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

by Nick Wisseman

  “Not that crazy.” Brin pointed at the shell. “Can just the one still do anything?”

  “Maybe.” The cowry’s compulsion to be worn—to be borne, to be used—still tugged at Neva, but with significantly less force than the whole necklace had exerted. “If I help you carry Derek out the back, maybe to the Logger’s Cabin, will you watch over him?”

  “While you search for Augie?”

  She nodded.

  Brin wrinkled her nose. “Not likely. Let’s do the reverse. Give me the—”

  “I can walk,” Derek protested, startling them both. “And I’m going with you.”

  He was afire with fever again; Neva could sense it radiating off him. But his eyes were clear, albeit strained from the effort of repressing urges she remembered all too well.

  “No,” she said. “You’re in no condition to help, and the fever isn’t easy to control. I see you fighting it. If you lose that battle, even for a second ...”

  “I won’t.” He reached an arm out to brace himself against the wall and struggled to a stand. “Not again.”

  She grit her teeth. “Augie tried to kill you while you were out. Nearly did.”

  A violent shudder almost unbalanced Derek, but he suppressed the next tremor and squared his jaw. “He’s still my brother.”

  There was no arguing with that. Not without hitting Derek over the head or running back to fetch the ropes in the storage room. Try as she might, Neva couldn’t think of a viable alternative. And he was right: this was a family matter.

  She offered her shoulder to him. He stiffened when he put his arm around her but didn’t further betray himself. He had the fever in check now, despite their proximity. He’d always been so disciplined. “You don’t have to come,” she said to Brin.

  The Irishwoman snorted and moved beneath Derek’s other arm. “Let’s go.”

  After stuffing their ears against future whistling—Brin and Derek used bits of his handkerchief; Neva restored her bone plugs—the three exited Machinery via the northeast door, a small entrance that let them peek around the building’s corner before setting foot in the Court of Honor.

  It was a wise decision: the heart of the White City, celebrated near and far as a heavenly vision of the future, had become the Devil’s hell-inflected canvas.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  THE MINES, ELECTRICITY, and Agriculture Buildings had all sprouted flames, their orange and red tendrils contrasting fiendishly with the white walls and roofs they consumed. Bodies dotted the grounds and waters like litter—crumpled in the open, blown against the bandstands, floating in the Basin. On the west side, a unit of soldiers sheltered in the Railway Station, crouching behind the ticketing counter and shooting through the windows every few seconds. On the east side, men who might have been strikers, rioters, or looters used Administration for cover and returned fire with rocks, scrap, and the odd pistol. Smoke and ash were everywhere. The air stank of burning staff.

  “Augie?” mouthed Brin.

  Neva shook her head. She recognized some of the combatants, however. Between Administration and Machinery, Wherrit brandished a giant sheet of wood like a shield as he advanced in the direction of a wounded man—one of the refugees who’d wintered in the Fair. Behind Mines, Miles Copeland wheeled on a horse, probably organizing a charge of Pinkertons. In front of Manufactures and Liberal Arts, two women she’d once played cards with crawled on their bellies towards the remains of the Music Hall.

  But no Augie—not in any guise Neva knew, at least. And he could be anywhere in the Fair by now. Or have left it entirely. Yet she had a feeling he’d stayed close. The White City had descended into the darkest possible version of itself, but it was still a spectacle, a morbid devolution he wouldn’t be able to resist. And the best place to view such a scene was from on high.

  “Let’s try the Midway,” Neva said.

  Derek tapped his improvised earplugs.

  “The Midway,” she repeated, but more slowly, giving him time to read her lips.

  He and Brin nodded. Then they all ran.

  Their pace was labored, closer to a trot than a sprint. Partly because Brin and Neva still had to support Derek, obliging them to maneuver as a single entity with six legs. But also because there were guns or flames (or both) to avoid at every turn, even though they took pains to circle around the Court of Honor.

