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

by Nick Wisseman

  She opened her mouth halfway, but it stuck there, unsure what words to form.

  Hatty understood anyway. “Or perhaps I’ll tell her later. Maybe mention that you paid a visit while she was out?”

  Neva nodded.

  “Well, I’m needed in the dining room. Come during the afternoon next time when it’s less hectic. And stay awhile. It’s been too long.”

  “I will,” she said as she gave Hatty another hug. “Soon. That’s a promise.”

  “I’ll hold you to it.” Hatty picked up the basket, approached the door that led to the main portion of the house, and stopped to exhale. Slowly. “Goodbye, child,” she said once she’d gathered herself. “Until next time.”

  “Goodbye.” Neva took a deep breath of her own before ascending the backstairs. There was no danger of being seen by a DeBell—they never used the “servant’s steps.” And the servants themselves would all be in the kitchen or dining room by now.

  Still, she didn’t relish the thought of encountering anyone else. Especially while she was looking for a reason why Mr. DeBell had gone to an establishment as idiotic as the White Chapel Club. At least Hatty’s suggestion to write a note made for good cover. Neva was already composing it in her mind as she walked into the opulent study and its shelves and shelves of books. “Dear Mr. DeBell,” she’d begin, or maybe “Dearest Mr. DeBell,” if she wanted to seem as far from conniving as possible ...

  The mess of papers on his desk gave Neva pause—from the looks of it, Mr. DeBell had been drafting his own note. And not very successfully: there were at least ten versions of an opening to Derek scattered about. Most of them began with “My son,” or “Derek, my boy,” but one of the sheets started with “I should have told you this long ago.” There was no body to any of the messages, however, no indication of what Mr. DeBell had been trying to disclose. The only words on the pages were what seemed to be comments he’d written to himself, usually of the “Get on with it, man” variety, or “Spit it out, for God’s sake!”

  “Curious,” Neva murmured as she bent to look in the wastebasket.

  “Indeed,” Mrs. DeBell agreed from the doorway.

  Neva hid her surprise—and guilt—better than she would have thought herself capable of. “Mrs. DeBell!” she exclaimed in an easy tone. She didn’t straighten immediately; that would have been a dead giveaway. Instead, she rummaged noisily through the wastebasket before removing a piece of paper at random. “I can be so clumsy when I’m not dancing,” she said as she stood. “I came to leave Mr. DeBell a note, but while I was looking for a pen, I knocked this piece of paper off the desk—right into the wastebasket!”

  “Heavens,” Mrs. DeBell said mildly. Her hair hadn’t been done yet, but she’d already donned a gray-green gown whose flowing curves did little to soften the angularity of the person beneath.

  “He’s really missing?” asked Neva, mostly to change the subject while she unwrinkled the bit of paper—a receipt?—she’d rescued from the trash.

  Worry joined the suspicion in Mrs. DeBell’s expression. “Who told you that?”

  “I went to the Stockyards yesterday. Bat Wiggins said they’re all worried about him. I’m sorry to call so early. I was just hoping Mr. DeBell had returned.”

  “Bat has a kind heart,” Mrs. DeBell allowed after a second.

  Neva didn’t disabuse her.

  “Sadly, he has the right of it. I haven’t heard from Edward in more than a week.” The suspicion in her gaze remained, but it had shifted, taking on the same knowing glimmer Hatty had evidenced a few minutes earlier.

  “He didn’t say anything before he left?”

  “No.” Mrs. DeBell nodded at the desk. “But he did come home that last day—came home early, in a bit of a state. He tried to write something.”

  Neva pretended to read one of the drafts for the first time. “A letter to Derek?”

  “So it would seem. He made quite the hash of it. I’ve never known him to waste so much paper. Something must have been on his mind ...” Mrs. DeBell turned her fearsome eyes to the window, and without their scrutiny, Neva found—to her shame—that she breathed easier. Time to get on with it.

  “This may sound odd, but was Mr. DeBell much involved with the White Chapel Club?”

