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

by Nick Wisseman

  “Genevieve,” she said upon spying Neva. Mag stood up from the game of street craps she appeared to be winning and clapped her on the shoulder. “The little dancer herself. Boys,” Mag said, turning to her disheveled gambling companions, “you can look at her—Neva’s the sweetest bit ‘a jam you’re likely ta lay eyes on. But if you try ta get a taste, you’ll be answering ta me.”

  One of the gamblers whistled appreciatively. Mag glared at him, and he grinned insolently.

  “It’s good to see you too, Mag,” Neva said with a small smile. “Can we speak a moment? Alone?”

  The same gambler whistled again.

  Mag threw an idle backhand his way, but he ducked easily.

  “Alone is probably best,” she said. “No telling how these rumbusticators would twist our words.” She led Neva into a dead-end alley and arranged a crate so they could sit and watch the entrance. “So: what brings a nice girl like you ta a pisshole like the Levee?”

  “Augie.” She gave Mag a condensed version of yesterday’s events. But even in shortened form, the tale wasn’t easy to tell; the big woman was rubbing Neva’s back by the time she reached the events at the Cold Storage Building.

  “I knew Kezzie,” Mag said after Neva closed with a question about Kesiah Nelkin, the girl Leather Apron had supposedly killed in the Levee. “She was nearly as pretty as you. Did well as a ladybird; mostly worked 20th Street. Never noticed any marks on her, other than what some ’a the johns gave her. But I took care ’a them. You might ask Ink, though. He saw a good deal more ’a her than I did.”

  “Ink Jacobs?”

  “You know any other Negro that black?”

  Ink was notoriously dark-skinned; his friends used to say he made coal look pale. He didn’t mind the comparison, but he liked it better when people said he had more ebony in him than an African King.

  Ink had also been Neva’s first kiss.

  “He’s chasing prostitutes now?” she asked, knowing it fit but hating that it did.

  “Every chance he gets. Got that Pullman money to spend.”

  George Pullman preferred to hire Negroes to bus his train cars, and the porters—if they were willing to don a mask of servility while on the job—made some of the best wages in the colored community.

  Mag jerked her thumb to the right. “Ink’s in Gaffney’s if you want ta talk to him. I saw him headed there about ten minutes before you came.”

  “The saloon on State and 22nd?”

  “The same. I’d go with you, but I’ve business in the Cheyenne.”

  Neva didn’t ask for details. The Levee’s colored district had been dubbed the “Cheyenne” because of its similarities to the most lawless town in the Wild West. Any “business” Mag had there was best left unspecified. “Thanks. I owe you.”

  The big woman motioned towards Gaffney’s. “Watch yourself in there. It’s not one ’a your cafés on the Midway.”

  “I will.”

  Mag clapped her on the shoulder again and left the alley. Neva trailed in the big woman’s wake, drafting on her fearsome reputation. But when she turned north at Dearborn Street, Neva had to make her own way south.

  A filthy white man propositioned her within five steps. Neva rolled up her sleeve to reveal one of the rashes. “I’ve got a venereal. A bad one—burns everywhere.”

  The man recoiled, but a second would-be-john stepped forward and raised his shirt to display an oozing sore on his stomach. “I got it too. See? Can’t get it any worse. How much?”

  Neva dealt with him by slamming a foot in his crotch.

  Several onlookers laughed, but no one else bothered her as she hurried the rest of the way to Gaffney’s. The only letters visible on the saloon’s faded sign were “G” and “F,” and the building was derelict even by the standards of the surrounding slum. Inside, the customers were just as dilapidated. Most didn’t look likely to have enough coin to pay for the beers they held.

  Not Ink, though. He stood out as much for his cleanliness as his dark skin: his porter’s coat shone so blue it could have been someone’s eye, and his black shoes gleamed with polish.

  He waved Neva over as soon as he saw her. “Quite the trip from the Fair,” he said after she’d taken a seat at his table.

  “I was already at the Yards. Ink, I need to speak with you about Kesiah Nelkin.”