  The first such obstacle arose as they headed south along Machinery. At the end of the Canal, several strikers huddled behind the Obelisk, occasionally darting out to shoot or throw something at four soldiers who’d taken up sniping positions in the arched doors of the tunnels beneath the Colonnade.

  “This way,” Neva mouthed, steering Brin and Derek away from the fire zone and into Machinery via the southeast entrance, then through the rear of the building. A skirmish in the Annex forced them to slip into the adjoining Machine Shop and Boiler House. They were safe there for the space of twenty yards or so—until a bullet whizzed by Brin’s face and another ricocheted through Derek’s legs.

  Neva ducked behind a half-dismantled boiler, its remaining components dull with dust. Peering out, she caught sight of a soldier guarding the west exit, rifle aimed their way and lips shouting something that might have been “God-damned strikers!” He must have seen the white ribbons they still wore on their chests.

  Derek and Brin knelt beside her.

  “Back?” the Irishwoman asked, gesturing the way they’d come.

  Neva grimaced. They’d be exposed as soon as they moved away from the boiler. And the fight in the Annex had been bad: ten or so soldiers and upwards of twenty strikers. Returning there would be no safer.

  “I’ll distract him,” she said, deliberately enough for Brin and Derek to make out. “You get clear.”

  Derek started to object, but she was already standing, contorting the bones of her face into the same demonic visage she’d resorted to in the White Chapel Club.

  The guard was down, though.

  Quill stood over him, holding a second rifle like a club and bleeding from at least three places. Behind him, the west exit’s door shuddered on its hinges.

  “Quill!” she called, turning away long enough to reform her facial structure, unstop her ears, and signal to Brin and Derek that they could rise. “Is he ...?”

  “No.” Quill didn’t seem surprised to see them. And really, what would their presence signify when set against everything else? “I don’t shoot unless I can help it. These boys are just cogs in the machine like the rest of us.”

  “Like Mabel was?” Derek, leaning on Brin, had unstuffed his ears too. She was doing the same.

  “I wouldn’t have cut her.”

  “You shouldn’t have touched her at all,” Brin noted.

  “No.” Quill sounded genuinely pained. “It was a bad bluff. But it had to be made.” Something shattered elsewhere in the Machine Shop, and he nodded in the noise’s direction. “This had to happen.”

  “Did it?” asked Neva.

  “It’s the only way.”

  Brin looked set to argue, but for the second time in as many minutes, a bullet nearly took off her nose, this shot coming from the other direction: the Annex. They scrambled to Quill’s side of the half-dismantled boiler and took cover again.

  “On three,” he murmured, hunched over but ready to charge.

  Neva shook her head. “We’re not part of the fight—we just need to get to the Midway.”

  He shrugged and spat to the side.

  She saw red in his spittle. “You’re hurt.”

  “It’s nothing.” He pointed to the west exit. “I’ll draw the attention of whoever’s come from the Annex. You get outside.”

  “Quill ...”

  He tightened his grip on the rifle. “Let me do this much. Go.” And as if he’d said the last word for himself, he was off, leaping over the boiler and shouting a challenge.

  Brin didn’t hesitate either, grabbing Derek and running low for the exit. When she passed the fallen soldier, she reached
down and plucked up his gun.

  Neva glanced back at Quill—he’d downed a second soldier, but at the cost of a vicious headwound. Wobbling badly, her former teacher stumbled into the Annex.

  “Good luck, you damn idiot,” she whispered before fleeing through the opposite door.

  Neva, Derek, and Brin emerged behind the Terminal Station in time to see Copeland lead a flood of shouting Pinkertons into the Court of Honor, clearing the way to Transportation. Once inside its ruins, the three of them restored their respective earplugs.

  Brin inspected the rifle she’d scavenged. “One shot,” she said, holding up her left index finger.

