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

by Nick Wisseman

  Neva’s breath betrayed her by catching. She did remember Augie attempting to draw their father. But the skinchanger couldn’t have known that on his own. He must have stolen the memory somehow, appropriated it from her brother along with his form.

  “Yet I was always a better mimic than an artist,” the Augie-guise continued. “And it wasn’t long before I could imitate more than just voices—I could copy another’s form. Not easily, not without a model. Fixing a person’s image in my mind helped, but the only way to make it look right was to take a piece of that person into myself. A strand of hair, a bit of spit—”

  “Blood,” Neva finished.

  Another gunshot sounded from outside, the timing perfectly terrible.

  “I didn’t do that at first,” he said. “Not until I’d already imagined our father several times.” The skinchanger’s form flitted between that of various colored men. Athletic and handsome. Tall and jolly. Skinny and scholarly. Small and weak. “But when I thought on a man who would abandon his children, and how dark his nature would have to be ...” A malevolent aspect surfaced, crooked and cruel. “I went too deep into character, and I took blood for the first time.” The Augie-guise returned, shoulders slumped. “From there, it became something of a bad habit.”

  Had she been able to, Neva would have shuddered. “Nat died in the Great Fire, though, trying to reach my—our—mother. He didn’t abandon us. You had no reason to think him anything but heroic once Mr. DeBell told us the truth.”

  “Perhaps, but what was Nat to us? A fiction perpetrated by others, one he had no part in. No, DeBell was the true culprit. His was the dark nature that made me what I am.”

  Neva watched another patch of Derek’s awful, crawling coat turn bloody. He had to be hurting. Would the Augie-guise call them off if she asked? “What about the insects? What do they have to do with ... mimicry?”

  “More than you’d think.” As if he’d heard her unspoken question, the bugs on Derek fell off in a shower, skittering in all directions, only to climb the walls or fly alongside them to the ceiling, where the miniature horde reformed and pulsed, hanging over the storage room like a living fog speckled with a thousand double-sickle shapes.

  She couldn’t see Derek’s left hand, but his right already showed signs of bruising. Sickles of his own would be rising soon.

  “Talents are surprisingly common,” the Augie-guise said, tapping Derek and then pointing at Brin. “Some are little better than parlor tricks; others make their owners the next thing to God. I could always tell when someone had one—that was my other ability from birth; perhaps it was our sister’s. If I touched someone, I’d know. Not what they could do, but that they could do something. And if I collected that someone’s form, via hair, or saliva, or—yes—blood, I’d have that something too.”

  With a jolt that felt like being stabbed, Neva remembered the swirl of stolen—injected?—memories she’d seen the night of the shootout in Administration: A grizzled, one-legged man set his crutches on the side of a picturesque creek, pulled his sketchbook out, and drew the scene in perfect detail ...

  The Augie-guise snapped his fingers. “Then it was just a matter of determining how it worked. Directing insects was one of the first talents I acquired.”

  A grubby toddler clapped her hands in delight, and the swirl of ants at her feet rippled like a wave ...

  More gunshots—whatever brewed in the Court of Honor was growing worse.

  “And the way you heal?” asked Neva. She’d succeeded in buying some time, but would it be enough to find a way out? Was there one? “Coming back to life ... Did you ‘acquire’ that as well?”

  The Augie-guise cocked his head. “That, I’m actually not sure of ... There was a Jewish girl in the Levee. I tracked her down after dealing with DeBell. She could heal herself.”

  A dark-haired woman grimaced at the mirror, touched the cold sore above her lip, and smoothed the blemish away ...

  “She’d almost finished recovering from a stab wound before I collected her. She didn’t recover from that.”

  Neva could almost hear Brin screaming in her mind.

  “Perhaps her talent is combining with another, one that sustains an action without conscious thought ... Eventually, I know their capabilities better than their original owners did. But I don’t always figure them out right away. Sometimes you have to die first, I suppose.”

  He chuckled darkly—so darkly. “I’m not sure which was worse, actually: being buried by the rubble of the Cold Storage Building and cooked by the fire’s heat, or emerging days later in our father’s form, even more witless than he’d been in life. I remember it now—dimly. But back then I knew almost nothing; just a jumble of what I remembered of him.”

