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

by Nick Wisseman

  “These artifacts,” she said, motioning at the cases against each wall. “Which ones speak to you?”

  Derek gave her a queer look but then turned his eyes on the displays. And now he took his time. His maddening, habitual, incredibly excessive time. Studying each artifact, reading its label, studying the artifact again. One by one. Case by case.

  Neva nearly screamed.

  But when he finally came to the cowry shell necklace, she tried her best to mask her sudden anticipation—she didn’t want to betray her interest unless he shared it. So, sidelong, she watched him peer at the necklace ... read its label ... peer at the necklace once more ... and move on.

  It was only a trinket to him.

  “Do you have a favorite?” she asked as levelly as she could, just to be certain.

  “Probably this sword,” he said, pointing at a wooden blade embedded with shark teeth on either side. “I’m not sure how effective it would be, but it looks fearsome.”

  Neva wanted to spit. “Indeed,” she said instead. If Derek wasn’t drawn to the necklace ... then maybe he wasn’t blessed (cursed?) with any abilities other than the mundane gifts God gave everyone. Unless you had to be bitten to hear the call—but why would that matter?

  Regardless, the necklace called to her stronger than ever.

  “Stand behind me,” she whispered tersely, pulling out her exhibitor’s pass and hanging it by its cord from her neck. If someone should happen into the room, and Derek didn’t block their view, the pass might make her look vaguely official. Maybe. She wouldn’t need long, though.

  Derek did as she’d asked, but not without question: “What exactly am I abetting?”

  “My affinity,” she said recklessly, picturing how easily Brin had gained access to the White Chapel Club. The Irishwoman wasn’t the only one who could play at that game.

  With a deep breath, Neva removed her right glove, elongated her index finger to a grotesque thinness, and slipped it in the case’s lock. Blood trickled out as she further deformed her finger—her version of the trick wasn’t as clean—but in short order, she matched the keyhole’s inner shape. From there, it was only a matter of rotating her finger until the lock clicked, gritting her teeth against the pain, and opening the case.

  Then the necklace was hers.

  Touching it was heavenly, a simultaneous surge of euphoria and adrenaline. But she knew she couldn’t wear it yet. Not here. Not in the Anthropology Building, the scene of her crime. No, the necklace had to go in her jacket pocket for now, never mind how reluctant her fingers were to leave the shells.

  All that was left was to gauge Derek’s reaction.

  As she turned, Neva braced herself. What had possessed her to take such a risk, to reveal her otherness when she’d failed to confirm anything but his normality? Brother he might be, but there was no telling how he’d respond to what must look like—and probably was—magic. In Salem, many of the condemned had been accused by family. Had she just doomed herself to a fatal stoning? Burning at the stake? Both at once? Would Derek—

  Crack a crooked smile and cause a tiny, jaunty spark of electricity to dance over and under his fingertips?

  Yes. Yes he would.

  Because he was her brother.

  “I knew it,” Neva murmured as she hurled herself at him and hugged him close, ignoring the small shock the spark imparted before Derek extinguished it. “I knew it.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  WILEY FOUND THEM IN the Transportation Building.

  Derek had wanted to see both the structure itself, already famed for the immense golden arch that served as the main entryway, and the Pullman Company’s “Ideal of Industry” exhibit, which featured a scale model of Pullman Town. Neva couldn’t help smiling at his enthusiasm—and determination.

  “I’m not leaving,” he’d said when she’d finished telling him (almost) everything she’d left out before: about the insect’s predilections, and Brin, and the little man in the Levee.

  “You’d be safer away from all this,” Neva had tried.

  “So would you.”

  “But if the insects come for you ...”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  She’d left it there. What else was there to say? Especially once she’d realized that, more than anyone else left in the world, she could trust him.

  If only she were as clear about what to do with the necklace.

  It felt like it was burning a hole in her pocket. Not to fall out, but to be next to her, to touch her skin, to impart that glorious feeling of wellbeing again. Or maybe that was her skin trying to burn a hole to the necklace. Either way, the thought of wearing the shells consumed her mind in ways that could only be unhealthy, even when she tried to turn her thoughts back to everything she’d just learned about Derek—and herself.