  It wasn’t much, but in the process of navigating the Choral Building, Horticulture, and the Children’s Building, they found no other serviceable arms. And when they finally made it to the Midway, they’d been shot at twice more and the target of four thrown objects. They’d also witnessed a half-dozen deaths and maimings and seen fires bloom in several locations, including on the Wooded Island, which seemed to be playing host to some of the fiercest fighting.

  As they caught their breath in the back alley of Irish Industries, Neva said a prayer that Dob and his cousins were safe with Mabel—said it silently because she was even more winded than Derek. She couldn’t push herself like this much longer. Maybe not at all. Her stomach had started hurting again.

  “Where now?” Derek panted.

  “Let’s stay in the alley,” Brin suggested.

  Neva had been thinking along similar lines—the Midway wasn’t likely to be much better than the Court of Honor. Gritting her teeth, she propped up Derek, as did Brin, and the three of them hurried west, from the back of one building to the next.

  It was an odd thing to navigate the Fair without noise.

  Neva had noticed its absence during the rush to the Midway. But as they moved behind the Natatorium, she remembered the din that used to welcome visitors to the Exposition. Exotic music, industrial clangs, roaring animals, shouting salesmen: all gone, even when she retracted her bone plugs. Instead, she knew without listening that the sounds beyond the silence were of conflict—men killing and dying.

  What a difference a year could make.

  At least the fighting on the Midway seemed restricted to the main thoroughfare; they didn’t meet anyone in the alley as they made their way to the Moorish Palace. From there, after edging out behind the palace’s rear wall, Neva could see the Ferris Wheel.

  At first, she thought she’d guessed wrong—all the carriages that hadn’t been disassembled looked empty, even the lower ones that didn’t need climbing to reach. But a bit of movement on the near side caught her eye, in the fifth carriage from the ground: a man kicking his feet up, propping them on the seat in front of him as he reclined to watch the struggle below.

  Augie.

  Not on the outside: the man’s skin was white, his beard red, and his clothing that of a hobo’s. But Neva was almost certain he was her brother.

  How to be sure, though? Augie wouldn’t admit his identity—not if she believed what he’d said about leaving him alone. He’d stay in his current form, with no way to get him out of it short of taking a knife to him. And if she were wrong ...

  On the other hand, if forcing the issue caused Augie to reveal himself, could she hope to overcome him? Who knew how many talents he’d acquired over the years? He’d just collected Brin’s, and he’d already had Derek’s.

  He’d already had Derek’s.

  The memory of Augie gloving his hand in sparks slammed into Neva as if the sparks had merged into another lightning bolt. He had Derek’s talent because they’d shared their mother’s womb, swapping bits of themselves as her nurturing fluids circulated between them. Augie had acquired his brother’s ability—and doubtless his form—before they were born ... Just as he must have collected his sisters’.

  He’d said he wasn’t sure what he’d taken from their stillborn sibling. But from Neva, what he’d gained was suddenly as obvious as it was crippling: from her, he’d acquired the power to transform. From her, he’d copied the ability to copy others. Not just by mimicking their voices, but by replicating their bodies. Because she wasn’t merely a bonebender.

  She was a skinchanger.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  NEVA SAGGED AGAINST Derek. Now he was supporting her instead of the other way around.

  All her life, she’d been a skinchanger—the skinchanger. The original talent, realizing only a fraction of her potential. Bending her bones to make minor alterations when she could have changed everything, subconsciously adjusting her flesh to stretch and contract as required.

  “You’re not some wax doll,” Augie had said, more than once. “Remember, if you’re not careful, you’ll tear a muscle, or bleed to death ... And what do you think they’ll do to you if you’re caught? Promise me, Neva. Not your skin. And only for emergencies.”

  All those references to the trials at Salem; all the times he’d made her worry about branding herself a witch—about being a witch. How he must have laughed at her ignorance, her lack of imagination. How he must have enjoyed his secret knowledge once he’d made her fearful of expanding her own.