  “With none of his memories?”

  “Glimmers maybe, but that was all ... I remember this, though.” The Augie-guise gestured at the knife on Neva’s belt, raised his hand to his throat, and drew a line across it. “And this.” He drew a line the other way. “And this.” Another line. “And all the rest. We’re not so different, sister of mine.”

  She was about to hiss, “I’m not your sister,” but a thought struck her. Not just struck her—leveled her. A flaming meteor of a thought that shattered her denials and slammed everything into place. “Why did you run from me?”

  He snorted as if the answer was obvious.

  “On the Pier?” she pressed anyway. “After you ripped the veteran’s leg off? Why did you run from me? What threat was I to you?”

  “None. I just didn’t want to be one to you. Ever.”

  And there it was.

  Grisly and convoluted, but plain and inescapable all the same. The skinchanger had lost control after killing Mr. DeBell, sending forth insect scouts to brand potential prey and embarking on a “collecting” spree with little of his previous circumspection, to the point that he’d left a severed hand in the Algerian Theatre’s rafters. (Had that been a cry for help?) Causing her to be marked had snapped him back, however, given him pause. Yet he hadn’t been able to help himself when the Civil War veteran acted like a boor. And after the chase to Cold Storage, the skinchanger had seen a way to end it: by stepping off the tower, falling, and (so he thought) dying.

  Because of what he’d done.

  Because he was ashamed.

  Because he was her brother.

  “Oh, Augie,” Neva whispered, without a shred of artifice: her agony was genuine. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you ask for help?”

  Augie—not a guise, not an imitation: Augie—studied her, blinked, and stood. “Because the truth hurts in our family. And I’ve always tried to spare you pain, to protect you. I wish to God I still could. But I’m weak.”

  He walked to her. “Speaking of weakness, when I stood behind that oaf in the Anthropology Building while he ogled those cowry shells, I suddenly desired them like nothing else in my life.”

  The notes of his whistling, still curving under and around his words, changed character slightly, compelling Neva to dig in her pocket, withdraw the necklace, and offer it to Augie.

  As he accepted the shells, his eyes closed rapturously. “Yes—that’s the feeling,” he said, caressing each cowry in turn. “I see why you took these. How odd that mere shells can have such power ...”

  She watched him play with the necklace. What would happen when he put it on? When her brother, with so many “acquired” talents, donned what amounted to an amplifier, an artifact that might have belonged to a “twisted clan” with “bad blood”? Would it still have the same strength with just three shells?

  With a grunt of insight, he fit two of the remaining cowries together along their score marks, creating the same crescent shape marring Derek’s flesh below and the insects’ above.

  “My sign,” Augie murmured. “Would you believe I dream of these sickles now and again?” He raised the necklace over his head, spread its cord above him, and ... held it there for a moment, contemplating the simple, mystical circle he’d formed.


  Neva opened her mouth to utter a warning, but it wouldn’t pass her lips—as if her words had grown arms that clung to her teeth, defying her tongue’s attempts to force them out.

  Even so, Augie didn’t look like he could be dissuaded. Eyes aglow, he brought the necklace down slowly, his identity flickering—in anticipation? A white man. A Chinese girl. A colored woman. A white boy. Too many guises to count; so many “acquisitions.” At last, after he’d savored the process for a preposterous length of time, the cord settled around his shoulders, the shells rested against his chest, and ...

  He choked.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  THE NECKLACE CLOSED about Augie’s neck with predatory speed. Eyes bulging, he clawed at the cord, yanking it so hard Neva heard one of his fingers snap. But the leather had assumed the strength of steel—no matter how forcefully he pulled, the necklace only sank deeper into his skin.

  And he stopped whistling.

  As Neva began to regain control of her body, she reshaped the sides of her skull so that a bit of bone poked through the inside of each ear and molded to its shape, muffling her hearing. Then, once her legs obeyed her commands again, she rushed at Augie. Brin staggered into motion at almost the same time.

  Derek beat them both.