  He raised his eyebrows and then his glass. “Who?” he asked before taking a sip.

  “I know you know her, so you must know she’s dead.”

  His eyebrows fell, contracting into headbutting caterpillars. “Damn, Neva. Two years hasn’t changed you a bit—still blunt as a battering ram.”

  “You cared for her,” she realized. “I’m sorry.”

  Ink took another sip. “Now why would I go caring for a Jew-girl ladybird?”

  “You don’t have to pretend—I’m only asking because I need to. Did she have any of these?” Neva pulled up her sleeve to expose the same rash she’d shown the white men outside.

  Ink’s fingers tightened around his glass. “How’d you get that?”

  “Insects bit me. Was it the same for Kesiah?”

  He traced the contours of the crescent shapes with his eyes. “Yeah ... I wasn’t with her when it happened, but she said the bugs were so thick on her legs it was like she was wearing pants.”

  Neva grimaced. “And the rashes came after?”

  “Right after, I think.”

  “Then she ... disappeared?”

  “She was killed, Neva. You can say it.”

  “I don’t want to, though. I’m so sorry, Ink.”

  He waved his hand dismissively, but the motion was feeble.

  Neva nodded. She knew the feeling. “What was she like?”

  “Sweet,” he said after a moment. “Everyone said she was gorgeous. And she was—had these curls that hung over her shoulder and practically shouted ‘follow me, boys.’ But most of all, she was sweet. She was sweet to me ...” His voice failed him, and it took a moment of visible struggle for him to get it back. “That’s what I’ll remember,” he finished eventually. “She was sweet.”

  “She sounds special.”

  “She was. Made you feel special too, even when someone was yelling at you for being with a white girl.” Ink rubbed his thumbs against their index fingers, as if recalling a caress. “She was real good with sick folk. Did some volunteering at the hospitals and the asylum. People said she was better than the doctors.”

  Neva nodded again, then braced herself. “Did you ever see her with Augie?”

  “Your brother?” Ink cocked his head. “No. Why? Did he say something?”

  She tried to cover her relief. “No. I’m just ... I hope he wasn’t mixed up in this.”

  “But you seem to be.”

  “Not by choice.”

  Ink went back to his glass. “At least the sick bastard who did this is dead.”

  Neva flinched.

  “Sorry, but I saw the paper. Kezzie wasn’t the only one he did for. I don’t like thinking you could have ended up like her.”

  “Then tell me one more thing and I’ll let it lie: did you see anyone else with her?”

  “More than I cared to.”

  “I mean, anyone ... different.”

  He drew the longest sip yet. “There was this redhead. Irish girl. That made me do a doubletake or three.”

  Neva froze. She felt like she’d been thrown in one of the Cold Storage Building’s meat lockers (before the fire) and left there overnight.

  “Lots of talk about those two,” Ink went on. “The jokes got pretty crude. I almost had to—”

  “Was her name Brin?”

  “I would have said Briney, but Brin might have been it. You know her?”

  Neva’s answer was forestalled by a man smashing headfirst through the saloon’s only unbroken window and onto a game of stud poker.

  Chapter Thirteen

  GLASS AND COINS FLEW in all directions. As the gamblers dropped their cards to clutch at wounds
or draw knives, Big Mag, grinning hugely, leapt through the window’s now-jagged opening and seized the man who’d sprawled atop the table—her “business” in the Cheyenne must have found her here. Then the craps players from 21st Street poured in through the door, and in moments the saloon erupted into a storm of fists, blades, and shouts.

  Ink reacted faster than Neva; she was still marveling that, in the Levee, people really got thrown through windows. But Ink must have dealt with this a time or two, because as soon as Mag’s fight became a general melee, he pulled Neva toward the back. “Through the kitchen,” he urged.

  They didn’t make it.

  Ink went down when a cannonball of a man hit him with a flying tackle launched from two tables over. Neva stumbled a second later when someone swept her legs from under her. But she regained her balance with a two-step graceful enough to have been a dance move and whirled to face her attacker.

