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

Something small and hard bounced off her forehead.

At first, she thought the deadeye matron had returned to hurl more pennies. Or that another member of the audience had taken up her cause. But as Neva raised her head to its normal level, a smile affixed to her face, she saw what had struck her: a cockroach. Upended on the stage floor, legs flailing in an attempt to right itself.

She suppressed a shudder. The “White City” of the Fair was far cleaner than the “Black City” of Chicago to the north, but the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors left an avalanche of trash in their wake. And despite the best efforts of the (mostly colored) custodial staff, pests abounded.

But not with such strange markings. As she raised the edges of her skirt to emphasize a series of languorous belly rolls, the cockroach managed to flip itself over, and she saw that its upper shell was festooned with two sickle shapes joined at the outermost part of their curves, as if a pair of crescent moons stood back-to-back. Their coloring was purple, and they ... gleamed.

So did the sickles on the next bug to fall, a millipede that bounced off the cockroach’s carapace, upending it again. The millipede landed on its many legs and crawled towards Neva, prompting her to use a Hagala walk to slide a few steps to her left.

No one in the audience seemed to have noticed the insects yet. Almost everyone’s focus remained on her, even when another bug—a fat worm?—dropped next to the first two. Was there a hole in the roof? Or were they congregating because last week a white woman had thrown rotten fruit at Meriem as she’d bowed at the end of her performance? Maybe one of the juicier pieces had splattered the rafters. The resulting mold might explain the purple markings.

Neva extended into another backbend, actively looking up this time to see if she could locate the source—there. Directly above where she’d been dancing a few moments ago: a score of insects clustered on a beam. All sporting glittering sickles and crawling over something pale. Only a portion of the object was visible, the rest obscured either by the bugs or the beam it rested on. But what she could see looked like ... the carefully manicured fingertips of a human hand.

“God preserve me,” Neva breathed, instinctively elevating out of the backbend and stepping into a set of Tunisian twists. Surely Augie, her twin brother, fellow performer, and dedicated prankster, was playing a trick on her by painting bugs and planting props. Or perhaps she was hallucinating. But on the stage, the cockroach still scrabbled madly to right itself, and the millipede had begun chewing on the worm. Which, now that she looked closer, wasn’t a worm at all.

It was a thumb.

Neva wasn’t sure how she stifled her scream or maintained her steps. Yet no sound escaped her lips as she resumed her Hagala walk and edged to the left. Outwardly, she remained perfectly calm: unruffled, wholly engaged in her dance, giving no cause for alarm.

Until she rolled her head back and saw that the beam was alive now, glistening and pulsing with a thick coating of sickle-marked insects—praying mantises, slugs, dung beetles, hornets, moths, ants, and more—swarming over each other in their frenzy to form a writhing stalactite whose tip, at its current rate of growth, would reach her in seconds.

None of the winged bugs had taken flight yet. But several fell on her as she dove to the stage’s floor and rolled further left. And although Islem’s reed pipe faltered, and the Columbian Guard had a troubled look on his face, no one seemed to have registered anything other than the abrupt change to her movements. Was she hallucinating? Or was the hem of the raised curtain shielding the bugs from the audience’s view?

“A moment’s respite!” Neva called out as she ripped off one of her veils, flicked the insects on it to her right, and fled offstage to her left.

But the stalactite of bugs streamed across the rafter in pursuit. And as the music died and the crowd burbled with discontent, the insects descended on her in a chittering, biting shower.

Chapter Two

THE BUGS WERE EVERYWHERE, went everywhere, but Neva still didn’t scream.

She didn’t have time.

She had to stop the vermin from biting her, had to get them off, had to be clean. Her hands tore at her clothing, flinging off cockroaches and spiders and leeches, and her bones spasmed, working her body into ever-faster convulsions that shook loose the tiny invaders like droplets from a wet, wriggling dog.

It wasn’t enough.

There were too many insects, and she was still coated in them, still infested ... when they fell away. Every single one. Dropped to the floor and scurried into the shadows as Neva caught her breath and the Columbian Guard sprinted up to her—he must have jumped on stage and followed her into the off-left wing.

“Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer, but he seemed puzzled as to why she was breathing hard and wiping at her clothing. Had he really seen nothing?

Wahib, the Algerian troupe’s worldly leader, hurried out of the changing room. His skin was as dark as the guard’s was light—with a change of outfit, Wahib could have passed for one of the Fon warriors in the Dahomey Village exhibit. “Neva?” he asked gently.

She shook her head, eyes still scanning the floor, the walls, the ceiling. How could the bugs just be gone?

Wahib wrinkled his wrinkles, glanced at the guard, and turned around. “I’ll get someone else on stage.”

“Wait.”

Wahib turned back to her, eyebrows raised.

What could she say that wouldn’t sound hysterical? “There’s something lodged in the rafters. Bugs are eating it. Part of it fell onstage. The bugs fell on me.”

“Ah.” He grabbed a broom. “I’ll clean it up. You catch your breath.”

As Wahib stepped out to soothe the audience, the guard motioned