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

by Nick Wisseman

  “No, the wood—it’s getting hotter.”

  “Because there’s a fire.”

  “Above us; not here.”

  The first landing’s window gave the lie to Wiley’s words by belching smoke. A second later, flames erupted beneath the upper guards’ feet and shot out of every opening, setting two men alight.

  “Dear God,” Wiley murmured as the crowd hushed and Neva cringed.

  The rest of the upper guards tried to extinguish the burning men’s clothing, but the smoke was everywhere, and one of them stumbled unseeing off the landing. He hit the main roof—seventy feet below—without uttering so much as a curse.

  The other man wasn’t as quiet.

  He started screaming the moment the first man went over the edge. Nothing the other guards did could stop the second man’s wailing; his clothing stayed lit, then his hair caught, then his skin. It was almost a relief when he broke away from his brothers and leapt into space.

  “Flaming hell,” Wiley muttered while the guards on the main roof called frantically for ladders to be raised from the ground. “The gap at the top of the stack—it must have allowed embers to fall between it and the tower’s wall.”

  “Wiley ...” Neva tried to ease her ankle from his grasp.

  “Those doff, dog-bolted, mumblecrusted architects! The stack should have been left bare, ‘White-City aesthetics’ be damned! This is on their heads. Those men’s deaths are on THEIR—”

  “Wiley, let go! They’re throwing us a rope.”

  He looked down: a guard on the first landing had coiled enough cord to toss a fair distance. Wiley released Neva’s ankle and began climbing into range.

  “I’ll get it,” she said, scurrying past him.

  She beat him to a likely line of windows by several seconds. “Throw it,” she called to the guard below. He shrugged and whipped the ball of rope overhand like a pitcher, its loose end trailing behind in the increasingly sooty air. Catching the rope required another temporary extension of her arm, but she drowned the pain in adrenaline. And by the time Wiley reached her, she’d tied the rope to one of the small pillars that separated each window.

  “You’re like a damn squirrel on this tower,” he noted before succumbing to a coughing fit.

  She shrugged, squinting against the smoke. “I used to do a highwire act in Barnum & Bailey’s.”

  “The circus?”

  “Before the Fair. I’ll take your jacket now.” She pointed to the first landing, where the upper team’s surviving members had fastened the other ropes and some of the hoses to the tower. The guards on the main roof—still yelling for ladders—had secured the opposite ends of each line as far from the fire as possible. Many of them had lit anyway, but that didn’t stop several guards from preparing to slide down, wrapping belts and coats tight around their chosen cables.

  Wiley darted inside the nearest smoking window for a moment. “Take this,” he said upon reemerging, handing her his belt. “It’s stronger. I’ll use my coat.”

  Neva shook her head. “Just hold on to me. I can bear us both.”

  He gave her the oddest look. “I almost believe you could. But I won’t let you risk it. Go now, while the line’s still clear. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Judging that there’d be no convincing him—and that trying to manhandle him might have disastrous consequences—she draped his belt over the rope, wrapped either end around her hands, and kicked off at the same time as several guards.

  The wind hit her almost as hard as the fear.

  Before, she’d been moving: over the Pier, through the Court of Honor, up and down Cold Storage and its towers—she hadn’t had a chance to be afraid. Now she was dangling, rushing helplessly toward the roof, with no recourse but bending her fingers about the belt and praying that it or the rope wouldn’t break, that the wind wouldn’t rip her free, that Wiley wouldn’t ...

  The furthest of the other guards lost his grip.

  Neva opened her mouth to swear, but another guard’s coat tore apart.

  The epithet died in her throat as a third guard’s rope snapped where flames had weakened it.

  One, two, three: the trio of men splattered on the roof in rapid succession. A fourth guard had enough luck to make it down his hose, but he pitched forward upon landing and smashed his head open.

  “Brace yourself!” called Wiley from behind her—still alive, thank God.

