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

by Nick Wisseman

  “There are all manner of clubs hanging on the wall,” the first voice observed.

  “No, what you want is one o’ them blades—slip it in and lever open the lid,” the second voice said.

  “You’ll cut the girls.”

  “What girls?” a new voice asked.

  “In the coffin. Two o’ them.”

  “Locked in?”

  “Aye. Cuddy’s left us a puzzle.”

  “You sure?”

  “Bat heard them talking.”

  “Hello?” Someone knocked on the coffin’s lid. “No need to be afraid. We’re all gentle souls here.”

  Someone else chuckled.

  “I saw a jimmy in the alley—I’ll run and fetch it.”

  But before any footsteps made it to the stairs, something smashed against the coffin, hard enough to make Neva and Brin smack their heads together.

  “Dry up, Theo, Dyer’s getting a crowbar! Put the damn club down.”

  “They’re running out of air! We have to get it open NOW!” Another blow rocked the coffin, splintering part of the lid this time.

  “I can’t mend that,” Brin whispered while the other men tried and failed to restrain Theo, who connected on another two swings. “On my mark, kick the top off and run.”

  Neva nodded and reformed herself so that her feet pressed against the bottom of the lid.

  “Do it!” hissed Brin as she loosened the lock. They pushed up, the lid shot off the coffin, and the two women sprang out before the men had finished exclaiming their surprise.

  But there was nowhere to go.

  The room was too small, and the White Chapel members too many—eight in total. Neva bent through them like a breeze, leaving several staring at their clutching, empty fingers. Yet they caught Brin before she took two steps.

  “Woah, little miss!” bellowed a man—Theo?—holding a club as Neva reached the stairs and glanced back. Brin wasn’t struggling, but her hand inched towards the knife concealed in her jacket.

  “Fast as a snake,” another man said of Neva as he took a step towards her, his doughy frame jiggling with drunken menace. “A black snake.”

  “No, she’s one o’ them dancing girls,” a third man cut in when she held up a warning hand. “The belly dancers. I seen her on the Midway, at the Street in Cairo.”

  “The Algerian Theatre,” a fourth man corrected. “Her name is Genevieve Freeman, and she’s a former servant of Edward DeBell.”

  Neva recognized the voice a split-second before she recalled the face it belonged to. The voice was Bat’s, the man who’d asked about Mr. DeBell a few moments ago. The face was that of the young executive she’d spoken to at the Stockyards that afternoon. Clearly, he’d done his homework since then.

  And a good deal of drinking.

  “Care to give us a shimmy?” he asked, stinking of whiskey even from across the room. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? A private showing?” He tugged at the bottom of his shirt to indicate she should expose her belly.

  For a moment, she was back at the circus, numb and young and helpless. But then she saw how close Brin was to whipping out her knife and plunging it into one of the oafs holding her. Which meant blood. And fighting. And a bad end for just about everyone in the room.

  Not that the men didn’t deserve it.

  “Of course,” Neva said in a tight voice. “Is this what you want?” She waved off the two men who’d been stepping towards her and slipped out of her jacket, stalling for time by rolling her stomach as soon as it became visible. Someone whistled as she moved into a Moroccan shimmy.

  But someone else—the ugliest man in the room—fixated on her belly’s rash. “Ain’t that Leather Apron’s mark? The one they showed in the papers?”

  More whistling, and louder.

  “Then why inn’t she dead?”

  “Who cares. Let’s see the rest of them. That article said the marks were all over.”

  “Oh, they are,” Neva purred—she might be able to bend her way out of this yet. “Watch, and I’ll show you.” Executing a half-turn, she worked into an undulation, sending a slow, sensual wave rolling up her body. But when the wave reached her hips, their ends sharpened to daggers and jutted from her skin. And when the wave crested at her head, her cheekbones took on a similar edge as a bony, bloody horn erupted above either ear.

  “The Ripper marked me well,” she hissed, sounding every bit as demonic as she’d caused herself to appear. “Go before I do the same to you.” She glided to the side, clearing the stairway. “Go NOW.”

