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

by Nick Wisseman

  “No, but ... Christ in Heaven, Neva, what am I supposed to think?”

  The energy went out of her. “I’m sorry. I know this must look mad. I’m not sure it isn’t.” She gripped the front legs of her chair. “But I think the person in the back—the core person; not the guises—set everything in motion last summer. The insects, the brands, the deaths: it’s responsible for all of them.”

  “And why are you so sure?”

  “The insects, for one. That much seems clear. They haven’t tried to bite me again, or anyone else I know of. It’s almost like they’re ... waiting for direction.”

  Derek scanned to either side—there was barely a bug to be seen now. “All right. Why else?”

  “I recognized some of the guises. Not the first few, but the fifth was a trapeze artist from Barnum & Bailey’s.”

  “The circus?”

  “Yes. She—Nora—disappeared one day about two years ago, never to be seen again ... until last December, when she made an appearance in the back.” Neva gestured at the rear of the storeroom.

  Derek mulled this over before nodding for her to continue. “Who else?”

  “The eleventh guise, a Mr. Percy Coggins.” Neva paused to see if this registered with Derek. He gave her a blank look. “One of the victims from the Fair,” she elaborated. “I didn’t know him by sight, but his name was in the papers. And that guise knew who he was; I checked up on him after. Went to his house and managed to see a picture of him. It was a mirror image.”

  “Eerie.”

  “Very. Not all the guises are of the deceased, of course—you saw Hatty hale and whole just a few hours ago. And there was another guise that remembered himself enough to give me an address. When I went there, the living original answered the door.”

  “Christ,” Derek murmured.

  “Lastly, I think the skinchanger is responsible because of what happened with Wiley and Mr. DeBell.” Neva slumped after saying this—it was one of the worst pieces of the puzzle, almost as bad as Augie being the porter.

  “And what did happen with Edward?”

  “He died.”

  “Yes, in the Administration Building—”

  “No, in the Stockyards.”

  Derek blinked. “Oh.”

  “You see it now.”

  He winced but spelled it out anyway. “The body the Pinkertons originally thought was Edward’s—that was him in truth?”

  “Yes. Probably killed shortly after he mailed his letter to you.”

  “God’s wounds ... And the Edward at the Administration Building—”

  “Was the skinchanger, in Mr. DeBell’s guise.”

  “I suppose that explains how the undertaker ‘lost’ Edward’s body.”

  “Right. The skinchanger woke in Mr. DeBell’s coffin, but in Wiley’s guise, walked out ...”

  “And came to see you.”

  Neva imagined herself adopting an impassive expression, willing herself to do so. She’d explained how she’d killed Wiley’s guise, but not how she’d lain with it first. She wasn’t ready to speak of that.

  “God’s wounds,” Derek repeated. “Is it the blood, then? Is that why he—it—kills his victims? Does he need to ... take some of their flesh in order to make it his own?”

  “He doesn’t necessarily need to kill them. There’s Hatty, remember, and the fellow I met. But yes, I think the skinchanger has to have a reference point for each new guise. The newspapers seem to have been right about that much: the consumption of the victims is real.” She shuddered. “In the Administration Building, Wiley’s blood splashed everywhere. And I saw a fleck of his ribs fly into the gunshot wound in the chest of Mr. DeBell’s guise. That must be enough.”

  Derek began to pace. “The insects, though, and the brands. And the fever—what of them?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the bugs had a trace of the skinchanger’s madness in their bite? Perhaps that’s why it made me so crazed ... so bloodthirsty. Brin said it was the same with her. It would explain why Augie did what he did.”

  Their brother’s name provoked a long silence as Derek completed a second circuit of the room and Neva tried not to think about Augie’s terrible last moments.

  “All right,” Derek said as he started his third lap. “All right. If this is true—and I’ll confess I find myself believing more of it than I would have thought possible—then why are you still here? Why are you doing this?” He made a cutting motion with his hand, miming the slice of her knife. “Why not burn the skinchanger and be done with it? If burning would even end matters ...”