  He was mad with fever—Neva could see it in the way his teeth gnashed, his nostrils flared, and his hands clamped around Augie’s jugular.

  “Don’t!” she shouted, trying to break Derek’s hold without touching the shells.

  Brin skidded to a stop, brandishing a knife and looking for an opening. But before she could find one, the insects fell from the ceiling in a hailstorm of mandibles and stingers.

  It was the Algerian Theatre all over again—bugs everywhere, going everywhere—yet only for a second. Derek’s wrists brushed the shells around Augie’s neck, and an enormous current sent the pests shooting off like a puff of dandelion seeds. In similar fashion, Derek, Augie, and Neva flew apart faster than a cluster of struck billiard balls, each crashing into a different wall or pile of crates. During Neva’s flight, her foot collided with Brin’s temple, knocking the Irishwoman to the ground as well.

  And then Neva couldn’t see or move.

  It wasn’t just that her right leg was pinned beneath an enormous crate. Her limbs were rubbery as eels, still smarting from Derek’s electrical burst. They wouldn’t respond to her attempts to shift them, to bend them free, and trying only made her body hurt worse. Hopefully this paralysis would wear off faster than the first.

  Her sight came back before anything else. After a minute or two, she could make out Derek lying at a sharp, unnatural angle against the far wall. But he still breathed, and his right hand twitched every few seconds, jiggling the leather cord threaded through his fingers.

  The cord that was broken on one end and no longer held any shells.

  He must have been holding it when he loosed the current. And when Augie ricocheted in one direction and he in another, the necklace had parted for him, only leather in his grasp when it had been something much harder in his brother’s.

  But if the necklace were broken, did that mean Augie was ...

  Free. He was free and treading on dead insects as he walked towards Brin; he’d recovered faster than anyone else, no doubt due to the healing abilities he’d acquired from Kezzie.

  Yet Neva could see a red line around his neck, and he moved slowly—the shells had weakened him. Maybe only temporarily, but if she could get herself up, get herself moving ...

  Her fingers flexed, but that was all.

  Augie knelt beside the insensible Irishwoman, pried the knife from her grip, and used the blade to cut a slit in the back of Brin’s hand. Then he kissed it, as gentlemanly as you like, except that he licked his lips after, luxuriating in the blood he’d taken from her.

  The knowledge he’d acquired.

  Neva still couldn’t move much when he turned to the far wall and contemplated his brother. What she could see of Augie’s expression was dark. How he must have hated Derek after Mr. DeBell revealed the truth. Derek, who’d had to bear the label of “bastard,” but still been acknowledged as “son”—and not merely the child of “loyal help.”

  She managed to raise her right arm. Could she throw something at Augie? Divert his attention from whatever else he planned to do with Brin’s knife? Except there was nothing in reach. And after another moment of consideration, Augie let the blade drop anyway, its fall cushioned by the carpet of upturned insects.

  He wasn’t done with Derek, however.

  Augie’s gaze remained fixed on his comatose brother, fingers spasming to produce a ... glove of sparks. Electricity. Had he acquired Derek’s talent at some point during their childhood? He certainly seemed to have mastered whatever intricacies were involved. With a twisted smile, he walked to Derek, crouched, and trailed the sparks over his face.

  At first, the flecks of energy only made Derek’s hair stand on end. But the flecks grew bigger, making him twitch harder. Then they coalesced into an enormous bolt that shot into his mouth, ringing his teeth with blue lightning before flashing through his body and causing him to arc his back once, twice ... and go still.

  “No!” screamed Neva.

  But Augie was already rising and swiveling on his heel to take the few, crunchy steps necessary to cross to her.

  She spat at him. “You bastard!”

  “It’s true—I am a bastard. And so are you.” He gestured behind him at Derek’s motionless form. “And so was he.”

  “Fuck you,” she whispered. She couldn’t hear him through the bone plugs she’d fashioned in her ears, but she was reasonably adept at reading lips.

  Augie gave the crates atop her a quick appraisal. “I doubt you’ll have any difficulty twisting out from that. Once you do, be safe, sister. But don’t be curious—don’t look for me. You wouldn’t find me anyway.”