  Neva inhaled and half-loosened, half-stiffened her shins, once more imagining her bones to be as elastic as a spiderweb. Her legs slammed against the roof, but they held, and she ran with the impact to make room for Wiley. He touched down a second after her, landing in a roll and coming up smoothly.

  They’d made it.

  Three men remained on the tower, however. And as the unoccupied guards on the main roof ran to Wiley and Neva’s side, another gout of flame whooshed from the first landing’s windows, catching the last ropes and hoses afire.

  The three men on the tower began exchanging long, heartfelt embraces.

  “Where are the damn ladders?” roared Wiley. “Throw them another rope!”

  But the trio had already made up their minds, and after chanting something in unison—the Columbian Guard’s motto?—they slapped each other’s backs, saluted the guards on the main roof, and jumped.

  “No,” Neva breathed.

  Yet five, six, seven they came, in another horrible, crunching parody of raindrops.

  The next several moments were filled with nothing but scattered whimpers from the crowd below and sputtering crackles from the flames above.

  “Gentlemen,” Wiley finally said. “The building is lost. Gather the dead and get to safety.”

  As if to emphasize his words, the west tower buckled between the first and second landings, showering debris over the roof. The tower’s inversion caused a brief disturbance in the surrounding smoke, creating an opening large enough to glimpse the crippled structure’s last occupant: the porter.

  Somehow, he was still atop the third landing, his clothes burned to shreds and his hair a wreath of red. He no longer seemed panicked, though. With absurd calm, he removed what remained of his beard—as if it were a prop—and dropped it into the inferno. The height was too great for his features to be anything more than indistinct; there was no telling what his sooty expression actually conveyed.

  But something gleamed on his bare chest above the crimson splash of the gunshot wound. Something purple. Something that might have been two large, adjoined sickle shapes. And the set his shoulders had taken looked ... familiar.

  “No!” shouted Neva as the realization crystallized too late. “Augie! WAIT!”

  Unhearing, her brother crossed himself, leaned forward, and stepped.

  Chapter Eight

  AUGIE FELL IN A SLOW tumble, completing his first rotation as the west tower gave way completely. Its upper half chased him to the main roof, smashing over him a second after his spine snapped across a cruelly curved piece of rubble.

  “AUGIE!” screamed Neva.

  She staggered toward the immense pile of blackened steel, plaster, and wood, but Wiley yanked her back. “The roof is going!” he shouted.

  Neva bent free anyway, but the lower half of the tower crashed down on the other end of its base, and with a creaking shudder, the Cold Storage Building began caving in.

  “Augie!” she screamed again as the debris that had buried him disappeared into a yawning, smoking hole.

  Four arms grabbed her, two on either side. She struggled initially but went limp as the guards—Wiley and another of his brethren—raced her to one of the ladders that had finally appeared on the side of the building.

  “Augie,” she whispered while the other guard helped Wiley get her on his back.

  “Neva, I need you to hold on. Can you do that? I need you to use some of your squirrel strength to hold on.”

  Sluggishly, she wrapped her arms around his chest, just below his neck.

  “Good girl. Now, don’t let go. Not
until we reach the ground.”

  She might have nodded—it was hard to tell; her body seemed to have stopped responding to her thoughts. Everything was so ... muffled. She knew men were yelling above her and that more bits of Cold Storage were collapsing, but she could barely hear any of it. And she could tell Wiley was laboring to bear her weight as he descended the ladder. Except that was odd, because she felt like she was floating.

  When they reached the ground—had the climb down really been so fast?—he shook his head at an approaching ambulance crew and shouted something at the crowd, presumably telling them to back up. Another guard kept making a shoving motion with his hand. “This is no longer a God-damned spectacle!” she thought she heard him say.

  Then Wiley eased her onto her feet, brushed a bit of ash from her face, and asked her if ... she could walk? Talk?

  It didn’t matter.

  Augie was dead.

  As Wiley told someone he was “taking her to see the Commandant,” Neva kept seeing her brother step from the third landing. Kept watching him spin slowly through the air, turning graceful circles as he grew larger, and larger, and ... died.

  He kept dying. Neva kept seeing him die.

