates.

  The heat left her as she pooled out the other side. For a second, as she regained her aspect, she felt comfortable. Then a chill set in; by the time she’d solidified her frame, the air was arctic, as if she’d been transported to the refrigeration room of the Cold Storage Building ... before it burned.

  He hit the rubble, his spine snapped—

  No.

  Neva tried to shake the image from her head, but she couldn’t move it, couldn’t move anything. Again. She was frozen once more—truly frozen now, a fallen ice sculpture frosted to the floor.

  Yet she could still hear. Wiley and his friends hadn’t left the main part of the storage room, and Neva had drawn close enough to make out their words above the steam engines and whatever exhibits continued to run in the Hall.

  “Chicago Day is almost upon us,” Quill said. He was perched on a box in front of Neva, his back turned to her and blocking her view of everyone else, and theirs of her. “We’re running out of time.”

  “So is capitalism,” Brin answered from near the door. “Lazarus Silverman’s failed today. That makes three banks in the last week alone.”

  “It’s enough to make a person wonder if we need to do anything but stand back,” Wiley said.

  Roland snorted. “Always movin’ at a snail’s gallop, ain’t ya?”

  Someone laughed.

  Neva tried again to call out, but she was so cold she could barely breathe, much less speak. All she could do was hope someone would turn around and notice her ...

  “I just don’t see why you lot are in such a hurry to risk jail when we don’t have to,” Wiley said.

  “But revolution is risk,” Quill replied, his voice assuming an intensity Neva recognized from the history lessons he’d given her and Augie at the DeBells’ house. “We can’t have one without the other, and now’s the time for both. No more speeches; no more pamphlets.”

  “I see. And how do you know the moment is now? Did Karl Marx come to you in a dream again? Was Proudhon with him?”

  “Hear him out, Wiley,” Pieter said.

  Quill gestured around the room. “We talked once about ‘enhancing’ the Fourth of July fireworks display.”

  “You talked,” Wiley cut in. “No one listened.”

  “I heard him,” Roland said.

  “But our message would have been lost,” Quill continued, shifting on his box. “The crowd would have assumed the blast to be part of the general patriotism, or a simple accident—not the beacon we need. Ferris’s monstrosity is a much better target.”

  Neva froze, even more so than she already had. Could this possibly be what it sounded like?

  It was: Quill confirmed it. “The Wheel is a glittering cage,” her former teacher pronounced. “A trifling prison that blinds its prisoners to their captivity. Such is property. Dynamiting its foremost symbol on Chicago Day will be the true beginning of the working man’s emancipation.”

  Chapter Nine

  NEVA HARDLY DARED TO breathe. Had Quill become an anarchist? He’d always been passionate about class struggle, but ...

  “This is madness,” Wiley said, echoing her thoughts. “You’d destroy the Ferris Wheel, the wonder of the Fair that’s the wonder of the World?”

  Quill inclined his head. From her vantage behind him, Neva could see his upper vertebrae jutting out from the base of his neck. “It’s an amusement—a true opiate of the masses.”

  “No, it’d be Haymarket all over. Except we’d actually throw the bomb, not just be framed for it. And you’d hurt people.”

  “Not if we do it right,” Brin interjected.

  “Flaming hell, you too?”

  “I’ve already made some stick babies. We just need to take care no one’s on the Wheel.”

  “You’ve already made the dynamite—flaming hell. Well, I know Roland’s in.”

  “Been in,” Roland confirmed.

  “Shocking. Pieter, tell me you’re not considering this idiocy?”

  A throat cleared. “Ja-nee, Wiley ... Do you really think the pamphlets have changed anyone’s mind?”

  “And you think an explosion will? Twenty-five thousand unemployed workers came to hear Samuel Gompers speak downtown not two months ago. Twenty-five thousand. That’s how you win hearts and minds. Dynamiting the Wheel will only turn the public against us. Violence isn’t the answer.”

  “It was when we stomped the khakis at Majuba Hill.”

  “Because the Freedom War was a war—this is politics.”

  “On the contrary,” Quill said. “It’s both.”

  The argument raged on, but Neva stopped listening. The anarchist movement in Chicago had become increasingly militant in recent years, and only more so in the aftermath of Haymarket. If they found her now, lying in earshot of their scheming ... what would they do?

  Best not to find out.

  Unfortunately, bending her bones again hurt worse than ever. Before, she’d been overheated—with fever?—and that warmth had made her supple. Now, she’d gone rigid with chill, and the slightest distortion triggered absolute agony. But she forced herself to swallow her screams and inch backward between the crates, contorting like an eel until she was once more within their recesses.

