Witch in the White City: A Dark Historical Fantasy/Mystery (Neva Freeman Book 1), Nick Wisseman [best novels for students .TXT] 📗

“You talked,” Wiley cut in. “No one listened.”

“I heard him,” Roland said.

“But our message would have been lost,” Quill continued, shifting on his box. “The crowd would have assumed the blast to be part of the general patriotism, or a simple accident—not the beacon we need. Ferris’s monstrosity is a much better target.”

Neva froze, even more so than she already had. Could this possibly be what it sounded like?

It was: Quill confirmed it. “The Wheel is a glittering cage,” her former teacher pronounced. “A trifling prison that blinds its prisoners to their captivity. Such is property. Dynamiting its foremost symbol on Chicago Day will be the true beginning of the working man’s emancipation.”

Chapter Nine

NEVA HARDLY DARED TO breathe. Had Quill become an anarchist? He’d always been passionate about class struggle, but ...

“This is madness,” Wiley said, echoing her thoughts. “You’d destroy the Ferris Wheel, the wonder of the Fair that’s the wonder of the World?”

Quill inclined his head. From her vantage behind him, Neva could see his upper vertebrae jutting out from the base of his neck. “It’s an amusement—a true opiate of the masses.”

“No, it’d be Haymarket all over. Except we’d actually throw the bomb, not just be framed for it. And you’d hurt people.”

“Not if we do it right,” Brin interjected.

“Flaming hell, you too?”

“I’ve already made some stick babies. We just need to take care no one’s on the Wheel.”

“You’ve already made the dynamite—flaming hell. Well, I know Roland’s in.”

“Been in,” Roland confirmed.

“Shocking. Pieter, tell me you’re not considering this idiocy?”

A throat cleared. “Ja-nee, Wiley ... Do you really think the pamphlets have changed anyone’s mind?”

“And you think an explosion will? Twenty-five thousand unemployed workers came to hear Samuel Gompers speak downtown not two months ago. Twenty-five thousand. That’s how you win hearts and minds. Dynamiting the Wheel will only turn the public against us. Violence isn’t the answer.”

“It was when we stomped the khakis at Majuba Hill.”

“Because the Freedom War was a war—this is politics.”

“On the contrary,” Quill said. “It’s both.”

The argument raged on, but Neva stopped listening. The anarchist movement in Chicago had become increasingly militant in recent years, and only more so in the aftermath of Haymarket. If they found her now, lying in earshot of their scheming ... what would they do?

Best not to find out.

Unfortunately, bending her bones again hurt worse than ever. Before, she’d been overheated—with fever?—and that warmth had made her supple. Now, she’d gone rigid with chill, and the slightest distortion triggered absolute agony. But she forced herself to swallow her screams and inch backward between the crates, contorting like an eel until she was once more within their recesses.

Instead of slipping out the other side, however, she followed another narrow passage between the sloppily stacked boxes and bent her way to the wall. Wahib—who, like the other early Algerian arrivals, had helped construct the Fair while Sol rush-built their exhibit—had told her once that while the White City looked eternal, its solidity was an illusion. The building’s exteriors were made of staff: a mixture of plaster, cement, and hemp troweled onto wooden laths, which were in turn supported by steel frames. Using staff had enabled the Exposition’s architects to build quickly while sculpting and molding as they pleased, but the substance wouldn’t hold up much longer than the Fair’s six-month run. And the compound was easy to break—as Neva proved to herself by hardening her right hand into a drill shape and punching through the wall.

The noise wasn’t loud, but it was enough to cause Roland to ask Brin to “check on Wiley’s Negro notch.”

Neva grimaced. This would have to be done quickly. As quietly as she could, she widened the hole a few inches and twisted through. She’d chosen the right spot: one of the laths was set higher than it should have been, making it easy for her to curve under it and spill out into the Machinery Hall proper.

She gave herself another few breaths to finish solidifying before hurrying toward the exit. The hall was dark and still, empty except for exhibits and the sound of the steam engines—it must be after midnight. She felt better, but moving faster than a walk was difficult.

Especially when the fever returned.

She grew hot as suddenly as she’d grown cold in the storage room. One moment she was wishing the forges of the metalworking display in the northwest corner hadn’t been damped for the night; the next moment she was flushed and near fainting. And the illness—if that’s what it was—had dug in deeper: with alarming speed, she became weaker than when she’d woken, barely capable of stumbling through the Hall’s main doors and out into the Court of Honor.

It didn’t help that the stench of burning staff immediately filled her nostrils: the Cold Storage Building still burned. Or smoked, at least. The crowd had dispersed—there was no one in the Court of Honor to see her stagger in the opposite direction. But a shout from beyond the Terminal Station indicated that the Columbian Guard continued to manage the fire’s aftermath. Perhaps they were hosing down the wreckage.

If only they’d hose her down instead.

She needed to be cooled quickly, even frozen again—anything to stop her looming incineration. Her insides already burned, each beat of her heart pumping boiling blood through her body. In a few seconds, her rashes would burst, and out would pour steam, and smoke, and ...

Neva fell headfirst into the South Canal.

She’d been aiming for the Basin but lost her bearings as the fever made steering impossible. The same icy Lake Michigan water filled the Canal, however. It quenched her quickly, calming her skin and promising to do the same for her broiling gut if she would only open her mouth and let the cool blue irrigate her body.

But just as her lips began to part, fingers gripped either shoulder and yanked her onto the walkway.

“Fancied a midnight swim, did you?” Brin maintained her hold