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

“There are all manner of clubs hanging on the wall,” the first voice observed.

“No, what you want is one o’ them blades—slip it in and lever open the lid,” the second voice said.

“You’ll cut the girls.”

“What girls?” a new voice asked.

“In the coffin. Two o’ them.”

“Locked in?”

“Aye. Cuddy’s left us a puzzle.”

“You sure?”

“Bat heard them talking.”

“Hello?” Someone knocked on the coffin’s lid. “No need to be afraid. We’re all gentle souls here.”

Someone else chuckled.

“I saw a jimmy in the alley—I’ll run and fetch it.”

But before any footsteps made it to the stairs, something smashed against the coffin, hard enough to make Neva and Brin smack their heads together.

“Dry up, Theo, Dyer’s getting a crowbar! Put the damn club down.”

“They’re running out of air! We have to get it open NOW!” Another blow rocked the coffin, splintering part of the lid this time.

“I can’t mend that,” Brin whispered while the other men tried and failed to restrain Theo, who connected on another two swings. “On my mark, kick the top off and run.”

Neva nodded and reformed herself so that her feet pressed against the bottom of the lid.

“Do it!” hissed Brin as she loosened the lock. They pushed up, the lid shot off the coffin, and the two women sprang out before the men had finished exclaiming their surprise.

But there was nowhere to go.

The room was too small, and the White Chapel members too many—eight in total. Neva bent through them like a breeze, leaving several staring at their clutching, empty fingers. Yet they caught Brin before she took two steps.

“Woah, little miss!” bellowed a man—Theo?—holding a club as Neva reached the stairs and glanced back. Brin wasn’t struggling, but her hand inched towards the knife concealed in her jacket.

“Fast as a snake,” another man said of Neva as he took a step towards her, his doughy frame jiggling with drunken menace. “A black snake.”

“No, she’s one o’ them dancing girls,” a third man cut in when she held up a warning hand. “The belly dancers. I seen her on the Midway, at the Street in Cairo.”

“The Algerian Theatre,” a fourth man corrected. “Her name is Genevieve Freeman, and she’s a former servant of Edward DeBell.”

Neva recognized the voice a split-second before she recalled the face it belonged to. The voice was Bat’s, the man who’d asked about Mr. DeBell a few moments ago. The face was that of the young executive she’d spoken to at the Stockyards that afternoon. Clearly, he’d done his homework since then.

And a good deal of drinking.

“Care to give us a shimmy?” he asked, stinking of whiskey even from across the room. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? A private showing?” He tugged at the bottom of his shirt to indicate she should expose her belly.

For a moment, she was back at the circus, numb and young and helpless. But then she saw how close Brin was to whipping out her knife and plunging it into one of the oafs holding her. Which meant blood. And fighting. And a bad end for just about everyone in the room.

Not that the men didn’t deserve it.

“Of course,” Neva said in a tight voice. “Is this what you want?” She waved off the two men who’d been stepping towards her and slipped out of her jacket, stalling for time by rolling her stomach as soon as it became visible. Someone whistled as she moved into a Moroccan shimmy.

But someone else—the ugliest man in the room—fixated on her belly’s rash. “Ain’t that Leather Apron’s mark? The one they showed in the papers?”

More whistling, and louder.

“Then why inn’t she dead?”

“Who cares. Let’s see the rest of them. That article said the marks were all over.”

“Oh, they are,” Neva purred—she might be able to bend her way out of this yet. “Watch, and I’ll show you.” Executing a half-turn, she worked into an undulation, sending a slow, sensual wave rolling up her body. But when the wave reached her hips, their ends sharpened to daggers and jutted from her skin. And when the wave crested at her head, her cheekbones took on a similar edge as a bony, bloody horn erupted above either ear.

“The Ripper marked me well,” she hissed, sounding every bit as demonic as she’d caused herself to appear. “Go before I do the same to you.” She glided to the side, clearing the stairway. “Go NOW.”

No one else so much as breathed—even Brin looked stunned. Then the doughy man bolted, and the rest of the men took off as if they’d been whipped, trampling over each other to get out of the room and keep as far from her as possible.

“Except for you,” Neva said to Bat when he tried to scurry past. She caught his arm and jerked him around to look at her. “You, I have questions for.”

He opened his mouth to protest. But his cry was stillborn, silenced by the twist of Neva’s features and the red lines running down her neck and legs. The rancid smell of soiled pants competed in the air with the sounds of flight and banging doors.

Then Neva smiled, and her teeth were razors.

Chapter Fifteen

“WELL, HE DIDN’T KNOW much,” Brin observed a few minutes later, after Bat had whimpered down the stairs and into the alley.

Neva nodded. Bartholomew Wiggins—Bat, to his idiot friends—hadn’t been able to tell her anything about why Mr. DeBell’s name was in the White Chapel guestbook. The young executive’s best guess was that Mr. DeBell had come on a lark, invited by a current member; that was how Bat had been introduced to the club a year ago. But as far as he knew, Mr. DeBell wasn’t a regular.

“No one’s going to believe him either,” Brin continued. “Sodden as he was. And considering the company he keeps.”

“You think he told the truth?”

“I don’t think he’s any cleverer than he looks, if that’s what you’re asking. Just an empty suit who belongs to a morbid, ridiculous club. Put those away, would you?”