  Mrs. DeBell looked back at Neva.

  She schooled her face to casualness. “Bat mentioned that Mr. DeBell had gone a time or two, and the papers have been carrying some queer rumors about the club ...”

  “What sorts of rumors?”

  Too late, Neva remembered that the club hadn’t been mentioned in the article she’d read. But Mrs. DeBell had a dim opinion of the local newspapers—she probably hadn’t gone through the most recent editions in any detail. “The killings at the Fair. Some people think the White Chapel Club might be involved.”

  Mrs. DeBell made a perfectly contemptuous face. “They might be involved in talking about the killings and drinking to their ghastliness—no more. They’re fools, but they’re harmless fools. Edward only went the once because a colleague insisted.”

  Neva found herself agreeing. Bat and the other White Chapelers weren’t exactly guileless babes—last night had proven that. But even drunk, they hadn’t seemed like true disciples of Leather Apron. And in either case, Mr. DeBell wouldn’t have associated with them. Not willingly, not for long. He just wouldn’t have.

  Nor was Mrs. DeBell likely to believe an ex-servant’s alibi for poking about the study. “I don’t want to keep you from your breakfast,” Neva said, taking a small step towards the door.

  Mrs. DeBell moved aside to let her pass. “And I don’t want to find you here again unannounced. You and your brother have been afforded certain liberties because of your father’s service to Edward, but that doesn’t excuse the lack of common courtesy you’ve so often displayed.”

  Neva couldn’t find the words to respond—the mention of Augie had choked her up, not least because she wasn’t sure Mrs. DeBell would care that he was gone.

  The white woman’s heart wasn’t completely cold, though. “Oh, stuff, girl. I’ve never known you to fall apart because of a rebuke. I’m sure Edward will turn up.”

  Neva nodded and tried to hurry by.

  “Neva ...”

  She stopped and glanced at Mrs. DeBell, who seemed to be chewing something over. Almost literally: her mouth moved up and down as if working on a tough piece of meat.

  “You’re not my first caller this morning,” she said once she’d finished reconciling herself to whatever she intended to say. “Derek was here not half an hour ago.”

  “Today?” was all Neva could manage.

  Rather than pouncing on this stupidity, Mrs. DeBell simply moved on—she really must be trying to impart something significant. “He was looking for Edward and extremely distraught to find him missing; I think Edward sent the boy a note after all. You might ask him about it.”

  Neva studied her former employer for a moment. “You know what was in the note, don’t you?”

  “I have a notion. But you should ask Derek.”

  “I will. Where is he now?”

  “He didn’t say where he was headed, but he kept fidgeting with a ticket stub for the Fair—perhaps he’s on his way there to see you?”

  The words rang so true for Neva that within a minute she was outside and striding towards the closest rail station, having tarried in the house only to mumble an apology to Mrs. DeBell and tell Hatty, “I spoke with her.”

  Would that she hadn’t.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “NO. I DON’T BELIEVE it.” Neva slammed the note down, then covered it with Sol’s inkwell for good measure.

  Derek winced from the other side of the desk. “I didn’t want to either, but ... It fits too well.”

  She glanced around the sparingly decorated office. Still empty, except for them—Sol was out, and Wahib had let her use the room after reporting that Derek was waiting for her. “Someone’s playing games with you. This note doesn’t make sense.” />
  He shook his head. “Whose game could it be? Have you ever known Edward to make such a poor joke? Or, God forbid, Lucretia?”

  “Jasper, then. Or Abiah.”

  “Neva ...” Derek pressed his hands together in a praying motion, but his palms were straining against each other too hard to look devout. “It’s Edward’s script. You know it as well as I.”

  “So he confirmed it?”

  “No.” Derek dropped his hands, flexed them, and rejoined them behind his back. “I’ve called on their house three times since I received the note. But he’s been absent each time— missing for more than a week now.”

  “Then you don’t know anything for sure.”