  No one else so much as breathed—even Brin looked stunned. Then the doughy man bolted, and the rest of the men took off as if they’d been whipped, trampling over each other to get out of the room and keep as far from her as possible.

  “Except for you,” Neva said to Bat when he tried to scurry past. She caught his arm and jerked him around to look at her. “You, I have questions for.”

  He opened his mouth to protest. But his cry was stillborn, silenced by the twist of Neva’s features and the red lines running down her neck and legs. The rancid smell of soiled pants competed in the air with the sounds of flight and banging doors.

  Then Neva smiled, and her teeth were razors.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “WELL, HE DIDN’T KNOW much,” Brin observed a few minutes later, after Bat had whimpered down the stairs and into the alley.

  Neva nodded. Bartholomew Wiggins—Bat, to his idiot friends—hadn’t been able to tell her anything about why Mr. DeBell’s name was in the White Chapel guestbook. The young executive’s best guess was that Mr. DeBell had come on a lark, invited by a current member; that was how Bat had been introduced to the club a year ago. But as far as he knew, Mr. DeBell wasn’t a regular.

  “No one’s going to believe him either,” Brin continued. “Sodden as he was. And considering the company he keeps.”

  “You think he told the truth?”

  “I don’t think he’s any cleverer than he looks, if that’s what you’re asking. Just an empty suit who belongs to a morbid, ridiculous club. Put those away, would you?” Brin motioned at Neva’s horns.

  “Gladly.” Yet she restored her teeth first, so she could grit them while she withdrew the horns into her skull and made it whole again. Next she set about smoothing her face and her hips. The puncture wounds didn’t seem as large once the bone receded and the surrounding skin folded back down, but they were still ugly. She’d be lucky not to have scars—the type of telltale mark Augie had always warned her not to leave. And her hair was clumped with blood. “Sorry. That’s further than I’ve ever gone with it, but it was the only thing I could think of ... Proper witchcraft, I suppose.”

  Brin snorted. “I’d call it inspired. And better than what I had going.” She gave Neva’s injuries a brisk appraisal. “Want me to bind those?”

  “With what?”

  Brin pointed at one of the crimson-stained Indian blankets hanging on the walls. “No one’s going to notice a little more red on that.”

  Neva grimaced. “No. Let’s just leave.”

  They turned the skull lamps off as they went. After making sure the alley was empty, Brin darted two blocks over and down another side street. “Saw this on our way here,” she explained as she neared a jumble of iron that might have been a broken printing press. “One of the papers must have gotten new equipment.”

  “Good for them?”

  “Trains won’t be running back to the Fair this late,” Brin elaborated. “We need somewhere to sleep for a few hours.” She knelt by the scrap metal and trailed her fingers over it, coaxing the busted parts into a cave shape as Neva’s rashes screamed at her to regrow her horns and gore the Irishwoman from behind.

  “You must have liked that coffin.”

  “Not a bit.” Brin glanced at Neva, no doubt noting how twitchy her hands had become. “But it’s as safe as we’re going to get unless you have extra coin on you.”

  She shook her head.

  “This o
ne’s yours, then. I’ll make my own. No need to share again.” Brin beckoned inside the crude opening. “Come on, you need the rest.”

  She was right. It had been a hideously long day—two hideously long days. Time for a nap. Neva slid inside the opening and shifted around until she found a tolerable position.

  Behind her, Brin molded a few strips of stray metal into what looked disquietingly like prison bars. “Not a fan of cages myself, but this will keep the riffraff out, and I imagine you could wriggle through them.”

  “I imagine so. Good night ... Irish girl.”

  Brin’s lips twitched. “All right, colored girl. Let’s pretend it is one—good night. I’ll wake you at dawn.” Chuckling, she withdrew to the other side of the press and began fashioning her own little cave.

  Neva fell asleep within four breaths.

  “DON’T LET LUCRETIA catch you reading that.”

  Augie moved to slap shut The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but Neva caught his hand.

  “We didn’t steal it, Mr. DeBell,” she said softly. “We borrowed it from Derek.”