  With that, he strode past her, heading down the corridor of crates and out of her limited view.

  Two frantic minutes later, Brin began to stir and Neva was finally able to contort her way free of the crates and scramble to Derek.

  He still hadn’t moved.

  “Derek,” she pleaded, gripping his forearm. “Please ...”

  At her touch, the nascent sickles on the backs of his hands wobbled and pulsed, his fingers clenched—

  And he gasped.

  “Oh, thank God,” Neva breathed, even as she readied herself for Derek to lunge at her in a venom-fueled rage.

  But he only shivered, beset by the chills that had wracked her so terribly when her own fever first waxed and waned nine months ago, in this very room.

  Brin covered him with a stray tarp. “Jaysus. He’s got it bad.”

  Neva unstopped her hearing; it seemed clear Augie wouldn’t be coming back. Ignoring the beads of blood forming on her earlobes, as if she’d pierced them afresh, she examined Derek. From what she could see, he had red crescent shapes in all the spots she’d developed them—on his hands, his stomach, his back—and more besides. His forearms looked like those of a sailor, inked up and down, except with only one design and color. And then there were the bite marks themselves, pocking his skin so thoroughly it looked like he’d been gored by an avalanche of needles.

  There was little to be done for him in the storage room, though. And not all the insects were dead. Some—like Brin, Neva, and her brothers—had only been stunned. In all areas of the room, little crescent-marked creatures were righting themselves and scrambling over their fallen brethren. They didn’t have the look of a swarm yet, but she didn’t want to wait for one to reform. “Let’s get him out of here.”

  Brin took Derek’s feet again, and Neva his arms. Once they were through the door and into the Machinery Hall proper, the sounds of exterior conflict—which they’d heard increasing instances of while in the storage room—became more prominent. Shouts, curses, gunshots, crashes: plainly, the city’s fighting had come to the Fair.

  “Set him there,�
�� Neva grunted, gesturing with her head to a sidewall that had once displayed a cross-section of a steamship engine. They laid him down.

  “Heavy bloke,” Brin panted. “Even underfed as he is.”

  More gunshots, more shouts—the Court of Honor must be a mess.

  Brin pointed away from the main entrance. “Shall we go out the rear?”

  “Probably.” Neva considered returning to the storage room for her lamp, but the winter had opened enough holes in Machinery’s roof to let in a fair amount of predawn light, and she didn’t want to crunch back over dead insects again.

  “What about Augie?”

  “He could be anywhere, anyone, by now ...”

  “Oh, I know, and he could have killed us. Easily.”

  Neva bit her lip. In Derek’s case, Augie had certainly tried.

  “But you heard what he said. About all those people, and your father ... and Kezzie.” The Irishwoman’s gaze was too intense to match for long; after a few seconds, Neva looked away.

  Augie hadn’t touched her, even when she’d been helpless after Derek’s wild, indiscriminate shock. Did that mean anything? When weighed against all the rest? Perhaps not, but she wasn’t ready to abandon her other brother just yet. Not when they still had things to discuss.

  Like how the necklace had reacted to him, as if springing a trap after dazzling him into taking the bait. While they’d carried Derek out, her ankle had rubbed against one of the shells—it had been half-resting on, half-buried by a mound of (mostly still) insects. The brief contact had made her feel ... nothing. No loosening in her body, no amplification of her ability; just the exoskeleton of a long-dead snail. Nothing remained of the force that had nearly ended Augie.

  The shell in her pocket still called to her, however, the one that had broken from the necklace when Derek used it to put down Kam. She withdrew the cowry and held it up to the light.

  “Did you make them do that?” asked Brin. “Tightening on him?”

  “No.” Neva turned the shell over in her hand. It hadn’t been part of the assault on Augie. Was that why it hadn’t spent its power? “I think we misunderstood the necklace’s purpose. It’s a talisman against bad vodun. Evil spirits,” she clarified when Brin cocked her head. “In their true form, and not some unknowing guise. That must be why it didn’t act before ... We heard the necklace tore a Dahomey clan apart, but maybe they made it to save themselves. Crazy as that sounds.”