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

“Thank you.”

“You gave us a fright disappearing from the storage room like that. Wiley is still tearing it apart looking for you. How did you get out?”

Neva pretended to study the Obelisk at the end of the Canal. The court’s lights were off, but the moon was bright enough to see the 60-foot-tall imitation of Cleopatra’s Needle in surprising detail. “There’s a hole in the wall. Behind some crates. I’m sorry—I panicked. This terrible fever came over me.”

Brin peeled one of her gloves back far enough to expose her wrist and laid it against Neva’s forehead. “Jaysus. You’re burning up.”

The fever had resurged the moment Brin’s skin contacted her own. But this time most of the heat concentrated in her rashes, causing them to pulse and throb.

As they’d done when she’d stood next to the Civil War veteran.

Seizing Brin’s wrist, Neva tore the glove the rest of the way off and twisted the Irishwoman’s arm down to look at the back of her hand.

She had the rash.

It was duller, more faded red than bright purple, but it was there. And seeing it made Neva want to ... bite her.

She couldn’t explain why. Maybe she was mistaking the fever for rage; perhaps rage was fueling the fever. Either way, she wanted Brin on the ground, bleeding and breathless. But when Neva tried to pin her, Brin spun free, took two steps back, and produced a knife from beneath her dress. “Get a hold of yourself, colored girl. You can control this.”

Lunging forward, Neva tried to rake her nails across Brin’s throat. She dodged to the side this time, slashing down at Neva’s chest. Without touching her skin, the blade sliced through the front of her jacket, which swung open to reveal the rash on her stomach.

Brin nodded. “Freshly risen. You were bit today, then?”

Neva watched her warily, waiting for an opening.

“Fight the fury. Don’t let it compel you.”

She edged to the right.

Brin mirrored her movement. “It’s not your fault. The bugs did this to you. Same as they did to the porter—Wiley told us about the chase. Desperate business, that.”

Neva kept circling; Brin did as well.

“The porter didn’t want to do what he did. Nor do you. It’s the bugs: they’ve maddened your blood.”

More circling.

“But you can overcome it. You can leave and be safe. Go. Tonight. Right now. Leave the Fair and be free.”

Neva paused, pretended to consider Brin’s words, and lunged again.

Only to be denied again—the Irishwoman leapt back in perfect unison with Neva’s charge. The knife swung down again too, but instead of cutting through her clothing, the blade went to her neck.

And expanded.

Rather than cleaving into her skin, the knife thinned and elongated, wrapping around her throat fast as a whip. Then it tightened.

Brin could bend metal.

“I’m not known for my mercy,” she whispered while the knife-whip cut off Neva’s air. “Especially towards stubborn Negroes. And I won’t warn you again: leave the Fair, or I’ll free you of it with this.”

The metal band squeezed harder, pressing out more images of Augie’s death.

He hit the rubble ...

Neva scrabbled at the band, trying to contort her way free.

His spine snapped ...

But she couldn’t manage the smallest contortion. She had no control. WHERE WAS HER CONTROL?

The falling tower buried him ...

And Neva blacked out.

Chapter Ten

A CROW CAWED, AUGIE threw a snowball at Neva, and she dodged.

“What was that?” he asked.

She froze. She’d always been flexible, but in the last few months—beginning shortly after her tenth birthday—she’d been able to ... bend. Stretch further than she should have been able to. Squeeze through gaps even a skinny girl like herself should have struggled with. And just now, she’d twisted like an eel around Augie’s snowball. “You mean your awful throw?”

He stared at her, studying her side. But everything was as it should be again. “I didn’t miss,” he said after a moment. “You should be spitting snow. Except you did something.”

Had it been that obvious? “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

She threw a fresh snowball at him. “Stop being thick.”

He caught it and stared at her further. Then he opened his mouth and ... cawed. In perfect imitation of the crow. Had her eyes been closed, Neva wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

Grinning, Augie puffed up into the stance he adopted whenever he wanted to impersonate Mr. DeBell. “It’s all right, Neva,” Augie said, but not in the usual repurposed version of his voice—this was Mr. DeBell’s aristocratic timbre and tone. Beat for beat, note for note. “You’ll always have a place in this household. Your parents earned it.”

“But just because my gallant husband took you in,” Augie continued in a spot-on replication of Mrs. DeBell’s acidity, his posture stiffening, “doesn’t mean you can’t dust the china, mop the floors, and wipe my bony bottom after I use my chamber pot. Oh, and clean that out, would you?”

“The pot?” asked Augie in Neva’s voice—her exact voice—as he stuck out his chin. “Or your bottom?”

“Don’t be sassing them,” he answered in Caleb’s growl, hunching over and looking at her sideways. “Acting all privileged and prissy. Getting some schooling with the DeBell children don’t mean they think you're white. You’re just a Negro servant to them, same as the rest of us.”

“But you can trust me,” Augie said, back in his own voice. “You can trust me, sister. I’ll keep your secret ... if you keep mine.”

Only frosted air came out of Neva’s mouth in reply—she didn’t know what to say. Too many emotions tumbled through her head:

She wasn’t alone.

Her brother was as strange as she was.

He understood her.

He was wonderful.

And he needed to be hugged—she knew that much. Rushing to him, she wrapped her arms around his chest, bending her bones to fully encircle him as her momentum sent them laughing into the snow.

“YOU’RE CERTAIN YOU’RE well enough to be up and about?” Wiley frowned at the small umbrella shading their table,