  “I’m not sure it would,” she said quietly. “But as for me, I’ll ask you again: why do you think I chose as I did?”

  Derek stopped pacing and gazed at the back of the storage room. “You want to see Augie again.”

  “And Mr. DeBell. And Wiley. Maybe Kezzie, too, for Brin; they’re all in there somewhere. Waiting to be brought out.” Neva cocked her head to regard her brother—her living brother—from a different angle. “Wouldn’t you like to see Mr. DeBell once more? Talk to him one last time, now that you know the truth?”

  “But it wouldn’t really be him.”

  “No, it would be a guise. Of course. But what if the guise remembered enough to tell you what you want to know?”

  “It’s random, this process? You can’t predetermine which guise will appear?”

  “Not that I can tell.”

  “Then what if, in trying to wake a certain guise, you rouse the core aspect—the skinchanger itself?”

  Neva’s eyes narrowed. “Then we could have justice.”

  “Is that what you’re waiting for?”

  She considered telling him the rest of it: that she thought she knew who the skinchanger was. That her months tending the body in its waxen state and various reconstitutions had imparted a familiar feeling to her. A feeling of helplessness in the face of sick aggression, a feeling she’d only felt so intensely once before—when that man at the circus raped her.

  Augie had broken his neck, but if the man was indeed the skinchanger, repairing such an injury wouldn’t have been beyond him. Neither would killing Nora and stealing her form—the trapeze artist had been entrancing, exactly the sort of woman a brute would obsess over. And shortly before the rape, Hatty had visited the circus when it came through Gary, Indiana. If the brute already been on the prowl, perhaps he’d stolen a hair from the old woman in hopes of laying a trap. His presence at the Fair made sense too, if he’d been following them all this time.

  Still, it was just a feeling, which ultimately amounted to even slimmer proof than she’d offered Derek so far. Even if it was a strong feeling.

  “Whoever that is,” she said, pointing to the back, “it’s a terrible person, deserving of justice. We would better the world by giving it to him.”

  Derek shook his head doubtfully, but a frantic knock on the door forestalled his response.

  “Miss Neva?” asked Dob, his small, scared voice squeaking from the main hall. “Please, I know you come here sometimes. It’s my aunt. They took my aunt!”

  Chapter Thirty

  NEVA GAVE THE STORAGE room a quick appraisal. With the insects gone, nothing seemed particularly out of sorts in the front. But to be safe, she gestured for Derek to stand before the crate-lined passageway to the rear. Only once he was in place did she unlock the door.

  It was hard to see Dob at first. His clothes—well on their way to becoming rags—had darkened from long use, and he’d turned his head to one side as if a stray sound had compelled his attention. Yet when the door’s hinges squeaked, he faced forward, and his eyes reflected the light of her lantern.

  His teary, panicked eyes.

  “Kam took my aunt,” the boy whispered as soon as he saw Neva. “My brothers went to get the Hobo King, but I don’t think he’ll help.” Dob took a step into the storage room; she put a hand on his shoulder and gently returned him to the Hall.

  “I’ll help,” she soothed, beckoning for her brother to
follow. “Dob, this is Derek, a friend of mine. He’ll help too.”

  Derek nodded.

  Neva mouthed, “Thank you,” to him and squeezed Dob’s shoulder. “We’ll help,” she reiterated. “Just tell us what happened.”

  The boy swallowed. “My aunt came home late from cleaning, but it was all right because she had two loaves of bread. Two!” His stomach growled at the memory—or maybe at what came next. “Kam saw them and said he wanted one.”

  Frowning, Neva motioned for Dob to continue while she positioned herself in front of the door to the storage room so he couldn’t see how she locked it.

  “My aunt didn’t want to give up either loaf. So Kam took the bigger one—yanked it away. After he got a taste, he tossed it to one of his friends and said he wanted to try the other loaf. My aunt said no again, but he took it anyway.” Dob hesitated further.

  Neva knelt beside him and took his hands.

  “Kam said he wanted a taste of my aunt too,” the boy finished, his voice barely audible now.