  “It’s an incredibly self-sufficient design,” he said as he circled the model Pullman Town again. “The boilers of the factory on the North end are powered by shavings from the carpentry shops. Exhaust water from the boilers fills the town’s lake. Sewage from the plant and the town’s homes is pumped to a farm as fertilizer ... Intelligence was mixed with mortar here, from every foundation to every roof.”

  “Too bad it’s a plantation,” Wiley interjected. He’d come up behind them unnoticed—Derek had been preoccupied with the model; Neva with everything else.

  Derek regarded him with displeasure. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Not in the usual sense,” Wiley allowed. “There aren’t any Negroes there: the Duke likes them better as porters on his railcars. But Pullman Town only takes fair-haired Northern Europeans and buckwheats from rural America—absolutely no Irish. After all, you can’t have dirty Micks in an industrial Eden.”

  Derek glanced at Neva, but she was listening with interest. He turned back to the Boer. “Wiley, was it?”

  He flashed an overly casual smile. “It was.”

  “Have you been to Pullman Town?”

  “No, thankfully.”

  “Then you haven’t seen how it answers the pressing questions of our time. Every house is brick-built and comes standard with gas, water, indoor plumbing, and waste removal. The streets are paved, as are the sidewalks. You won’t find anything comparable in the working neighborhoods of Chicago. Pullman Town doesn’t even have a policeman—because it doesn’t need one. It’s a better way, proof that blight, poverty, and social disorder aren’t the inevitable consequences of industry.”

  Wiley shook his head. “You don’t have a policeman because George Pullman makes every decision—what the Duke says goes. He wants clean, orderly workers, and that’s what he’s trying to create. Anyone who doesn’t fit that mold is evicted on ten-days’ notice.”

  Derek shook his head harder, with uncharacteristic passion. “Pullman Town is everything Chicago should be and isn’t. We have clean air; the Black City has cinder-flecked soot. We have clean water; the Black City has cholera. We have a pristine lake; the Black City has dead animals in the Chicago River, and every rain washes greasy plumes into Lake Michigan.”

  “You also have a town laid out according to rank: executives get dibs on the freestanding homes, skilled workers settle for row houses, and common laborers pack into tenements. Rent is so high that wages come to almost nothing. And even if they didn’t, there are no taverns to sluice your gob in after a day of breaking your back for the Duke, because drinking isn’t civilized: it’s dirty. Dirty, dirty, dirty.”

  “You sound like a parody of a labor agitator.”

  This made Wiley snort. “Do you know how Pullman made his first money?”

  Derek looked wary but still answered. “He developed a process for raising Chicago’s business district out of the swamp it was built on.”

  “Now he’s trying to do the same to workers—raising them out of their ‘muck.’ Because he thinks the issue of capital versus labor is an issue of labor alone. And you’ve let him become your master.”

  Momentarily speechless, Derek turned to Neva agai
n, but she only raised her eyebrows. “If you hold such views,” he finally said to Wiley, “then why guard the White City? Isn’t its design—with its ambulance service, its electric streetlights, and its daycare center—just Pullman Town writ large? A vision of a planned urban ideal?”

  “It’s a conundrum,” Wiley agreed before turning to Neva. “I need you to come with me.”

  Derek muttered something that might have been “Unbelievable.”

  Neva simply said, “Oh?”

  “To see Miles Copeland—the Pinkerton.”

  She thought of Bat Wiggins and the other ghouls at the White Chapel Club. Had they decided last night wasn’t a drunken hallucination? Had someone believed their story after all? “What about?”

  “He didn’t say.” Wiley had a dour air now. “But he wanted to see you first thing, and I’ve spent half the day trying to find you. We need to speak with him.”

  Derek put his hand on her shoulder.

  She removed it gently, glad that touching him didn’t incite murderous tendencies in her. Was that because he didn’t have the rashes? “I should probably go.”

  “Can I escort you?” he asked.