  Mr. DeBell nodded, his head seeming oddly bereft without its customary bowler hat. “And you’re performing it quite well. I’m sorry, I should have knocked.”

  “It’s all right.”

  He took another step into their candlelit servant’s room, his shadow jiggling like a robe on a laundry line. “It’s just that when I heard you taking turns with Twain’s colorful prose, I realized what a good teacher we lost in Quill—his politics aside.”

  Augie grunted. Neva looked down at the book.

  Mr. DeBell studied the small room for a moment, his eyes lingering longest on a worn copy of Charles Upham’s Salem Witchcraft, another book they’d asked Derek to procure for them—and the one Augie had been more insistent they read.

  Neva rested easier when Mr. DeBell’s gaze found its way back to her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I know my being here is a ... break with custom. But I wanted to let you know that I won’t be hiring another teacher. Abiah has all the schooling she needs—and more than she wants, it seems—while Jasper will be old enough for university in the spring. Derek, I think, would be best served by an apprenticeship with a draftsman.”

  “And what of us?” asked Neva.

  “That’s up to you.” Mr. DeBell tucked his arms behind his back. “You’re welcome to stay on, of course; you always will be. But you’re sixteen now, and I’ve seen you dance,” he said, unfolding one arm to point at Neva. “And I’ve heard you throw your voice,” he continued, gesturing at Augie. “If you’d like to try something new, I could write a letter of recommendation to James Bailey.”

  Augie sat straighter. “The ringmaster?”

  “And cofounder of Barnum & Bailey Circus. He’s an old friend of mine. Once he sees your skills, I’m sure he’d be happy to take you on.”

  Augie shot Neva a look of pure enthusiasm.

  She shut The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn slowly enough that the pages rippled down a few at a time, creating a smooth, fleeting waterfall of parchment. “We’d be performers?”

  “That’s my hope. What do you think?”

  “We say yes,” Augie answered in a near-perfect—but not too perfect—imitation of Neva.

  She pretended to hit him with the book. He ducked playfully.

  Then Neva grew somber. Going to the circus—the circus!—meant they’d be on their own, leaving the only home they’d ever known ... But they’d be on their own, no longer servants at a white lady’s beck and call. “We say yes.”

  Mr. DeBell smiled. “I’ll write the letter in the morning.”

  “Thank you,” she said as he turned to go. “For everything.”

  He paused at the door. “It’s nothing—your parents earned it. Good night.”

  TRUE TO HER WORD, BRIN woke Neva at first light. “Sleep well?” the Irishwoman asked after they were both free of the printing press.

  “Not really. Did the bites make you dream ... memories?”

  Brin wrinkled her nose. “Vivid stuff, isn’t it? It’ll pass, except for the occasional wit-smearer: last night I dreamt that Bat fellow conned us—that he was the one directing the insects. Had me shaking when I woke. Breakfast?”

  “Thank you, but no. I need to look into something.”

  “Seeing about Mr. DeBell?”

  Neva nodded. Details of her connection to him—and his mysterious absence—had come out during the interrogation of Bat. “Yes.”

  Brin clucked her tongue. “Good luck. I’d lend a hand, but my shift starts soon. I’ll look for you on the grounds.” She stepped in the direction of the nearest rail station, then paused. “If you’re in earnest about helping with the Wheel, the boys and I are meeting at ten tonight in Machinery.”

  Neva considered her fiery-haired counterpart for a moment. “So you trust me now?”

  “The others don’t, but I can bring them around. If you’re in earnest.”

  It still felt like a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one at that. Moreover, it was a distraction from finding out what had happened to Augie. But Brin was growing on her, and Wiley had been nothing but kind. They deserved the chance to be dissuaded before she did something more drastic. Like going to the authorities.

  “I’ll see you at ten,” Neva said.

  Brin waved and left.