  He hit the rubble, his spine snapped, the falling tower buried him. He hit the rubble, his spine snapped, the falling tower buried him. He hit the rubble, his spine snapped, the falling tower buried him ...

  Her hand twitched—Wiley had taken hold of it.

  “This way,” he said, then repeated himself when she didn’t respond. They were in the Court of Honor—had they already walked that far? Her feet were pointed at the Administration Building, but his free hand gestured at the Machinery Hall. Was Commandant Rice in there now? Augie had never liked how loud it was ... Augie.

  He hit the rubble, his spine snapped, the falling tower buried him. He hit the rubble, his spine snapped, the falling tower buried him ...

  The noise of the Machinery Hall wrapped around her like an embrace, the din of its devices—the motors, the machining tools, the oil drills, the conveyor belts, the steam engines; especially the steam engines—drowning out the roar of the fire. Few in here seemed to know what had happened to Cold Storage. How could they? It was impossible to hear anything more than a few feet away.

  Wiley led her past Eli Whitney’s original cotton gin, behind a sewing machine that stitched hundred-foot lengths of carpet at a time, and underneath a traveler’s crane—one of the hoists that had been used to construct the Hall and now gave visitors rides up to and down from the galleries overhead ... Overhead and high above. Just a step away from the edge.

  He hit the rubble, his spine snapped, the falling tower buried him ...

  Wiley removed a key from his pocket and unlocked a small door on the west wall. Then he rapped an odd pattern next to the knob and waited—perhaps for a second lock to be undone on the other side?

  After a moment, the door opened and an auburn-haired woman peered out, her white dress trimmed with the purple of a Palace of Fine Arts guide. She nodded to Wiley, gave Neva and her dancer’s garb an appraising look, and turned back to him. “Well, isn’t she a bit of jam?” the woman said in a light Irish brogue.

  He shook his head. “Not now, Brin. Let us through.”

  “And why would you be bringing a colored girl in?” Brin was almost as tall as Wiley, but her build was slight. Even so, she seemed like someone who wouldn’t be easy to brush aside.

  “She’s under my care.”

  Brin shrugged.

  He smacked the wall, then controlled himself and motioned her close so he could whisper—which in the Machinery Hall, meant half-shout—something in Brin’s ear. Likely about Augie.

  He hit the rubble ...

  Brin studied Neva again, taking in her soot-stained shoulders and listless hands. “Truly?”

  Wiley nodded. “Truly.”

  “God love you,” Brin said to Neva. “It’s unspeakable.”

  She inclined her head so shallowly she wasn’t sure it actually moved.

  “But this isn’t the place for grieving.” Brin frowned at Wiley. “Surely there’s somewhere else you can take her.”

  “There’s nowhere—she may still be in danger.”

  “So take her to a guard station.”

  “They’ll only badger her with questions. Let me put it to the others.”

  Brin glared at him a moment before rolling her eyes. “What’s the point? Pieter’s an even softer touch than you.”

  “Thank you.” Wiley took Neva’s hand again and motioned her towards the door.

  Brin snorted and stepped inside. “Wiley’s brought a guest,” she announced as they entered behind her.

  “He think we need a domestic?” The speaker, a large man dressed in the dapper blue uniform of the Wellington Catering Company and sitting on a barrel, looked at Neva in a way that made clear what he thought of her skin tone.

  “Shut your giggle mug, Roland,” a second, fatter man said, his paunch straining against the confines of his red Casino Attendant’s vest. “Wiley, what is this?”

  But the third man—bony, to the point that a yellowed undershirt hung off him like a sad flag—just stared at her, a Fair Custodian’s gray coat lying next to him on a table.

  “Quill?” asked Neva in disbelief.

  He blinked. “Neva. What are you doing here?”

  Wiley raised his eyebrows. “You know each other?”

  “She used to be a student of mine.” Quill continued studying her with the quizzical, piercing gaze she remembered so well. “What happened to you?”