  “I know it feels true.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” She ripped the note out from under the inkwell and pointed to the fourth paragraph—the one that had upended her already tumultuous world. “Damn it all, Derek, I’m not your sister!”

  BUT THE NOTE KEPT MAKING its case.

  My dearest Derek, the letter had begun, its words running through Neva’s head as she walked dazedly at Derek’s side ...

  You have always been my happiest indiscretion—the noblest fruit sin has ever born. I regret that I have never said this so explicitly, but I love you with all my heart and wish bitterly that I had not facilitated your entry into this world while placing such a burden on your name.

  She tried to think of something else as Derek led her onto the Wooded Island—much as Wiley had two short, endless days ago—but Mr. DeBell’s elegant letters continued rushing in front of her eyes ...

  You know of my regret already, however. Or at least, you know a portion of my regret. But I’m ashamed—deeply, and before now, unspeakably, ashamed—that my regret extends further. For my sin does as well.

  There is no easy way to put this, so I will say it plain: you are not my only bastard. Augie is your brother, and Neva your sister.

  It was still preposterous. Unfathomable and absurd. And yet, as Derek saw how unmoved she was by the Lagoon and gestured to the Court of Honor, Mr. DeBell’s every action towards her recast itself in a newer, truer light ...

  The story is longer and more sordid than I have the courage to write, but suffice it to say that while Nat, their supposed father, fought in my place during the Great War, I began a relationship with Betty, their mother. It was wicked on many levels. A white man—an abolitionist, no less—lying with his Negro butler’s woman? A husband betraying his wife? An employer taking advantage of his employee? I don’t dispute the iniquity of any of it. But I had luck as well as lust: Betty didn’t fall with child—three, it turned out—until years later, long after the war had ended and Nat had come home.

  Betty knew her belly swelled with my seed, though; Nat had never quickened her before. And no good sin goes unpunished ... Not that you—or Neva, or Augie—were that punishment. You were all a blessing, despite my shame. No, it was the manner of your birth, the loss of Nat and Betty after: that was my punishment. That has ever been my guilt.

  The lies since have pained me almost as much, but I would rather explain them in person, man to man. Come when you can, and I will confess all.

  The valediction hadn’t been addressed to Neva, but it might as well have been:

  Your father,

  Edward

  Impossible.

  “But you’re white,” she reiterated to Derek as they crossed the bridge that ran above the small island containing the Hunters’ Camp and the Australian Squatters’ Hut.

  Shrugging, he repeated his earlier answer: “It’s been known to happen.” Except this time he elaborated. “I made some inquiries—discreetly—when I couldn’t find Edward. It’s uncommon, yet now and again a seemingly pure-white child is born of mixed parents. And the reverse can happen as well. There’s even been a case of a colored child born of two white parents ... Strange things happen when blood mixes.”

  “In a set of triplets, though?”

  Derek shrugged again, this time more with his eyebrows than his shoulders.

  “And you were born earlier than us—August, not October.”

  “That’s an easy enough thing to tell children who can’t remember differently.” He led the way past a statue of Benjamin Franklin and into the Electricity Building. “I talked to the servants. Only Hatty was with the DeBells before the Fire, and she gave me the most evasive answer I’ve ever heard from her.”

  “That doesn’t make it true.”

  “No, but we’re of a height—all three of us were. And when I look at you, and I remember how we grew almost in lockstep ...”

  Neva studied Derek’s face for a moment. Could she see herself in him? Perhaps in the nose ... and the cheekbones ... and the cast of his eyes ... But no more. Surely no more. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  He winced. “I should have, but I wanted to speak with Edward first. And when I couldn’t locate him, and I finally came to see you and Augie ...”

  She nodded. Yesterday hadn’t exactly been the most opportune time.

  “I also wondered ... I didn’t know how to put this. I still don’t, but ...” Derek gestured in a way that seemed to encompass the entire Electricity Building, which they’d now walked to the middle of. “Do you have an affinity for this?”