  But she doubted he’d laugh now. Not if she could take the shape that seemed to haunt him most.

  Neva straightened and stepped away from Derek. If it worked the same for her, then she had everything she needed inside her and Augie’s model to work from. That had been his advantage: knowing she could do something and having the experience to guess there might be more. If she’d had the same type of practice identifying a talent’s true limits ...

  But she didn’t want that. Not ever. Focus.

  She closed her eyes to better picture the form she had in mind, trying to recall every detail, every line of the soft eyes, strong cheekbones, and delicate ears. Attempting the dress was probably too much, but if the face came close ...

  A tap on her shoulder. She turned to see Brin giving her a worried look.

  “Neva?” the Irishwoman asked.

  Neva glanced at her hands; still caramel. Damn. “It’s all right. Just give me a minute.”

  She reached into her pocket to clutch the last cowry: her true teacher. Augie should have been the one to instruct her, to show her what was possible. But the shell and its brethren had been the ones to enable her, to help her ooze through a tiny hole, or sharpen her hands into weapons, or impersonate Arthur Johnson—her first true shapeshift. The necklace had done that ... And the insects’ venom; Augie had been responsible for that much.

  What a brother she had.

  Gritting her teeth, Neva let the shell’s invigorating (yet diminished) warmth spread through and loosen her. Now: should she start with the familiar—bending her bones? Except Augie’s version of the aspect had basically the same build as her, with similar facial structure. She could round her chin a little more, perhaps, and flatten her forehead a touch ... But how to change the tone of her skin and that of her eyes and hair? She didn’t have a catalog of traits inside her like Augie seemed to, no pages of options to rifle through until she found the ones that struck her fancy. If she was right, though—and she knew she was; she felt it keenly—she could do this. This was her skill, not his. She just had to relax.

  And Neva could think of no better way to calm herself than dancing.

  It had been months—nine, to be precise—since she’d last attempted anything approaching a shimmy, much less a Hagala walk. And she didn’t want to move like that now. This wasn’t about being sensual. She wanted to glide, to let her feet find their way without the weight of cares and conscience, to allow her arms to sway like willows in the wind.

  And so, as flames claimed Hagenbeck’s Animal Show and a man stumbled into the Street in Cairo complex with his guts slithering forth from a bayonet wound, Neva blocked it all out and danced.

  A step to the right and her hands lightened.

  Two paces forward and her hair uncurled.

  A spin to the left and her face whiten
ed.

  Two paces back and her eyes blurred, blued, and gentled.

  Each transition hurt more than Neva had expected. She was used to the pain that came with bending her bones. But massaging her flesh, inverting her pigments—pure agony. Augie hadn’t betrayed the slightest hint of it while he’d flitted from one guise to the next. Maybe long practice had dulled the sensation. Or perhaps he was simply too mad to notice.

  Well, he’d notice this. “Augie!” she yelled when she’d changed as much as she dared and stepped into the open. “Augie!” she yelled again, making sure the man on the Ferris Wheel heard her voice coming out of their sister’s lips.

  His gaze tracked to her automatically, as anyone’s would when someone shouted, chaotic backdrop or not. But once he saw her, his mouth gaped.

  It was Augie, all right.

  “That’s him,” Neva said, turning to Brin and Derek, whose amazement confirmed her transformation as much as any mirror.

  “Jaysus,” the Irishwoman breathed.

  Neva tapped her ears. “Check your muffs.”

  Despite his surprise, Derek did so immediately. Brin followed suit a second later. The handkerchief scraps likely weren’t as good as bone plugs, but they were better than nothing.

  “I’m going up,” Neva said, jerking her thumb at the Ferris Wheel and then lowering two fingers at her companions. “Stay here.”

  Brin shook her head. “Not likely.”

  Neva pointed at Derek, who still shivered, despite all the running they’d done. “He’s too weak to climb. Watch him for me—please.”

  He removed his arm from around Brin and made a show of standing on his own.