  Derek muttered something about “Rutting curs,” but the disgust in his voice hardly compared to the anger blistering Neva’s veins. The memory of that brute at the circus—and the possibility that he was responsible for the more-recent atrocities in her life—fired her outrage like kerosene poured over hot coals. But she had to stay calm, had to appear calm, for Dob.

  At least for now.

  “Where did he take her?” she asked in a measured tone.

  “I think they went to the Wooded Island.”

  “Then we’ll check there first. But you should go back to Manufactures’ promenade. We’ll bring your aunt there when we can. Get your cousins up there too if you see them.”

  Dob’s lip trembled, but he bore up bravely. “Yes, Miss Neva ... Thank you.” He gave Derek another glance, then fled through Machinery’s main entrance.

  Neva waited until he was out of sight before jogging after him. “Come on,” she called to her brother.

  “You know this Kam?”

  “Better than I’d like. Thought he was all talk, though.”

  Derek spat to the side. “They are until they aren’t.”

  Neva sped up at this, clearing the Machinery Hall at a near sprint and Administration at an actual one. She slowed at the end of Electricity and Mines, though, not wanting to cross the bridge to the Wooded Island without being able to hear what was happening ahead of her.

  “I don’t remember saying anything about hostages,” a voice—Wherrit’s—boomed like a foghorn from the remnants of the Rose Garden. “Especially not taken from my flock.”

  “Drastic times, I’m afraid,” Quill answered. Oh, Lord, it would be Quill.

  “Perhaps,” Wherrit called back, “but drastic or otherwise, no situation requires the sort of measures you’ve taken. Let her go.”

  “Not until you promise to join with the Pullman strikers.”

  “So that’s what this is about: labor madness.”

  Neva was close enough now to see Wherrit crack his knuckles in the moonlight. She’d left the path as she’d drawn near, and the foliage had grown unkempt since the Fair ended. But she could make out two Ignobles flanking the Hobo King: the Destitute Duke and the Princeling Pauper (known less pretentiously as Hal and Thaddeus).

  Quill remained out of view. “Madness is standing aside on the eve of the great struggle of our age,” he ranted from wherever he was hiding.

  “And what do you know of madness?”

  Derek joined Neva in the underbrush in time to see Wherrit tap a scar atop his bald pate.

  “The man from the Ferris Wheel,” her brother whispered. “Is that ...?”

  “Yes,” Neva whispered back. “Hush. We need to find Mabel—Dob’s aunt.”

  The Hobo King tapped his scar again. “What do you know about ceding control of your mind to fear? About panicking like a bird that’s flown down the chimney and can’t get out? About battering your head against the window because through it shines the light you seek?” He lowered his hand and flashed a toothy, mirthless grin. “I’ve felt it. I know what it is, how it sets in, and what makes you vulnerable to it. Do you?”

  “Thankfully, no,” Quill replied. “But every man here lost a job and a family to this depression, same as you. Suffered through the same winter. Saw too many bodies lying in the Court of Honor, stiff with frost. All while the robber barons sat by their roaring fires and drank to their continued prosperity.”

  “There,” Derek said softly, pointing ahead of him. He’d moved towards Wherrit while Neva edged in the opposite direction.

  She doubled back to see what her brother had spied through the Wooded Island’s wild growth: Mabel kneeling amidst an unruly crop of roses, her clothing and skin torn by thorns. Quill standing defiant, a knife in his hand. Kam and five of his tattered companions in combative poses.

  “And that gives you leave to become a robber yourself?” asked Wherrit. “A snatcher of women? A purveyor of high rhetoric and inglorious deeds?”

  “It gives me leave to recognize when things need to change, and that the moment of change is now.” Quill jabbed his blade at the Hobo King. “God knows why, but the refugees in the White City still look to ‘Your Royal Poorness’ for leadership. Give it to them: order them to join the strikers. Give this city, this nation, the rebirth it needs—a second Great Fire. Help set capitalism ablaze, for the betterment of the common man.”

  Wherrit stared at him, shrugged, and laughed.