  “There’s been a fire,” Wiley answered for her. “I’ll tell you about it in a moment. First, I’m going to get her settled in back. She needs to rest.”

  Roland grunted. “Ain’t the place for your colored tail. Give her notch a taste of your holy bone somewhere else.”

  The fat man—Pieter, presumably—threw a wadded paper wrapper at Roland. “Stop being such a muckspout. Wiley wouldn’t bring her here without good cause.” He glanced at Wiley for confirmation, and Neva realized the two men’s accents were similar. Were they both Boers, then? And where was the Commandant?

  “You’ll hear my reasons in a moment,” Wiley said. “After I get Neva settled.” He grabbed a lantern and, ignoring more grumbling from Roland, led Neva through a corridor of haphazardly stacked crates and bits of leftover exhibits. Winding through the floor-to-ceiling clutter revealed a small refuge at the rear: a second table and a jumble of mismatched blankets.

  “Sometimes it’s easier to sleep here than fight the crowds for a train home after work,” Wiley said as he set the lantern on the table and smoothed the blankets into a more inviting ensemble. “You’re welcome to rest here as long as you like.”

  She nodded.

  “I must apologize for Roland. He’s a stroppy bastard, but he’s good in a tight spot. Saved Pieter’s life once.”

  She nodded again.

  “Neva ...”

  Glancing at Wiley, she saw the concern in his eyes and looked away.

  “Are you certain Augie was the porter?”

  She slumped to the floor and pulled her knees to her chest.

  “I’m sorry, but he was a long way off, and between the smoke and the fire—”

  “It was him.” She laid her head against her knees. “His disguise fooled me at first, but it was him. He had the rash on his chest.”

  “I saw that. But perhaps ...”

  She closed her eyes. “Please go.”

  Wiley paused, then cleared his throat. “Of course. I’ll be in the front.”

  The ensuing quiet was at once better and worse. Better, because it wasn’t absolute: she could still hear occasional clangs and bangs from the main hall, as well as the thrum of the steam engines; the storage room must be near the hall’s power plant, which generated electricity for the entire Fair. Worse, because the quiet was complete enough to isolate her with her thoughts.

  He hit the rubble ...

  “No,” N
eva mumbled as the images she’d managed to suppress for a short while resurfaced.

  His spine snapped ...

  “Please, no.”

  The falling tower buried him.

  And she was alone.

  HER DREAMS, WHEN SLEEP finally came, dredged up memories that hurt almost as much:

  “I can’t,” Neva said, eying the curtains: still closed, still shrouding Barnum & Bailey’s secondary stage in shadows.

  Augie squeezed her shoulders. “You can.”

  She shook her head. “We could go back to Chicago.”

  He released her shoulder and pointed to the sliver of audience revealed by the crack between the curtains. “I’ll be out there, the whole time. You’ll do fine.”

  She shook her head harder.

  “Neva ...”

  She could feel the anger in him. He hid it well, masking it with the tenderness and strength she’d always known he’d lend her if she truly needed it. But she could sense the underlying rage, the anguish and guilt that he hadn’t done more—hadn’t been faster. None of it was directed at her, but she shrank from it anyway.

  “We can leave,” Augie said upon seeing her reaction. “Go back to the DeBells’ house—if that’s what you really want?”

  She nodded.

  “But just know that every time you don’t dance—every time you choose to hide your grace—that man will retain his power over you.”

  Neva flinched, then raised her hand, hoping to make Augie flinch too. But he didn’t. He was ready to be slapped, if that was what she needed. Ready to leave the circus too—he hadn’t said those words just to say them. He’d meant them.

  He’d also been right.

  “You’ll be in the audience?” she asked softly, lowering her hand.

  “The whole time.” He squeezed her shoulder again. “You can do this, sister. You’re stronger than you know.”

  She studied the curtains again. All she had to do was part them and step through—a half-second’s worth of movement between two rumpled sheets of cloth. Just that, and then the rhythms of performance would take over and she could lose herself in dancing and bending.

  Except in all her seventeen years, she’d never felt weaker.