  His build was even slighter than his height. If he’d been standing straight—rather than crouching in a wrestler’s stance—he only would have come up to her chin. She probably outweighed him. But his sleeves were stretched tight over the muscles beneath, and he stank of horse. Perhaps he was a farrier? Or maybe the odor was his own, and he was simply one of the Levee’s many dockworkers? Either way, his eyes quivered with rage.

  Neva wondered if hers were doing the same.

  Her vision was certainly trembling now. And narrowing, focusing on the small man as he lunged low again. Instead of stepping back, she jumped onto him, avoiding his arms by landing on his head.

  He grunted and tried to fling her off. But she wrapped her legs tight around his neck and squeezed, welcoming the pain of locking her hip and knee joints so that her thighs closed like a vice. The small man countered by hurtling towards the rear of the saloon, ricocheting off other brawlers without losing momentum. Nor did he slow when he reached the far wall—he just somersaulted into it.

  His timing was devious: he made contact midturn, slamming Neva’s back against the wall’s brick foundation and her head onto the floor’s hardpacked dirt. Alone, either impact would have been enough to stun her; combined, they almost paralyzed her.

  Fortunately, her attacker’s landing hadn’t been any softer. Through her haze of disequilibrium, she caught a glimpse of him holding his neck and retching on another man’s boots. Other patrons of the saloon were down as well, but Mag and her boys were still doling out free mayhem.

  Good.

  When the small man came at Neva again, she stepped under his opening blow, sharpened her knuckles into bone thorns, and punched his cheek open. Her second jab left his stomach bloody and her fingers dripping. A kick to the groin doubled him over. And while he clutched his crotch and gasped, she tapered the outer edges of her hands into skin-coated blades and swung them towards his neck, targeting the red marks her thighs had—

  “Neva!” shouted Ink as he pulled her back.

  She still hit the man, but only with her nails, which scratched parallel lines across his forehead. Wriggling free of Ink, Neva squeezed the fingers of her right hand together and formed their tips into a pointed cone that would bore through her attacker’s throat like a wasp’s stinger so she could drink his—

  He had sickle shapes on his right forearm.

  The sleeve had torn away during the fight, revealing the dark purple crescents—he’d had them for several days, then. Long enough to poison his blood with violence and rage.

  The same rage she had to walk back now. Bit by bit, flicker by flicker. Trading the fire in her veins for ice, one crystal at a time. Calm. She had to be calm. No bone blades. No finishing blows. Just steadiness—just Neva. She had to be Neva. She had to come back to herself ...

  When she did, she found that the brawl had burned itself out: the saloon was quiet except for the groans of wounded men and the owner’s repeated question of “Who’s to pay for this?” Mag and her boys were gone. So was the man she’d thrown through the window. Neva’s combatant lay slumped against the wall he’d rammed her into. Someone—Ink?—must have knocked him out. His face looked a mess, but his throat remained whole. She hadn’t killed him.

  She’d come close, though—and contemplated worse. Yet she’d stopped short, wresting control of her emotions away from the insects’ terrible venom ... Just as Brin had said she could. And while doing so had brought on another round of chills, they weren’t as bad as the arctic cold she’d suffered in the Machinery Hall’s storage room. Did that mean she was getting better?

  It didn’t feel like it.

  Ink put a hand on Neva’s shoulder, and she reached up to lace her fingers through his, her hand normally shaped again. Had anyone noticed its transformations? And where had those blades come from? She’d never weaponized herself like that before—hadn’t realized she could. Not to that degree, and not with so much intent.

  The venom ... Was it changing her?

  Ink couldn’t tell her, but it was a blessing to have him there, to be able to lean into his solid, reassuring form. But only for a moment. Because while he didn’t have any answers, she knew someone who might.

  It was time to have another chat with the Irish anarchist.

  “COLORED GIRL,” BRIN said by way of greeting when Neva cornered her near an extravagant oil painting in the Palace of Fine Arts. “I thought I told you to leave the Fair.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m not sure there’s anything more to say.”

  “There is for me. I’m sorry, for one thing—sorry about attacking you. If I hadn’t been bitten ...”