  Instead of slipping out the other side, however, she followed another narrow passage between the sloppily stacked boxes and bent her way to the wall. Wahib—who, like the other early Algerian arrivals, had helped construct the Fair while Sol rush-built their exhibit—had told her once that while the White City looked eternal, its solidity was an illusion. The building’s exteriors were made of staff: a mixture of plaster, cement, and hemp troweled onto wooden laths, which were in turn supported by steel frames. Using staff had enabled the Exposition’s architects to build quickly while sculpting and molding as they pleased, but the substance wouldn’t hold up much longer than the Fair’s six-month run. And the compound was easy to break—as Neva proved to herself by hardening her right hand into a drill shape and punching through the wall.

  The noise wasn’t loud, but it was enough to cause Roland to ask Brin to “check on Wiley’s Negro notch.”

  Neva grimaced. This would have to be done quickly. As quietly as she could, she widened the hole a few inches and twisted through. She’d chosen the right spot: one of the laths was set higher than it should h
ave been, making it easy for her to curve under it and spill out into the Machinery Hall proper.

  She gave herself another few breaths to finish solidifying before hurrying toward the exit. The hall was dark and still, empty except for exhibits and the sound of the steam engines—it must be after midnight. She felt better, but moving faster than a walk was difficult.

  Especially when the fever returned.

  She grew hot as suddenly as she’d grown cold in the storage room. One moment she was wishing the forges of the metalworking display in the northwest corner hadn’t been damped for the night; the next moment she was flushed and near fainting. And the illness—if that’s what it was—had dug in deeper: with alarming speed, she became weaker than when she’d woken, barely capable of stumbling through the Hall’s main doors and out into the Court of Honor.

  It didn’t help that the stench of burning staff immediately filled her nostrils: the Cold Storage Building still burned. Or smoked, at least. The crowd had dispersed—there was no one in the Court of Honor to see her stagger in the opposite direction. But a shout from beyond the Terminal Station indicated that the Columbian Guard continued to manage the fire’s aftermath. Perhaps they were hosing down the wreckage.

  If only they’d hose her down instead.

  She needed to be cooled quickly, even frozen again—anything to stop her looming incineration. Her insides already burned, each beat of her heart pumping boiling blood through her body. In a few seconds, her rashes would burst, and out would pour steam, and smoke, and ...

  Neva fell headfirst into the South Canal.

  She’d been aiming for the Basin but lost her bearings as the fever made steering impossible. The same icy Lake Michigan water filled the Canal, however. It quenched her quickly, calming her skin and promising to do the same for her broiling gut if she would only open her mouth and let the cool blue irrigate her body.

  But just as her lips began to part, fingers gripped either shoulder and yanked her onto the walkway.

  “Fancied a midnight swim, did you?” Brin maintained her hold on Neva while she coughed, supporting her until she could sit upright on her own.

  “Thank you.”

  “You gave us a fright disappearing from the storage room like that. Wiley is still tearing it apart looking for you. How did you get out?”

  Neva pretended to study the Obelisk at the end of the Canal. The court’s lights were off, but the moon was bright enough to see the 60-foot-tall imitation of Cleopatra’s Needle in surprising detail. “There’s a hole in the wall. Behind some crates. I’m sorry—I panicked. This terrible fever came over me.”

  Brin peeled one of her gloves back far enough to expose her wrist and laid it against Neva’s forehead. “Jaysus. You’re burning up.”

  The fever had resurged the moment Brin’s skin contacted her own. But this time most of the heat concentrated in her rashes, causing them to pulse and throb.

  As they’d done when she’d stood next to the Civil War veteran.

  Seizing Brin’s wrist, Neva tore the glove the rest of the way off and twisted the Irishwoman’s arm down to look at the back of her hand.

  She had the rash.

  It was duller, more faded red than bright purple, but it was there. And seeing it made Neva want to ... bite her.

  She couldn’t explain why. Maybe she was mistaking the fever for rage; perhaps rage was fueling the fever. Either way, she wanted Brin on the ground, bleeding and breathless. But when Neva tried to pin her, Brin spun free, took two steps back, and produced a knife from beneath her dress. “Get a hold of yourself, colored girl. You can control this.”

  Lunging forward, Neva tried to rake her nails across Brin’s throat. She dodged to the side this time, slashing down at Neva’s chest. Without touching her skin, the blade sliced through the front of her jacket, which swung open to reveal the rash on her stomach.

  Brin nodded. “Freshly risen. You were bit today, then?”

  Neva watched her warily, waiting for an opening.

  “Fight the fury. Don’t let it compel you.”

  She edged to the right.

  Brin mirrored her movement. “It’s not your fault. The bugs did this to you. Same as they did to the porter—Wiley told us about the chase. Desperate business, that.”

  Neva kept circling; Brin did as well.

  “The porter didn’t want to do what he did. Nor do you. It’s the bugs: they’ve maddened your blood.”

  More circling.

  “But you can overcome it. You can leave and be safe. Go. Tonight. Right now. Leave the Fair and be free.”

  Neva paused, pretended to consider Brin’s words, and lunged again.

