“We both walked away,” Brin said eventually. “Bloody and furious, but we faced down the madness—Kezzie more than me.” She finished the swan and moved on to a flower. “Not the next time, though.”
The waiter returned before Neva could reply. He raised his eyebrows when he saw Brin’s napkin. “Hell, Briney, you should be working here instead of as a guide.”
She smiled again, but there was still no truth in it.
He didn’t notice. “Here’s everything you ordered,” he said to Neva. “Must have quite a hunger.”
She chose to overlook the fact that he’d addressed most of the other women in the restaurant—all the white women except Brin, in fact—as Ma’am. “I do. Thank you.” Yet after the waiter set the plates down and left, Neva didn’t touch the food. “What happened?”
Brin transitioned her flower into a frog. “A few days later, I went to Kezzie’s room in the Levee to make amends. But the fever ... It was bad in her. It had lessened in me, but she was wild with it. Now I was the one trying to lead us back. Except she got hold of my knife, and when I reclaimed it ...”
Neva resisted the impulse to reach across the table and put her hands on Brin’s. Her own fever had begun to simmer dangerously, and making contact with the Irishwoman might cause it to boil up at what would be the worst possible moment. Words were a poor substitute for touch, but she tried them anyway: “You didn’t have a choice. You only did—”
“I didn’t do anything!” Brin yanked the frog into a shapeless sheet and swept it off the table. “She threw herself on my knife!”
Neva rocked back in her chair: that hadn’t been the ending she’d expected. “She killed herself?”
The energy went out of Brin as suddenly as it had come, and she looked down at the floor. “She did—to save me from having to do it. She’d gotten enough of herself back to lose it all for me. I saw it in her eyes. Damned if I don’t still see it when I close mine ... Jaysus, but I need a drink. Did you order anything stiff?”
“I will.” It would clear her out, but Neva flagged the waiter down anyway, and then she and Brin staved off further conversation by eating.
“I didn’t ‘consume’ her,” Brin said after a while. “If that’s what you’re wondering. I know the papers made a story out of it, but that wasn’t me.” She held a piece of steak aloft on her fork for a moment and shuddered.
Neva nodded, remembering how, while in the fever’s grip, she’d wanted to bite Brin and the man from the Levee—and how little she wanted to admit it.
“I left her,” Brin went on in a near-whisper. “That’s the worst of it. I left her there in her room. I was too angry, too scared, to stay and do right by her. To give her a proper burial ... So she was alone when someone came in after me.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“That’s decent of you to say, but I know different.” Brin set the piece of steak back on her plate and pushed it away. “You seem to have a better handle on it—I thought you’d be leaping over the table at me by now.”
Neva squashed the urge to do just that. “How long have you been able to ... bend metal?”
“Since I was a babe. How long have you been able to bend yourself? Don’t be shy. I saw what you did when you tried to get loose last night. And you must have done some of the same to get out of the storage room in Machinery.”
Neva pursed her lips, then shrugged. “Since I was a babe. Do you think that’s why the insects are targeting us?”
“I expect so. Kezzie could lay hands on people. Not like Christ; she couldn’t restore sight to the blind or reverse the course of death. But she could ease pain, close small wounds and speed the mending of larger ones. She couldn’t cure the bites, though ... What could your brother do?”
“Voices. He could mimic them and throw them so well you’d never know it was him. Sometimes he made it sound like I was saying things I’d never say—horribly crude things that offended old ladies.”
“He sounds grand.”
“He was.”
Brin watched Neva take another bite. “Did you ever meet someone else like us?”
“Only a few. But Augie and I never told anyone. I bet it’s the same with others: there are probably more of us than we’d guess.”
“I imagine some don’t even know they’re one of ‘us.’ I met a man once who could eat anything, no matter how poisonous—and I’m talking the most noxious mushrooms you can imagine—and be fine. He thought he just had a strong stomach.”
“Or he might have thought it witchcraft.”
“No.” Brin gave her a fierce look. “Witches seek out dark knowledge; we’re born with a gift. Being what you were made to be isn’t witchcraft.”
“Unless it’s a curse.”
“Stop it. Don’t go believing every bible thumper you hear. We are what we do. Now, setting insects on people and driving them to attack each other—that’s witchcraft.”
“Of course.” Neva could have argued the other side; she’d done it in her head often enough. But she let it pass. “The Pinkertons think it might be the White Chapel Club.”
“That ghouls’ gathering?”
“The same. Something about them using ‘strange chemistry’ to rile up the insects.”
Their waiter came by to take a last call. Brin waved him off and asked for the check—which, Neva was relieved to see, the Irishwoman seemed willing to contribute to. After things were settled, she stood and motioned for Neva to do the same. “Let’s go.
“Where?”
“To the White Chapel Club.”
Neva’s feet ached, her heels remembering the miles they’d already walked that day. “It’s midnight.”
“The perfect time for a colored girl and an Irish lass to meet lads pining for Leather Apron.” Brin gestured again for her to follow. “Were you really going to sleep?”