  “Not your fault. Are we done?”

  Neva shook her head. “I need to ask you some questions. About Kesiah Nelkin.”

  Brin stiffened so visibly she could have doubled as one of the palace’s Greek statues. “Not here,” she said after a moment. “I need to finish closing up. But our restaurant stays open for another hour. Meet me there at half past.”

  Neva murmured her thanks and went to get a table. Even this late—it had been almost eleven when she made it back to the Fair—the restaurant was full. But an older couple vacated their seats just as she started to contemplate sitting on the Palace’s front steps instead. The view there would have been better: the south side of the building bordered the North Pond, and gondolas lit by Chinese lanterns slipped eloquently through the water. Reading the menu made her realize how famished she was, though, and she ordered food enough for three when the waiter came by.

  “What’s this about Kezzie?” asked Brin a few minutes later. She’d waited to approach until she caught Neva’s eye, no doubt to avoid surprising her. Upon reaching the table, the Irishwoman stayed standing and rested her arms on the back of the empty chair.

  Neva gestured at it. “Please—I won’t attack you. I can control it now. And sitting with a ‘colored girl’ won’t hurt you.”

  Brin snorted and considered the bruises Gaffney’s floors had dealt to Neva’s forehead. “I take it I’m not the first person you’ve asked about her,” she said eventually, pulling the chair out.

  “I spoke with Ink Jacobs earlier today. In the Levee.”

  “Ah.” Brin glanced around the restaurant, but the other customers seemed engrossed in their food and drink. “And did that change your impression of me?”

  Neva shrugged. “It’s not my place to care about that. But I do need to know what happened to Kesiah.”

  Brin returned her gaze to the other customers.

  “No!” shouted Neva. “You answer me!”

  Along with half the restaurant, Brin looked at Neva.

  She lowered her voice, but it still felt like she was yelling. “I nearly killed you last night, and I almost killed someone else today. I watched my brother—my brother—dismember a man on the pier, and he may have done the same to five other people—”

  “Not Kezzie.”

  With an effort, Neva dammed her flood of words. Not easily: she could feel them lapping at the back of her throat, eager to spill out. But she�
�d come to listen, not rant.

  Brin began with a question. “The porter was your brother?”

  Neva nodded.

  “I’m sorry. He didn’t kill Kezzie, though.” Brin fussed with her place setting, rearranging the silverware in various layouts. “Two weeks ago, I brought Kezzie to the Fair. She was so excited; it was her first visit. She’d never found the time before, and I was worried she never would.” Brin started folding her napkin into an intricate pattern. “We spent the day wandering the grounds. Kezzie loved it all, but the theatorium struck her dumb.”

  “The orchestra?”

  It was Brin’s turn to nod. “Playing live from New York; that just floored Kezzie. Hearing music a thousand miles away through a box ... I’d never seen her smile so big—not while being so quiet.” She flashed a smile of her own. But it was only an echo, small and fleeting. “The insects found us when we went back to the Midway.”

  Neva winced sympathetically. “They bit me in the Algerian Theatre—while I was dancing.”

  “We were at the ice railway. Kezzie was already in the sled, about to strap in. And then they were just ... there. Boiling out of the ground, swarming over both of us and biting everywhere. But only for an instant—they were gone before we had time to scream.”

  “And then the rashes came?”

  “And the fever.” Brin gripped the napkin for a moment before letting it fall. It landed on her plate unspoiled, still in the crown shape she’d fashioned it into. “Not right away: it didn’t hit until after I’d made her go to the hospital to see about the marks. But when we got back to the Levee ...”

  Neva inhaled audibly. She thought she knew where this story was going, and she didn’t like it. “You fought.”

  Brin contemplated the crown for a beat before unmaking it and starting a swan. “Harder than you and I did. It was fresh on both of us—that’s when it’s worst.”

  Neva plucked at her own napkin. She didn’t mold it into anything; whatever sad form she managed would look twice as wretched next to Brin’s rapidly morphing cloth art. But letting her fingers twitch gave her something to do while she waited for the Irishwoman to continue.