  Neva watched her go and then headed south, taking a quick detour to Halsted Street and Jane Adams’ Hull House, the famed settlement house for recently arrived European immigrants. But Dob was no longer there—as Wiley had hoped, his aunt had picked him up the previous afternoon. Neva thanked the bleary-eyed resident she’d spoken with, begged the use of a washroom to clean herself up, and hurried north. She would have liked to stay longer. Adams and her fellow Progressives offered a range of social programs to the surrounding working-class neighborhood, including free concerts and lectures on all manner of subjects. But there wasn’t time. At least Dob had someone to look after him now.

  The DeBells’ house was another two hours’ walk, but Neva didn’t stop once. She just kept stepping out the rest of her worries—and anger, and grief, and guilt—as she picked her way around masses of homeless until the neighborhoods became more affluent.

  The DeBells lived in the Gold Coast, a tree-lined paradise along Lake Michigan that had grown up after the Great Fire. Mr. DeBell had followed Potter Palmer’s lead by buying land in the area before it was popular. And while the DeBells’ property wasn’t nearly as majestic as Palmer’s castle-like mansion, Mrs. DeBell still oversaw a bustling three-story household. Several other stockyard executives lived in the area, which smelled immeasurably better than Packingtown (the slums to the southwest of the Stockyards, and home to most of its laborers).

  When Neva finally reached the DeBells’, she glanced first at the path to the servant’s entrance and then at the main walkway to the front door. Would either one ever feel right? She’d been here recently—Mr. DeBell had invited her and Augie to visit when they’d returned to Chicago to seek their fortune at the Fair. Still, calling at the front today seemed too formal, even for such a somber reason. So she opted for the servant’s entrance.

  It was the right choice: Hatty opened the door, saw her, and smiled.

  “Genevieve!” the old woman said in her rich voice. “How I needed a surprise like this. Come in, child, come in.” She stepped back inside and opened her arms for an embrace.

  Neva accepted both invitations gladly—Hatty had been a friend of her mother’s and the only servant not to regard Betty Freeman’s offspring as upstarts. “It’s good to see you,” she whispered, pressing her cheek against Hatty’s.

  “And you, child. I’ve a few minutes before breakfast is to be served. Would you mind helping me with these?” She pointed to a basket full of napkins in need of folding.

  Feeling her lips curving into a small, nostalgic grin, Neva nodded and pulled out a handful of fine white cloth.

  Hatty drew out the r
est of the napkins and started on the topmost. “You’ve not been by since the Fair began. Is it as heavenly as they say?”

  “Most days.” Neva hid her discomfort by attempting to shape a napkin into one of the floral patterns she’d seen Brin manage so effortlessly the night before.

  “Don’t crumple them, child—clean lines are all I need.”

  She considered her failure of a flower for a moment before smoothing the cloth flat.

  “Was there really a fire the other night? And a killing?”

  The truth was on the tip of Neva’s tongue, but she sucked back the words before they could escape her lips. Hatty had saved pastries for her and Augie after the house hosted big parties, kept them focused on their lessons (even though she’d never been afforded an education herself), and tucked them in at night.

  She couldn’t tell Hatty about Augie—not yet. Not when everything was so ... unresolved. “As it happens, the fire is why I came: to speak with Mr. DeBell about the goings-on. Is he here?”

  “No, child.” Hatty shook her head slowly. “No, he’s away. Left for work one morning last week and never came back.”

  “So there’s been no word?”

  “Not a whisper.”

  “That’s not like him.”

  “Not of late.”

  Neva chewed this over for a moment. “What does that mean?”

  Hatty folded the last of her napkins and returned them to the basket. “It’s been years, but he did something like this once ... Before Derek was born.”

  “You think he’s run off with another mistress?”

  Hatty shrugged.

  “But what if something happened to him? What if he’s hurt? Or worse?”

  “I pray it’s otherwise, child. But if nothing happened to him, then where is he?”

  Neva had no answer to this. Nothing she wanted to contemplate, at least.

  “You can leave him a note in the study if you’d like. If he comes back, I’ll see that he gets it.”

  “Thank you.” Neva placed her stack of folded—and very flat—napkins in the basket.

  “Would you like me to tell Mrs. DeBell you’re here?”