She imagined lying down and allowing her body to forget everything she’d put it through the past two days: the stiffness in her back after fighting the little man in the Levee, the pain of the rashes as they erupted on the Midway, the heat of the fire on Cold Storage ... And she knew that, no matter how deeply she slept, she’d see all the associated images in her dreams.
He hit the rubble, his spine—
No. There would be no resting tonight.
“All right,” she said to the woman who’d choked her into unconsciousness the evening before. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Fourteen
EVEN AFTER MIDNIGHT, the trains ran steadily, transporting thousands of Fairgoers to and from the grounds. Neva coughed up the fare for a downtown ride, hating the expense but knowing that walking that far—after already making most of the trek earlier in the day—might wreck her. And while the White City was safe enough in the early morning, the Black City’s streets were another story.
No one hassled her and Brin, though. Not during the long train ride, and not when they disembarked and walked to an unlit alley off La Salle, where Brin had heard the White Chapel Club was supposed to be.
“Looks like you were right,” Neva whispered once her eyes adjusted to the moonlight. At the end of the alley stood a heavy oak door decorated with iron scrollwork and a stained-glass pane featuring a skull and crossbones.
Brin snorted as she took in the door. “Subtle lads, these ones.”
No light came through the glass, but Neva put her ear to the door to listen anyway—nothing. She tried the door. “It’s locked.”
Brin placed her hand on the mechanism, closed her eyes ...
And Neva’s rashes started to throb.
Her hands twitched too, one clenching and one clawing. But she fought the fever down, mentally packing her veins with ice again, leaving no room for rage—just cool, and calm, and control ... It worked. Barely, but it worked.
A moment later, the lock clicked.
“It’s open,” Brin confirmed.
“Warn me next time?”
“Right. Sorry.”
The door swung in with a
suitably hideous creak, opening on a warren of shapes and shadows.
“Jaysus,” Brin murmured. “It’s like a haunted house.” She lit a match.
“You’re sure that’s wise?”
“I’d rather risk a glow than be stumbling about in this.”
They still couldn’t see much, but after a bit of groping, Neva located a tap for one of the gas jets. She turned it and reached under the lampshade to light the flow—which, once burning, revealed the shade to be a human skull with glass eyes.
“Very subtle,” Brin said.
The rest of the fixtures were also wall-mounted skulls. Lighting a few more provided enough illumination to examine the table, a horseshoe-shaped piece set with pipes and upturned brainpans filled with tobacco.
“Who would come to a place like this to relax?” breathed Neva as they began searching the room.
“Men,” Brin muttered. “Only men. Be quick.”
But there was little of significance to find—just more macabre trinkets, most designed to facilitate relatively innocuous vices: bone dice for gambling, skull cups for drinking, skeletal hands for serving spoons ... The only “strange chemistry” in evidence was the noxious-smelling beer filling the bar’s keg to the brim.
Neva covered her nose and gestured at the ceiling. “Upstairs?”
The room above was smaller and even more fetishized. Skulls served as lampshades again, but the walls were further adorned with a vicious assortment of weapons: knives, nooses, and pistols, all with captions that described whom the implements had been used to kill and how. Blood-stained Indian blankets and before-and-after pictures of beheaded Chinese pirates rounded out the collection. In the center of the room sat a coffin—which, based on the surrounding chairs' position—presumably served as another table. In the corner crouched a life-size, hooded mannequin with arms crossed and a blade jutting from either hand. A small card labeled him “White Chapel President.”
“That must be ole’ Jack,” Brin observed.
“Charming.” Neva tried to open the coffin, failed, and waved her over.
“I heard the club’s members are mostly reporters,” Brin said while unshaping the lock. “Which makes sense, being that we’re in Newsboys’ Alley. They probably stop in for a quick pint during the day.”
Neva nodded but didn’t say anything. She was too busy tamping down the resurgence of fever set off by Brin’s use of her talent.
“I suppose they cover a dark world. Maybe this place helps them make light of it.” She removed her hand from the lock and motioned for help shifting the lid.
Neva threw her weight against it and grunted. The exertion helped. “So you don’t think they’re killers?”
Brin shook her head and heaved. The lid skidded open. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to meet any of them, but ... It’s all a mite blatant. Maybe this will tell us.” She bent to pick up the leatherbound book lying at the bottom of the coffin. “Seems to be a guestbook.”
“Recognize anyone?”
Brin skimmed the most recent pages. “I don’t. Yourself?”
Neva took the book and did her own perusal, angling it towards the skull lamp they’d lit upon entering the room. “No. Not—wait.”
“What?”
“Wait,” she said again as she slumped in one of the red-stained chairs, still studying the guestbook. “Why was Mr. DeBell here?”
“Who’s Mr. DeBell?”
“Who’s there?” a new voice asked before Neva could respond. A male voice—a very drunk male voice—from downstairs.
The women froze for a moment as the sounds of more men drifted up from below. There were at least six, and several of them remarked about the skull lamps being lit. Another voice wondered if “Cuddy” had ordered them some “entertainment.”
Brin reacted first. She pointed to herself, then to Neva, then into the coffin.