  “Thank you, but I’ll be fine. Meet me at Manufactures? The French restaurant in the northwest corner is good. If you wait there, I’ll be along as soon as I can.”

  He acquiesced with a nod to her and a glare at Wiley.

  “You’re in a pleasant mood today,” Neva noted as the Boer led her out of the Transportation Building and into the Court of Honor.

  “Ja, well, searching fruitlessly for hours does wonders for my disposition.” He studied her a moment. “Where have you been? I looked for you yesterday too, but no one saw you after your little escapade on the Ferris Wheel. Even that old ogre in the Algerian Theatre didn’t know where you’d got off to.”

  Neva’s thoughts were turning back to the necklace, but she retained enough presence to ignore the jab at Wahib and detect the anxiety underlying Wiley’s voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you or cause you trouble with the Guard. I’ve just been trying to figure out what happened to Augie ... And what’s happening to me. Is that what this is about?”

  “I don’t know.” Wiley frowned. “Copeland doesn’t exactly confide in me. I guess we’ll find out.” He regarded her with unease.

  Belatedly, she realized he was worried she might reveal—or have already revealed—Quill’s plans to “emancipate” the Wheel. “I still intend to meet you and the others at ten tonight; Brin told me I should come.”

  “She mentioned that.” He didn’t sound enthused, but they were approaching the Administration Building, and Neva wasn’t ready to be more explicit within earshot of the Columbian Guard station. Wiley would just have to grapple with his insecurities a little longer.

  Cassie, the receptionist from a few days ago, was working the desk again, and she waved them into the same conference room. Bonfield and Commandant Rice weren’t waiting for them, though. This time it was just Copeland.

  “Close the door,” he said to Wiley once they’d entered. “Sit,” he added once Wiley had complied.

  Neva did so slowly. The walls—previously plain—were now covered with newspaper clippings about the killings. Descriptions of the victims. Theories about Jack the Ripper’s involvement and/or influence. Speculation about the “bloodthirsty” porter’s motives and methods ... And a few articles about “wild Negresses” scaling the burning Cold Storage Building and calming a crazed passenger on the Ferris Wheel.

  Copeland followed her gaze. “Bold women, to be sure. Do you know them?”

  Neva considered lying, perhaps by offering something along the lines of “We don’t all know each other.” But Wiley’s peers had seen him on Cold Storage. And even if he hadn’t reported her name, it wouldn’t have been hard for Copeland to put two and two together. Yet what she’d done for Wherrit on the Wheel wasn’t a crime. “It was me.”

  “Really?” Copeland didn’t sound at all surprised. “Well, while I admire your courage, may I ask why you decided to pursue someone who’d just torn off a man’s leg?”

  There was no good answer. But if she was lucky, Wiley hadn’t said anything about Augie. “The man the porter ... injured—”

  “Killed,” Copeland corrected.

  “Yes. He had the same marks I do, the ones caused by the insects. I tried to talk to him, but he didn’t want to listen, and when the porter ... did what he did ... I don’t know. He ran, and I ran too.”

  Copeland considered this for a moment. “All right, but why not leave off your pursuit once he cleared the Pier, or caused a stampede in the Court of Honor, or—I don’t know—climbed a burning tower?”

  There was still no good answer. “The porter wiped his lips with a handkerchief I recognized: it matched that of a boy whose mother had just disappeared. Dob was his name—Wiley spoke with him. I feared the worst ... And at the same time, I just wanted to stop being afraid. I know it doesn’t explain my actions, but it’s all I can think of.”

  Copeland worked her over with his eyes another few seconds. “No, it doesn’t explain your actions. Or why you seem intent on refusing the Guard’s protection.” He glanced at Wiley, who raised his hands, as if to show how helpless he’d been to prevent her from eluding him.

  Copeland shook his head in a way that indicated he didn’t hold Wiley blameless—clearly, they’d discussed the subject and probably would again. “But it would be in your best interests to keep a lower profile and stay under our care.” The Pinkerton leaned back and tapped a report on his side of the table. “The case isn’t over yet: two more bodies surfaced today.”

