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

Neva studied Derek’s face for a moment. Could she see herself in him? Perhaps in the nose ... and the cheekbones ... and the cast of his eyes ... But no more. Surely no more. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

He winced. “I should have, but I wanted to speak with Edward first. And when I couldn’t locate him, and I finally came to see you and Augie ...”

She nodded. Yesterday hadn’t exactly been the most opportune time.

“I also wondered ... I didn’t know how to put this. I still don’t, but ...” Derek gestured in a way that seemed to encompass the entire Electricity Building, which they’d now walked to the middle of. “Do you have an affinity for this?”

She looked around her for the first time since they’d entered the Court of Honor’s brightest structure (really, since they’d left the Algerian Theatre). The Electricity Building fairly brimmed with the future. Phonographs that played an entire opera, one act per cylinder. Telautographs that reproduced handwriting at a distance. Long-distance telephones connected to concert halls in the East (producing the music Brin’s Kezzie had so loved). Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, which made pictures move as if they were alive. General Electric’s Tower of Lights, strung with eighteen thousand incandescent bulbs. A fully electric kitchen ... The Machinery Hall might pulse with the deafening force of mankind’s industrial advancement, but the Electricity Building whirred with energy and potential.

Neva had seen all its exhibits at least twice, though. “It’s certainly impressive,” she replied, unsure what Derek was getting at.

Unless ...

She could bend her bones. Augie had been able to bend his voice. If Derek was really their brother ... Could he bend electricity?

But he beat a hasty retreat before she could pursue the matter. “Isn’t it grand?” he asked with false eagerness before nudging her towards one of the central displays: Westinghouse’s expansive exhibit on alternating current. “On a daily basis, the Fair consumes three times more electricity than the city of Chicago. Can you believe it? The White City is the City of Lights. And Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla made it so—they beat out Edison and General Electric for the rights to illuminate the Fair. It’s a huge victory for Tesla’s alternating current: the whole world is seeing how safe it is here at the Exposition! Edison’s direct current will soon be as archaic as gas lamps.”

Despite everything, Neva smiled. Derek had never talked that fast in his life. There was something there.

If only he’d stop running from it.

He wasn’t literally running, of course. Not quite. But he moved from one exhibit to the next with uncustomary speed, rarely allowing himself his usual lengthy pauses for consideration. And they still had much to discuss.

“Come on,” she said after a half hour of waiting him out. “I want to show you something.” She took his wrist, making sure to grasp him where the sleeve ended, so that her skin would contact his—but there was nothing. No flush of fever; no impulse to assault. Nothing to indicate he was anything other than an ordinary white man.

Who might be her triplet.

Neva dropped his wrist and headed for the main exit. “Did you ask Mrs. DeBell?”

Derek winced. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to.”

“She must have known, though—one way or another.”

“Oh, I think she knows. She’d have to.” He caught up to Neva as she emerged into the sunshine. “Do you remember what she used to say to me? When I’d particularly dissatisfied her?”

Neva froze just long enough to put a hitch in her stride. “She’d say, ‘Your mother’s lucky she didn’t have to rear you ...’”

“‘Dying in childbirth has its advantages,’” Derek finished.

Neva shook her head vehemently. “That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of women die in childbirth.”

“That they do, and more’s the pity. But few bastards are taken into their father’s household ... Unless that father feels a debt is owed.”

She didn’t have a reply to this, so she kept walking, past the Administration Building and the Machinery Hall, pacing silently along the same stretch of the South Canal Brin had dunked her in two nights ago.

Then a thought struck. “Are you worried about being part Negro?”

“I don’t—”

“Well, it’s different when you’re actually dark. No one would look at you and think anything but ‘There goes a white man. Look how fair his skin is: pure as snow. He must be a capital fellow. Let’s give him every advantage.’”

“Hey, now.” Derek sounded hurt.

But the rest of the barb came out anyway: “Never mind his parentage. Send him to apprentice with a draftsman, and then get that man a job with Pullman Engineering! He deserves it all because he’s so damn white.”

“Hey, now,” he said again, in a more sympathetic—but still aggrieved—tone. “Growing up a bastard is no lark.”

“So I’m finding out.” She whipped a tear from her eye. “I’m sorry. I don’t even believe it yet, but the idea ...”

“I know.” He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Where are we headed?”

She exhaled and resumed walking. “The Anthropology Building. It’s not much farther.”

In truth, it was still another torturous five minutes of weaving in and out of happy fairgoers. But Derek was content to say nothing further, and for that Neva loved him—brother or no. When they reached the Anthropology Building, she hustled him through the halls and into the Polynesian room.

“These artifacts,” she said, motioning at the cases against each wall. “Which ones speak to you?”

Derek gave her a queer look but then turned his eyes on the displays. And now he took his time. His maddening, habitual, incredibly excessive time. Studying each artifact, reading its label, studying the artifact again. One by one. Case by case.

Neva nearly screamed.

But when he finally came to the cowry shell necklace, she tried her best to mask her sudden anticipation—she didn’t want to betray her interest unless he shared it. So, sidelong, she watched him peer at the necklace ... read its label ... peer at