  Only to be denied again—the Irishwoman leapt back in perfect unison with Neva’s charge. The knife swung down again too, but instead of cutting through her clothing, the blade went to her neck.

  And expanded.

  Rather than cleaving into her skin, the knife thinned and elongated, wrapping around her throat fast as a whip. Then it tightened.

  Brin could bend metal.

  “I’m not known for my mercy,” she whispered while the knife-whip cut off Neva’s air. “Especially towards stubborn Negroes. And I won’t warn you again: leave the Fair, or I’ll free you of it with this.”

  The metal band squeezed harder, pressing out more images of Augie’s death.

  He hit the rubble ...

  Neva scrabbled at the band, trying to contort her way free.

  His spine snapped ...

  But she couldn’t manage the smallest contortion. She had no control. WHERE WAS HER CONTROL?

  The falling tower buried him ...

  And Neva blacked out.

  Chapter Ten

  A CROW CAWED, AUGIE threw a snowball at Neva, and she dodged.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  She froze. She’d always been flexible, but in the last few months—beginning shortly after her tenth birthday—she’d been able to ... bend. Stretch further than she should have been able to. Squeeze through gaps even a skinny girl like herself should have struggled with. And just now, she’d twisted like an eel around Augie’s snowball. “You mean your awful throw?”

  He stared at her, studying her side. But everything was as it should be again. “I didn’t miss,” he said after a moment. “You should be spitting snow. Except you did something.”

  Had it been that obvious? “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  She threw a fresh snowball at him. “Stop being thick.”

  He caught it and stared at her further. Then he opened his mouth and ... cawed. In perfect imitation of the crow. Had her eyes been closed, Neva wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

  Grinning, Augie puffed up into the stance he adopted whenever he wanted to impersonate Mr. DeBell. “It’s all right, Neva,” Augie said, but not in the usual repurposed version of his voice—this was Mr. DeBell’s aristocratic timbre and tone. Beat for beat, note for note. “You’ll always have a place in this household. Your parents earned it.”

  “But just because my gallant husband took you in,” Augie continued in a spot-on replication of Mrs. DeBell’s acidity, his posture stiffening, “doesn’t mean you can’t dust the china, mop the floors, and wipe my bony bottom after I use my chamber pot. Oh, and clean that out, would you?”

  “The pot?” asked Augie in Neva’s voice—her exact voice—as he stuck out his chin. “Or your bottom?”

  “Don’t be sassing them,” he answered in Caleb’s growl, hunching over and looking at her sideways. “Acting all privileged and prissy. Getting some schooling with the DeBell children don’t mean they think you're white. You’re just a Negro servant to them, same as the rest of us.”

  “But you can trust me,” Augie said, back in his own voice. “You can trust me, sister. I’ll keep your secret ... if you keep mine.”

  Only frosted air came out of Neva’s mouth in reply—she didn’t know what to say. Too many emotions tumbled through her head
:

  She wasn’t alone.

  Her brother was as strange as she was.

  He understood her.

  He was wonderful.

  And he needed to be hugged—she knew that much. Rushing to him, she wrapped her arms around his chest, bending her bones to fully encircle him as her momentum sent them laughing into the snow.

  “YOU’RE CERTAIN YOU’RE well enough to be up and about?” Wiley frowned at the small umbrella shading their table, no doubt worried that even a single ray of sunshine might topple Neva.

  “I’m fine,” she murmured, banishing the last of the memories—all featuring Augie—that had filled her dreams after Brin choked her into unconsciousness. “And not to sound ungrateful, but if you’re so worried, why did you bring me here?” An ostrich grunted from its enclosure, one of several featured outside the Midway’s California Ostrich Farm.

  “You need to eat something. Dr. Gentles said you fainted from exhaustion as much as fever, and the Farm has the best breakfast in the Fair.” Gentles had discharged Neva into Wiley’s care earlier that morning, following her late-night stay in the Exposition Hospital.

  She shrugged. “The omelets are really made with chicken eggs, you know.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Not according to the advertising.”

  “The copy for the Algerian Theatre says I’m Arabic. And the Fair is celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America in 1492—except it’s 1893.”

  “Fair enough.” Wiley tried to coax a smile out of Neva with one of his own, but she looked back at the still-grunting ostrich. “Either way,” he said after a moment, “they’re good eggs.”

  She watched the ostrich until an attendant calmed the bird by shrouding its head. “So Dob is at Hull House ...”

  Wiley fidgeted with a fork. “It was only for last night. It sounds like he has an aunt he can stay with until we find his mother.”

  “If you find her,” Neva said quietly, remembering the diamond-patterned handkerchief the porter—Augie—had used to wipe his bloody lips. Dob’s circumstances had been one of the first things she’d asked Wiley about when he’d collected her from the Exposition Hospital. She hadn’t liked his answer.