  Wiley straightened in his chair; Neva wanted to slump in hers.

  “Where?” he asked.

  Copeland pointed to a map of Chicago pinned against the closest wall. Someone had marked eight X’s at various points: five in and around the Fair, one in Bridgeport, and two in the Levee. Six of the marks had been made with thick strokes. The seventh and eighth had lighter lines. Neva had a sinking feeling they were the most recent.

  She was right.

  “The latest victim turned up in an alley off 21st Street,” Copeland said. “But we think the place of death was Gaffney’s Saloon on 22nd—there was a brawl there yesterday, more vicious than usual. One of the barmaids confirmed the victim’s involvement, but she wouldn’t say anything more.”

  “I imagine that’s not the first patron Gaffney’s dragged out of his saloon and stashed around the block,” Wiley said. “This one had the rashes, though?”

  “Several. But no signs of cannibalism or dismemberment. Just beat to hell—he’s a little fellow, and someone did quite the number on him.”

  Neva forced herself to breathe. It was the small man she’d fought at the saloon ... But he’d been alive when she left him. Unconscious and bleeding, but alive. Had his injuries been worse than they looked? Or had whoever knocked him out while she was struggling to control herself damaged him past the point of recovery? Maybe Ink—

  No.

  No, she couldn’t put this on someone else. This was her crime, of intent if not execution. She’d wanted to kill the man, and he’d died. It didn’t matter that the rashes had been behind her rage (and his). The responsibility was hers. She had to accept it.

  Just not in front of Copeland.

  “What about the other new victim?” she asked quietly, dreading this answer almost as much. “Is this it?” She pointed to the lightly drawn X crisscrossing the outskirts of the Fair.

  “Youngish woman,” he confirmed. “Partially mutilated, but it seems more rushed.”

  “So there’s a second killer,” Wiley mused.

  “At least,” Copeland said. “We’re still looking into the White Chapel Club, but we haven’t been able to connect them to the porter yet. That’s where I’m hoping Miss Freeman can help.”

  Breathe, Neva reminded herself as the Pinkerton reached for a piece of paper and spun it around to face her. Inhale, exhale, and be. />
  “Does this look like him?” asked Copeland. Sketched on the paper was a recreation of that terrible moment when the porter had closed his eyes and lapped up the Civil War veteran’s blood. But the artist—no doubt having gleaned the details from the accounts of terrified onlookers—had worked evil into the porter’s every line, distorting his face in subtle but significant ways. The result wasn’t as cartoonish as the depictions Neva had seen in the newspapers, but it wasn’t much better.

  And it didn’t look a thing like Augie.

  “Yes, that’s the porter,” she said. “As best I can remember.”

  “And you don’t recognize him from anywhere else? You didn’t see him at some other point during the Fair?”

  Once again, she was tempted to retort that colored people weren’t all acquainted with one another; once again, she thought better of it. “Sorry. Before this all happened, I spent most of my time at the Theatre.”

  Copeland’s eyes radiated incredulity, but she was starting to suspect they always looked mistrustful. After a moment, he grunted, pulled the sketch back, and spun another around in its place. “Does she look familiar?”

  This drawing showed an alluring woman in a low-cut dress. The shading about her cleavage suggested the artist—likely the same one who’d drawn the porter—found the exposed flesh particularly important. Her inviting smile was similarly emphasized: she was supposed to look wanton ... like a prostitute. Was this Brin’s Kezzie? “I’ve never seen her before,” Neva said truthfully. “Was she one of the victims?”

  Copeland grunted affirmatively. “The first we found. What about these names?” He put a third piece of paper in front of Neva. It contained only text: Kezzie’s formal name, as well as four more, including the other two that had featured in the Tribune the day before, and—

  Rena Barrot.

  “Oh, God,” Neva whispered, the fear conjured by Copeland’s description of a “youngish woman” now realized. “That’s Dob’s mother.”

  “Ah. And how do you know her?”

  Wiley stepped in when Neva didn’t—couldn’t—answer, explaining how they’d come upon Dob and taken him to the Daycare.