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

which left many idle on the streets. And with the country in such a bad way—as stock prices plummeted and banks closed left and right—the number of destitute, desperate families only continued to swell.

Neva’s heart went out to them, but she didn’t have time for charity and little of it to give. So she walked on, trying not to see the hungry men and women with their skinny, ragged children. She wasn’t the only person determinedly casting a blind eye: few of those who could afford to visit the White City wanted an illustration of how sharply it contrasted with the Black City that had made it.

No answers awaited Neva when she at last reached the Stockyard’s main gate, an imposing limestone arch topped with the bust of a bull. But a tour was in progress:

“Seventy-five thousand hogs, twenty-one thousand cattle, and twenty-two thousand sheep,” a guide was reciting to his audience. “That’s how many animals we can hold at any one time. Annually, we process about nine million, but that’s likely to be higher this year with the appetite at the Exposition. The work keeps the world in meat and a fifth of Chicago employed. But the numbers don’t do the Yards justice. Let’s go see the process in action.” He glanced at a woman in the front of the audience, dressed in an extravagant white dress she likely planned to wear to the Fair as well—tourists who came to Chicago for several days often visited both attractions. “Ma’am, you’ll want to hold up your hem. The floor can be a bit red.”

The woman covered her mouth with one hand, but her other went to her dress and raised it several inches. A second woman in the group did the same. Neva watched them follow the guide into one of the pig-slaughtering plants and felt momentarily ill. Mr. DeBell had given her the tour years ago, and the worst scenes remained vivid in her memory. Hogs marching up the “Bridge of Sighs,” so named because it afforded them their last look at life in the pen. Men stunning the hogs with a sledgehammer to the head and winding chains about their legs. The chains hoisting the hogs and swinging their limp bodies to the first butchering station. Men slitting the hogs’ throats. The chains dipping the hogs into a vat of boiling water and swinging them to the next station. Men making more cuts. The chains swinging the hogs to more stations. And so on, until all you could see—even when you closed your eyes—was men and chains and carnage ...

Neva shuddered. By going into that building, those women would be stained whether their dresses brushed the floor or not.

She shook her head and walked in the opposite direction. She needed to find Mr. DeBell.

It had been a long time since she’d been in the Yards but locating his office building proved easy enough: its location was another part of her prior visit she hadn’t forgotten, largely because the north end overlooked Bubbly Creek, a branch of the Chicago River fouled by the Yards’ blood and entrails. The gory runoff was so thick that the creek constantly bubbled with the gasses of decomposition—thus its nickname.

Resisting the impulse to hold her nose, Neva entered the building and made her way to the sales department. Mr. DeBell’s office was empty.

“He’s been out this past week.”

Neva turned to find a young, white executive leaning against the doorframe of the opposite office. “Out where?”

“Out without telling anyone where the blazes he went.” The young executive inclined his head. His voice was deep. “How did you get in here?”

“I walked.” It was true. No one had stopped her as she’d navigated the Yards. She’d been moving with purpose—perhaps that had helped. “So Mr. DeBell’s missing?”

“Maybe. Incommunicado, at least. What business is it of a colored girl’s?”

“I used to be his servant.”

The young executive ran his eyes over Neva’s body. “I’ll bet you did.”

She gave him a look that was four parts withering and no parts encouraging.

He laughed. “I suppose that’s none of my business.”

“Have you spoken to Mrs. DeBell?”

“Jonas—one of the partners—did. Lucretia doesn’t know where Ed is either. In fact ...” The young executive gave her a different type of appraisal. “He went missing shortly after another visitor of your persuasion came knocking.”

The sudden lump of foreboding in Neva’s stomach was as nauseating as the surrounding smell of slaughter. More, even. “Who was the visitor?”

“I’d never seen him before, but he looked a bit like you. More disgruntled, though—I could see thunder in his face. Didn’t hear him say why. But Ed called him Augie.”

Chapter Twelve

NEVA TRIED NOT TO CRINGE at the sound of her brother’s name—the confirmation she’d been dreading. “What did they talk about?”

The young executive shrugged. “Ed shut the door. But I suspect it’s neither of our businesses.” He straightened and crossed his arms. “You’ll show yourself out?”

She hesitated, but it seemed clear she wouldn’t be allowed in Mr. DeBell’s office. “Of course.”

The young executive motioned with his head to the stairs. Apparently he intended to watch her leave.

So Neva went, hoping she looked steadier than she felt. Augie had come to Mr. DeBell a week ago? Come angry? And then Mr. DeBell had gone missing? But even addled by an unnatural fever, her brother wouldn’t have—couldn’t have—harmed the closest thing he had to a living father. Not the Augie she’d grown up with. But why hadn’t he told her about any of this?

She needed to know more.

The article she’d read that morning returned to her as she debated where to go next—one of the first victims with a rash had been a girl in the Levee District. It wasn’t far from the Yards: maybe another hour’s walk.

Heading north, Neva crossed the bridge over Bubbly Creek—while holding her nose, without looking down—then cut back to Halsted, which she stayed on until 21st Street. Turning east, she continued walking as she readied herself to enter Chicago’s most sinful slum.

The