Neva nodded. It was an awful option, but the room had no other viable hiding places. As quietly as she could, she returned the guestbook to the coffin and climbed in after. Brin wedged herself in just as stealthily, and together they slid the lid back to its original position—with luck, they’d lined its edges up convincingly enough to avoid inspection.
Now there was just the small matter of not killing each other.
Brin was slender and Neva short, but together they were more than the coffin had been sized for. Fitting as a pair required Neva to bend her bones and, as the air began to feel especially hot and thin, Brin to dissolve a few of the coffin’s metal studs to enable shallow breathing and the entrance of a little light and sound. In response to the Irishwoman’s use of her talent, Neva’s rashes started throbbing so badly she wondered if they’d rattle against the coffin’s walls; she could feel Brin quivering in turn. But they managed to control their respective fevers as several men climbed the stairs and lit the rest of the room’s skull lamps.
“Anything missing?” one of them asked.
“Not that I can see.”
“Was it the Pinkertons?”
“Probably just Cuddy. Or Appleton, stopping in for a nightcap. The Pinkertons would have made a mess.”
“Maybe Appleton came to admire the lady skulls again. I hear they put his wife to shame.”
Someone tried to open the coffin, but Brin, still trembling, snaked her arm around Neva, touched the lock, and fused it shut.
“The table’s still closed. Anyone have the key?”
“Cuddy’s got the only copy.”
“And I need to wet my beer street. Come on: no one’s up here, and the bar is calling.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“For drinking spirits!”
“While surrounded by spirits!”
Several of the men laughed, harder than warranted. Then they all tromped back downstairs.
When the carousing reached its full, noisy heights, Brin risked a whisper into Neva’s ear. “Are you all right?”
Neva realized her shaking had worsened—too much repressing aggression and contorting her bones the last few days. “I will be. Can you unlock this?”
“Sorry, love. We stay until they go.”
Another tremor went through Neva ... and then rippled through Brin. She was struggling just as much. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
“It’s wise-er. There’s only one way down, and too many drunks at the bottom.”
“But we could stay up here ...”
“And if they climb the stairs again?”
“We hide again.”
“But perhaps not in time. Best to wait.”
Neva took a deep, slow breath and let it out even slower. “All right. But keep talking to me.”
“Sure.”
“Tell me about the Ferris Wheel.”
Brin tensed for a moment.
“Ready to get out now?”
Brin tried to shake her head, but there wasn’t enough room. So she chuckled instead. “Wiley said you overhead us. And that you might want to help.”
“I’m not opposed,” Neva lied. “But I want to know more.”
Brin shrugged as much as she was able. “It’s a symbol.”
“Of what?”
“Chicago—and the rest of the country—spent twenty-eight million dollars building this Fair. And it’s certainly grand enough, as close as we’re liable to get to a New Jerusalem. But outside the gates, people are starving. We’re sliding into one of the worst economic crises the nation’s ever seen—maybe the worst. Hundreds of thousands can’t get a job, and that’s just today. Tomorrow’s going to be even grimmer. And the day after that ... Well, it’s about as dark as the Fair is light.”
Neva looked for the right words to express herself, couldn’t find them, and resigned herself to bluntness. “But isn’t this what you want?”
“Come again?”
“Forgive me—I said that badly. I know you don’t want the suffering. But you’re an anarchist, aren’t you?”
“You mean I should be happy with capitalism’s collapse?�
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“Thank you, yes.”
“It needs to happen. Any system besides that of free association of individuals is oppressive. But I wish we didn’t have to sink to such depths to wake people up.”
“Dynamiting the Wheel, though ... You think that will do the trick?”
Brin semi-shrugged again. “Quill does. He says we’ll make their symbol ours. That it will become ‘the spark that ignites a glorious revolution.’”
“And you?”
“I think it’ll make a glorious spectacle. And then we’ll see.”
“But you don’t mean to hurt anyone ...”
“The Wheel will be empty; I won’t light the charges otherwise. Who’s Mr. DeBell?”
Neva shifted awkwardly.
“Come now: I showed you mine.”
She hesitated, then froze—something had scraped against the floor just outside the coffin.
“Please,” a man said when Neva didn’t answer. “Who is this Mr. DeBell fellow? Would it be Mr. Edward DeBell? We’re all dying to know.”
“Shite,” Brin breathed.
“Boys,” the man called down to the first floor, his voice deep and brackish. “You’ll want to see this. Cuddy outdid himself.”
“Shite,” she murmured again.
“Reinforce the lock,” Neva suggested as softly as she could.
“It’ll shatter if I make it any stiffer. Just ... be ready.”
“Girls,” the man was explaining to the first of his companions to stamp back up the stairs. “In the coffin.”
“You’re drunk,” the companion responded.
“Absolutely muzzy,” the man agreed. “Didn’t trust myself to walk down the stairs with you lot. But I heard them—the girls. Talking politics. Sound like radicals.”
“What’s this?” a third man asked.
The first two filled him in.
“Well, open it then.”
“No key—remember, Billy Noodel?”
“Shut your bone box.”
More footsteps indicated the rest of the men had moved into the room.
Witch in the White City: A Dark Historical Fantasy/Mystery (Neva Freeman Book 1) Page 10