  She looked around her for the first time since they’d entered the Court of Honor’s brightest structure (really, since they’d left the Algerian Theatre). The Electricity Building fairly brimmed with the future. Phonographs that played an entire opera, one act per cylinder. Telautographs that reproduced handwriting at a distance. Long-distance telephones connected to concert halls in the East (producing the music Brin’s Kezzie had so loved). Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, which made pictures move as if they were alive. General Electric’s Tower of Lights, strung with eighteen thousand incandescent bulbs. A fully electric kitchen ... The Machinery Hall might pulse with the deafening force of mankind’s industrial advancement, but the Electricity Building whirred with energy and potential.

  Neva had seen all its exhibits at least twice, though. “It’s certainly impressive,” she replied, unsure what Derek was getting at.

  Unless ...

  She could bend her bones. Augie had been able to bend his voice. If Derek was really their brother ... Could he bend electricity?

  But he beat a hasty retreat before she could pursue the matter. “Isn’t it grand?” he asked with false eagerness before nudging her towards one of the central displays: Westinghouse’s expansive exhibit on alternating current. “On a daily basis, the Fair consumes three times more electricity than the city of Chicago. Can you believe it? The White City is the City of Lights. And Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla made it so—they beat out Edison and General Electric for the rights to illuminate the Fair. It’s a huge victory for Tesla’s alternating current: the whole world is seeing how safe it is here at the Exposition! Edison’s direct current will soon be as archaic as gas lamps.”

  Despite everything, Neva smiled. Derek had never talked that fast in his life. There was something there.

  If only he’d stop running from it.

  He wasn’t literally running, of course. Not quite. But he moved from one exhibit to the next with uncustomary speed, rarely allowing himself his usual lengthy pauses for consideration. And they still had much to discuss.

  “Come on,” she said after a half hour of waiting him out. “I want to show you something.” She took his wrist, making sure to grasp him where the sleeve ended, so that her skin would contact his—but there was nothing. No flush of fever; no impulse to assault. Nothing to indicate he was anything other than an ordinary white man.

  Who might be her triplet.

  Neva dropped his wrist and headed for the main exit. “Did you ask Mrs. DeBell?”

  Derek winced. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to.”

  “She must have known, though—one way or another.”

  “Oh, I think she knows. She’d have to.” He caught up to Neva as she emerged into the sunshi
ne. “Do you remember what she used to say to me? When I’d particularly dissatisfied her?”

  Neva froze just long enough to put a hitch in her stride. “She’d say, ‘Your mother’s lucky she didn’t have to rear you ...’”

  “‘Dying in childbirth has its advantages,’” Derek finished.

  Neva shook her head vehemently. “That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of women die in childbirth.”

  “That they do, and more’s the pity. But few bastards are taken into their father’s household ... Unless that father feels a debt is owed.”

  She didn’t have a reply to this, so she kept walking, past the Administration Building and the Machinery Hall, pacing silently along the same stretch of the South Canal Brin had dunked her in two nights ago.

  Then a thought struck. “Are you worried about being part Negro?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Well, it’s different when you’re actually dark. No one would look at you and think anything but ‘There goes a white man. Look how fair his skin is: pure as snow. He must be a capital fellow. Let’s give him every advantage.’”

  “Hey, now.” Derek sounded hurt.

  But the rest of the barb came out anyway: “Never mind his parentage. Send him to apprentice with a draftsman, and then get that man a job with Pullman Engineering! He deserves it all because he’s so damn white.”

  “Hey, now,” he said again, in a more sympathetic—but still aggrieved—tone. “Growing up a bastard is no lark.”

  “So I’m finding out.” She whipped a tear from her eye. “I’m sorry. I don’t even believe it yet, but the idea ...”

  “I know.” He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Where are we headed?”

  She exhaled and resumed walking. “The Anthropology Building. It’s not much farther.”

  In truth, it was still another torturous five minutes of weaving in and out of happy fairgoers. But Derek was content to say nothing further, and for that Neva loved him—brother or no. When they reached the Anthropology Building, she hustled him through the halls and into the Polynesian room.