  “Don’t think I won’t cut her,” snarled Quill, moving the knife to Mabel’s throat.

  Neva took a step forward. Derek grabbed her wrist.

  She shot him an angry look, but he was busy considering distances. “Ten yards,” he muttered without looking at her, finger-sketching calculations in the air. “I can probably arc a current ten yards—if you give me the necklace.”

  She thought of how exhausted he’d seemed after using it a few hours ago. “Are you sure?”

  He shook his head yet reached his hand out anyway.

  “All right.” She passed him the necklace, touching only its cord and not the shells themselves. “I’ll distract them.”

  “Go in at an angle so that my line of sight stays clear. And get Quill to break contact with Mabel. If they’re touching, and I hit him ...”

  “Right.” She drew in a deep breath, stood straight, and strode into the open.

  “Your actions are as small as your talk is large,” Wherrit was saying to Quill.

  “And once you’ve spilled Mabel’s blood,” Neva interrupted, as all eyes turned to her. “A mother’s blood, mind you—will you use your mighty blade to turn back the troops who’ve taken the robber barons’ side? Will your three inches of steel be sufficient to overcome the capitalists’ guns, trains, and manpower? Because that’s all we’ll have. Knives and stones against guns, against trained soldiers. It’s not the way.”

  “Neva?” asked Quill, momentarily taken aback ... and ashamed?

  “Let her go. This isn’t you.” She took another step closer. “I remember how you used to teach Augie and Derek and me about the Magna Carta, and the Declaration of Independence, and the early days of the French Revolution—you were inspiring. And you never would have hurt anyone.”

  He grimaced. “Times change.”

  Kam snorted. “What’s your plan, then, Chocolate Hips? Continue living like rats? So that we’re prepared to die like them?”

  “I find and distribute what food I can,” Wherrit interjected. “Clothing, blankets—little things, it’s true, but large to those who receive them. Sometimes, the best course of action is to simply endure.”

  “But it’s not!” shouted Quill, his passion flooding back. “Not anymore! Not when the newspapers are demonizing anyone siding with the Pullman strikers! Not when women and children go hungry because there’s no work to be had for their men! Not when—”

  “Your case would be stronger if a mother didn’t cower at your feet.”

  Quill glowered
, but the grandstanding ended there: with a cry of “Aunt Mabel!”, Dob burst from the bushes on the other side of the garden and slammed into Neva’s former teacher, sending him staggering backward as a streak of lightning took Kam in the chest.

  “Holy fuck!” one of his tattered brethren exclaimed, the only reaction anyone managed before Neva was in their midst, whipping between the two largest men and reaching for Mabel with one hand and Dob with the other.

  But like a second lightning bolt, pain flared in Neva’s stomach, its immediacy leaving her breathless and off-kilter—she stumbled just as Mabel lunged toward Dob and Quill threw him off.

  “Get hold of her,” Quill spat, grabbing Mabel’s arm while motioning for the other men to do the same to Neva.

  They were too surprised to comply. “Kam?” one of them asked their fallen comrade, who’d landed on his back several paces from where he’d stood when the lighting struck.

  “What was that?” another wondered, gazing up at the clear sky.

  Neva suppressed the urge to run her hands over her midsection—there was no tangible injury there. No gunshot, no knife wound, not even a bruise. The problem was inside her, and there was nothing she could do about it right now. So she pushed through her agony and made another lunge for Mabel.

  But Quill yanked Dob’s aunt away and returned the knife to her throat.

  “Back!” he yelled as Wherrit charged in, Hal and Thaddeus at his side. “Back!” Quill screamed again, tightening his grip on Mabel’s neck and forcing the Hobo King and his Ignobles to draw up short.

  “Be a man,” Wherrit panted warningly. “Not a monster.”

  “Better still,” Brin—Brin!—called from the far side of the garden. “Don’t be an eijit.” The Irishwoman, her auburn hair burnished by starlight, stood where the Hobo King and his companions had a few moments earlier.

  “Where are all these bloody women and children coming from?” asked the dirtiest of Quill’s followers, to no one in particular.